The death penalty and abortion.

[actsnoblemartin]

I dont think they are in-compatible or hypocritical position.

The death penalty is taking the life of a man or woman who purposefully took the life of a man or woman, and the bible gives justification for this (eye for an eye)

Abortion is taking the life of an innocent un-born child, and while having sex is a choice (with one obvious exception), murdering an innocent child is not. (Incest, and the mothers life being in actual jeopardy being the other two) The woman can give the child up for adoption, now let me ask you a question, how would you feel if your son's girlfriend, wife etc of daughter decided to have an abortion, which would have been your grand child or if youre parents decided to abort YOU

:laugh2: I sit back and wait for the personal attacks, er responses lol

Perhaps im not enlightened enough, I need to be sent to a re-education camp (sarcasm)

[gabosaurus]

One of the main arguments of pro-life activists is "Only God can take a life."
So how does that not carry over to the death penalty?

Also, define "purposely."

[diuretic]

The Bible's idea of "an eye for an eye" is from Jewish law and was an expression of proportionate punishment. An eye for one, not two for one (well not unless they're on special at your local Safeway :laugh2:).

Also discussing abortion policy isn't really enlightened by referencing the death penalty. I know people do but they're just shit stirring.

[DragonStryk72]

alright, I'm pro-death penalty, I'll lay that out now. There are some crimes that, quite frankly, are beyond the pale, and should have that finality. That said, the process takes too long, if someone is judged to be killed, they shouldn't be sitting around waiting to die for 10 years, it should be taken care of efficiently, and I believe that the judge who pushes the death penalty should be the one to throw the switch.

Now, abortion gets to be murkier water. pro-life and pro-choice get thrown at us alot, and we end up missing the point that there is a middle. I do not think that abortions should be used as often as they are (it is disturbing in the extreme that some women have had 4 or more abortions), so there should be limiters on it. Abortion clinics should also promote adoption as an alternative, given we have that amazing line of people trying to adopt a baby in this country (two problems solved in one run).

However, to out and out outlaw abortion will only make things worse, as the industry goes underground, again. As long as men and women are sexual creatures, there will be abortions, legal, or illegal. We can only control the circumstance of abortions.

[diuretic]

Fancy that, a thread on the death penalty and abortion. Don't see those around much :laugh2:

Sorry, I'm not having a go at anyone, it just struck me as being funny.

Yes I know, I know, I'm going to bed shortly :coffee:

[krisy]

I agree with you martin. I am pro life and I feel that in this day, there is really no reason for unwanted pregnancy. I know it will happen no mater what,but only out of irresponsibility. I know there are cases here and there of women getting pregnant on the pill,that is rare tho. Using abortion as a form of birth control should definitely be stopped.

The death penalty is a little trickier to me. Part of me is o.k. with it,but I was listening to Glenn Beck one day and he was talking about it. He said that he would not want to answer to God as to why our society decided it had the right to take a life when it is for him to decide.

[Trigg]

I agree with you martin. I am pro life and I feel that in this day, there is really no reason for unwanted pregnancy. I know it will happen no mater what,but only out of irresponsibility. I know there are cases here and there of women getting pregnant on the pill,that is rare tho. Using abortion as a form of birth control should definitely be stopped.

The death penalty is a little trickier to me. Part of me is o.k. with it,but I was listening to Glenn Beck one day and he was talking about it. He said that he would not want to answer to God as to why our society decided it had the right to take a life when it is for him to decide.

Getting pregnant on the pill isn't as rare as you think. My third handed the pill back to me when he was born. Also the pill isn't affective if you're on antibiotics, many people don't realize that.

I am pro-choice also. I wish there was no reason for it and I wish people didn't use it as a form of birth control. I would personnally not have one and if my child or a girlfriend of my sons gets pregnant I would advise them against it. Having said that, abortion has been around as long as people have and will continue to be even if outlawed. It might as well be safe.

I am also completely pro-death penalty. Some people are evil and need weeded out of the population.

[Hagbard Celine]

I dont think they are in-compatible or hypocritical position.

The death penalty is taking the life of a man or woman who purposefully took the life of a man or woman, and the bible gives justification for this (eye for an eye)

Abortion is taking the life of an innocent un-born child, and while having sex is a choice (with one obvious exception), murdering an innocent child is not. (Incest, and the mothers life being in actual jeopardy being the other two) The woman can give the child up for adoption, now let me ask you a question, how would you feel if your son's girlfriend, wife etc of daughter decided to have an abortion, which would have been your grand child or if youre parents decided to abort YOU

:laugh2: I sit back and wait for the personal attacks, er responses lol

Perhaps im not enlightened enough, I need to be sent to a re-education camp (sarcasm)

I think you're a troll who starts threads with the intent of delving into ad-hominem attacks, but here's a rebuttal to your bs religious viewpoints anyway.


One sided. That's the abortion stance of most Christians -- one sided. We hear the Christian Coalition speak against abortion. We hear Focus on the Family tell Republican candidates it will not support them unless they state their opposition to abortion. We hear Operation Rescue's Christian members praying God will turn back the clock and make abortion illegal again. Over and over we are bombarded with the "Christian" perspective that abortion is outright wrong, no exceptions.
With all these groups chanting the same mantra, there must be some pretty overwhelming biblical evidence of abortion's evil, right?

Wrong. In reality there is merely overwhelming evidence that most people don't take time to read their own Bibles. People will listen to their pastors and to Christian radio broadcasters. They will skim through easy-to-read pamphlets and perhaps look up the one or two verses printed therein, but they don't actually read their Bibles and make up their own minds on issues such as abortion. They merely listen to others who quote a verse to support a view they heard from someone else. By definition, most Christians, rather than reading for themselves, follow the beliefs of a Culture of Christianity -- and many of the Culture's beliefs are based on one or two verses of the Bible, often taken out of context.

This is most definitely the case when it comes to abortion. Ask most anti-abortion Christians to support their view, and they'll give you a couple of verses. One, quite obviously, is the Commandment against murder. But that begs the question of whether or not abortion is murder, which begs the question of whether or not a fetus is the same as a full-term human person. To support their beliefs, these Christians point to one of three bible verses that refer to God working in the womb. The first is found in Psalms:

"For Thou didst form my inward parts; Thou didst weave me in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to Thee, for Thou art fearfully wonderful (later texts were changed to read "for I am fearfully and wonderfully made"); wonderful are Thy works, and my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from Thee, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth. Thine eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Thy book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them."
Psalm 139:13-16
Although this passage does make the point that God was involved in the creation of this particular human being, it does not state that during the creation the fetus is indeed a person. According to Genesis, God was involved in the creation of every living thing, and yet that doesn't make every living thing a full human person. In other words, just because God was involved in its creation, it does not mean terminating it is the same as murder. It's only murder if a full human person is destroyed.
But even if we agreed to interpret these verses the same way that anti-abortion Christians do, we still have a hard time arguing that the Bible supports an anti-abortion point of view. If anything, as we will soon see, abortion is biblical.

Anytime we take one or two verses out of their context and quote them as doctrine, we place ourselves in jeopardy of being contradicted by other verses. Similarly, some verses that make perfect sense while standing alone take on a different feel when seen in the greater context in which they were written. And we can do some rather bizarre things to the Scriptures when we take disparate verses from the same context and use them as stand-alone doctrinal statements. Some prime examples of this come from the same book of the Bible as our last quote. Consider these verses that claim that God has abandoned us:

"Why dost Thou stand afar off, O Lord? Why dost Thou hide Thyself in times of trouble?"
Psalm 10:1
"How long, O Lord? Wilt Thou forget me forever? How long wilt Thou hide Thy face from me?"
Psalm 13:1
"O God, Thou hast rejected us. Thou hast broken us; Thou hast been angry; O, restore us.
Psalm 60:1
Not only can we use out-of-context verses to support that God doesn't care for us anymore, we can even use them to show how we can ask God to do horrible and vile things to people we consider our enemies. In this example, King David even wanted God to cause harm to the innocent children of his enemy:
"Let his days be few; let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children wander about and beg; and let them seek sustenance far from their ruined homes. Let the creditor seize all that he has; and let strangers plunder the product of his labor. Let there be none to extend lovingkindness to him, nor any to be gracious to his fatherless children."
Psalm 109:8-12
Are we indeed to interpret that God, speaking through David in these Psalms, is saying we have been abandoned by God and that when wronged we can ask God to cause our enemies to die and cause our enemies' children to wander hungry and homeless? Indeed, it would seem the case.
But rather than interpret that God is with us as a fetus, but forgets us as adults, and yet will allow us to plead for the death of our enemies, we need to look at the greater context in which all these verses are found: songs.

Called Psalms, these are the songs of King David, a man of great faith who was also greatly tormented. He was a man of passions. He loved God, lusted for another man's wife, and murdered him to get her. He marveled at nature and at his own existence. All his great swings in emotion are recorded in the songs he wrote, and we can read them today in the Book of Psalms. What we cannot do is take one song, or one stanza of a song, and proclaim that it is indeed to be taken literally while taking other stanzas from David's songs and claim they should not be taken literally.

Yet that is exactly what anti-abortion Christians are asking us to do. They use those few verses from the Psalms to support their dogma that abortion is wrong. They proclaim those verses as holy writ and the other verses as poetry that we should not be following. Clearly, this is a perfect example of taking verses out of context. And it leads us to only one conclusion: if we cannot trust that God wants to kill our enemies and abandon us, we must also conclude that we cannot trust that God has defined the fetus as being a person.

For indeed, if we allow that kind of thinking we could also make an argument that God is willing to maul children to death if they make fun of a bald guy who just happens to be in God's favor. You think I'm joking, but I'm not. In the book of Second Kings, our hero, the Prophet Elisha, who was quite bald, so it seems, was taunted by a group of young boys. Elisha's response was bitter and cruel:

"...as he was going up by the way, young lads came out from the city and mocked him and said to him, 'Go up, you baldhead; go up you baldhead!' When he looked behind him and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. Then two female bears came out of the woods and tore up forty-two lads of their number."
2 Kings 2:22-24
Did God kill those forty-two kids for making fun of a bald prophet? We can certainly make an argument for that if we use the anti-abortionists' kind of thinking.
Likewise we can also use the anti-abortionists' methods to establish that God approves of pornography, as seen in these following verses by Solomon as he pondered the female body:

"How beautiful are your feet in sandals, O prince's daughter! The curves of your hips are like jewels, the work of the hands of an artist. Your navel is like a round goblet which never lacks for mixed wine; your belly is like a heap of wheat fenced about with lilies. Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle."
"Your stature is like a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters. I said 'I will climb the palm tree, I will take hold of its fruit stalks.' Oh, may your breasts be like clusters of the vine, and the fragrance of your breath like apples, and your mouth like the best wine."

Song of Solomon 7:1-3,7-9
Pretty steamy stuff. Taken by itself, it would appear God is indeed promoting a written form of pornography. But just like Psalm 139:13-16, we cannot take it by itself. Instead we must take it within the context it was written.
The same is true with the other two verses used by anti-abortion Christians to defend their cause. From the book of Jeremiah, these Crusaders are fond of quoting the phrase, "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee," from the first chapter. But they never quote the entire passage, which changes the meaning considerably:

"Then the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. Then said I, Ah, Lord GOD! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child. But the Lord said unto me, Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak. Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord. Then the Lord put forth his hand, and touched my mouth. And the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth. See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant."
Jeremiah 1:4-10
This is a special event -- the birth of a prophet. God brought the prophet Jeremiah into the world for a divine purpose, and because of that, God was planning Jeremiah's life "before" he was even conceived. God was preparing him to do miraculous things, such as speak on behalf of God while still a child and setting him up as an overseer of nations and kingdoms. But the anti-abortionists simply overlook this on their way to claiming that the one phrase they quote proves God sees us as individual people while still in the womb. God saw Jeremiah in that way, but to claim it applies to all of us is akin to saying that we were all prepared as children to speak for God, and that God has placed all of us "over the nations and over the kingdoms" of the world. In essence, to claim this verse applies to anyone other than Jeremiah is to claim that we are all God's divine prophets. We are not; therefore, we cannot apply these verses to our own lives.
Another problem in this passage is the phrase, "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee." In Psalm 139:13-16 the anti-abortionists claim that because God was active in the creation of King David in his mother's womb that we must conclude the fetus is recognized by God as being a person. But here we see God stating that he knew Jeremiah "before" he was formed in the womb. By anti-abortionist logic, we would have to conclude that we are a human person even before conception. Since this is a ridiculous notion, we must, therefore, conclude that the anti-abortionist is interpreting these verses incorrectly.

The last verse most often quoted by anti-abortion Christians relates the story of Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, while both were pregnant. When they meet, the pre-born John the Baptist leaps in his mother's womb at Mary's salutation. Let's read the original:

"And Mary arose in those days, and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Juda; And entered into the house of Zacharias, and saluted Elisabeth. And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost:"
Luke 1:39-41
As much as the anti-abortion lobby would like this to mean that all fetuses are sentient persons because one is recorded as knowing Mary's words and then leapt inside the womb, the logic is as flawed as the Isaiah misquote. Again we have a miraculous event. Again we have a divine prophet whom God had ordained since before he was conceived. And this time it's even more miraculous, because the gestating John the Baptist is reacting to the approach of Mary, who at the time was pregnant with Jesus. Unless we believe all of us are chosen before birth to be the divine prophet ordained by God to herald the arrival of Christ on earth, then we cannot claim this passage refers to us. And indeed, it does not. While gestating fetuses are known to move and kick as their nervous systems and muscles are under construction, only divinely-inspired babies understand the spoken words of the mother of Jesus and can leap in recognition.
The point to all this is simple: we cannot take the verses we like and interpret them to support what we want to support. And, more to the point, we cannot simply accept what some Christian leaders proclaim as being God's word on a given subject without carefully reading the full text of the book and taking into consideration the entire context. We cannot, as we have shown, simply interpret those few verses from Psalms, Isaiah, and Luke as a reason to be against abortion. And, as we will see in a moment, there are still other verses -- if interpreted in the sloppy manner demonstrated by anti-abortion Christians -- in the Bible that could easily lead us to argue that indeed God, at times, supports abortion. Let's take a look.

In the full context of Ecclesiastes, King Solomon makes the point that much of life is futile. Over and over he writes that if life is good then we should be thankful. But when life is not good, Solomon makes some interesting statements:

"If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, however many they be, but his soul is not satisfied with good things, and he does not even have a proper burial, then I say, `Better the miscarriage than he, for it comes in futility and goes into obscurity; and its name is covered in obscurity. It never sees the sun and it never knows anything; it is better off than he.'"
Ecclesiastes 6:3-5
Clearly there is a quality of life issue being put forth in the Scriptures. And in this case, Solomon makes the point that it is sometimes better to end a pregnancy prematurely than to allow it to continue into a miserable life. This is made even more clear in these following verses:
"Then I looked again at all the acts of oppression which were being done under the sun. And behold I saw the tears of the oppressed and that they had no one to comfort them; and on the side of their oppressors was power, but they had no one to comfort them. So I congratulated the dead who are already dead more than the living who are still living. But better off than both of them is the one who has never existed, who has never seen the evil activity that is done under the sun."
Ecclesiastes 4:1-3
Here we have an argument for both euthanasia and abortion. When quality of life is at stake, Solomon seems to make the argument that ending a painful life or ending what will be a painful existence is preferable. Now remember, we're not talking about David's songs here. We're reading the words of the man to whom God gave the world's greatest wisdom.
And Solomon was not alone in this argument. Consider the words of Job, a man of great faith and wealth, when his life fell upon the hardest of times:

"And Job said, 'Let the day perish on which I was to be born, and the night which said, "a boy is conceived." May that day be darkness; let not God above care for it, nor light shine on it.'"
"Why did I not die at birth, come forth from my womb and expire? Why did the knees receive me, and why the breasts, that I should suck? For now I would have lain down and been quiet; I would have slept then, I would have been at rest, with kings and with counselors of the earth, who rebuilt ruins for themselves; or with princes who had gold, who were filling their houses with silver,. Or like the miscarriage which is discarded, I would not be, as infants that never saw light. There the wicked cease from raging, and there the weary are at rest. The prisoners are at ease together; they do not hear the voice of the taskmaster. The small and the great are there, and the slave is free from his master."

Job 3:2-4,11-19
And again a few chapters later Job reiterates the greater grace he would have known if his life had been terminated as a fetus:
"Why then hast Thou brought me out of the womb? Would that I had died and no eye had seen me! I should have been as though I had not been, carried from womb to tomb."
Job 10:18-19
Clearly there is a strong argument here that the quality of a life is as important if not more important than the act of being born. Indeed, we could claim that the Bible supports ending a pregnancy in the face of a life without quality. And, if I wanted to be bold, I could claim that this interpretation is in fact a biblical mandate to support the use of abortion as a way to improve our quality of life. And taking these verses to their extreme, I could claim that abortion is not just a good idea, it is a sacrament.
Actually, I will stop short of making that claim. In fact, I will stop short of making the claim that the Bible condemns or supports abortion at all. It does neither. The condemning and supporting comes not from the words of the Bible but from leaders within our Culture of Christianity who use verses out of context -- the same way I just did to support abortion -- to support their views against abortion. The condemning and the supporting comes not from the Scriptures but from average Christians who take the easy way out, accepting one or two verses of the Bible as proof that their leaders are speaking the gospel truth. The condemning and supporting comes not from God but from those who do not take the time to read the Bible, in its own context, and decide for themselves the meanings therein.

For indeed, there is one passage in the Bible that deals specifically with the act of causing a woman to abort a pregnancy. And the penalty for causing the abortion is not what many would lead us to believe:

"And if men struggle and strike a woman with child so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is no further injury, he shall be fined as the woman's husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise."
Exodus 21:22-25
This is a very illuminating passage. In it we find a woman losing her child by being stuck by men who are fighting. Rather than it being a capital offense, however, it is relegated to a civil matter, with the father-to-be taking the participants to court for a settlement. But, as we read on, if the woman is killed, a "life for a life," then the men who killed her shall be killed. Some have claimed that the life for a life part is talking about the baby. But from reading the context we can see this is not true. It also states a tooth for a tooth and a burn for a burn. Babies don't have teeth when they are born, and it is highly unlikely a baby will be burned during birth. It is pretty clear that this part refers to the mother. Thus we can see that if the baby is lost, it does not require a death sentence -- it is not considered murder. But if the woman is lost, it is considered murder and is punished by death.

It's important to note that some anti-abortion lobbyists want to convince us the baby in this passage survived the miscarriage. They point to the more "politically-correct" translation they find in the New International Version of the Bible. There it translates the term "miscarriage" into "gives birth prematurely" (the actual words in Hebrew translate "she lose her offspring"). While this may give them the warm and fuzzy notion that this verse might actually support their cause if maybe the child survived, it is wishful thinking at best. In our modern era of miracle medicine only 60% of all premature births survive. Three thousand years ago, when this passage was written, they did not have modern technology to keep a preemie alive. In fact, at that time, more than half of all live births died before their first birthday. In a world like that, a premature birth was a death sentence.

Others have looked to the actual Hebrew words, themselves, to try and refute these verses. They note that the word "yalad" is used in verse 22 to describe the untimely birth, and that yalad is also used in other places to describe a live birth. They then go on to say other places in the Bible use the words "nefel" and "shakol" to describe a miscarriage. Therefore, the argument goes, the baby in Exodus 21:22 must have been born alive. It's easy to see how a novice might make this mistake, but a closer look at the words in question reveal the flaw in this argument.

The word yalad is a verb that describes the process of something coming out - the departing of the fetus. Since it is describing the process, and not the result, it could be used to describe either a live birth or a miscarriage. Shakol which shows up in Hosea 9:14, is also a verb, but its meaning is to make a woman barren. Now a barren woman certainly might miscarry, but with this understanding of the word, it's clear why the writer of Exodus would not have used it since this miscarriage was caused by an accident, not by barrenness. And the word nefel is not even a verb. It's a noun. True, as a noun it is the term for a miscarried fetus, but the writer wasn't using a noun. He was using a verb to describe the coming out of the fetus. Thus, if I were describing a man falling to his death, I would use the verb "to fall" which can be used for both those who die and those who survive a fall, but to describe the man himself I would use the word the "fatality." So we can see that while a novice might mistake a verb for a noun and come to the wrong conclusions about the original Hebrew words used in the Exodus passage, a more careful look proves that the words only describe the action of losing the fetus, not the fetus itself. And that being the case, we can't use the Hebrew translations to determine if the fetus was alive or not when it came out - so we are forced to accept that in all certainly, considering the medical knowledge at the time, the preemie died. This makes it even more clear that the "tooth for a tooth" passage refers only to the mother, not to the miscarried fetus.

What has been so clearly demonstrated by the passage in Exodus - the fact that God does not consider a fetus a human person - can also be seen in a variety of other Bible verses. In Leviticus 27:6 a monetary value was placed on children, but not until they reached one month old (any younger had no value). Likewise, in Numbers 3:15 a census was commanded, but the Jews were told only to count those one month old and above - anything less, particularly a fetus, was not counted as a human person. In Ezekiel 37:8-10 we watch as God re-animates dead bones into living soldiers, but the passage makes the interesting note that they were not alive as persons until their first breath. Likewise, in Genesis 2:7, Adam had a human form and a vibrant new body but he only becomes a fully-alive human person after God makes him breathe. And in the same book, in Genesis 38:24, we read about a pregnant woman condemned to death by burning. Though the leaders of Israel knew the woman was carrying a fetus, this was not taken into consideration. If indeed the Jews, and the God who instructed them, believed the fetus to be an equal human person to the mother, then why would they let the fetus die for the mother's crimes? The truth is simple. A fetus is not a human person, and its destruction is not a murder. Period.

It is time to stop the one-sided view of abortion being proclaimed by Christian leaders. These leaders do not -- despite their claims -- have a biblical mandate for their theologies. It is time to stop preaching that the Bible contains an undeniable doctrine against abortion. It is time to stop the anger and hatred being heaped on abortion doctors and upon women who have abortions, especially when it's done in the name of a God who has not written such condemnations in his Bible. It is time to stop, because the act of making a judgment against people in God's name, when God is not behind the judging, is nothing short of claiming that our own beliefs are more important than God's. We must stop, because if we don't, then indeed the very type of theological argument being used against abortion can be turned around and used to proclaim that abortion is biblical. http://www.elroy.net/ehr/abortion.html

[Hobbit]

What a snarky answer. It essentially amounts to, "Christians are all sheep and they only oppose abortion because people tell them to." What a load of horse squeeze.

They back it up with "one or two verses," because quoting from the Bible is the easiest way to express a Christian view and most people don't really want to take the time to write out a thesis. Do you have personalized novellas to back up each of your statements? Do you regale people for hours with your well-thought out, cited, arguments for every moral opinion you have, including quoting several different authors, at least a paragraph at a time for context, to justify every position you hold? If you do, then you're a douche and should be kicked in the jewels. If you're a normal human being, you probably have, at most, a 90 second explanation and maybe a couple of quotes. Sound familiar? Yeah, it's pretty much the same as the 'one or two verses' that are never enough to justify a religious position. This is just another lame excuse to bash Christians and attempt to invalidate their opinions by holding them to ridiculously high standards of justifying their own beliefs and dressing it up as some sort of proof that they really don't believe it. If Christians must give a thesis on why they believe abortion is wrong, then YOU must give a thesis on why you think abortion is right. Quid pro quo and all.

However, since this is a discussion board and not a random, five-minute conversation that has no room for a thesis, I'll give you a thesis.

Christian opposition to abortion is actually nearly as old as Christianity itself and dates back to the first and second century A.D. Records from that time indicate two important facts. The first is that Romans, who held men in high regard, women as little more than objects, and children as an inconvenience, often aborted unwanted children and committed mass infanticide against baby girls, much like Red China today. The other fact is that people who were later found to be Christians openly opposed this as barbaric, claiming that even the unborn were people and that all people deserved fair treatment. Let that sink in a moment. Before Christians had even slashed 'avoid being fed to lions or burned alive for Caesar's amusement' off of their agenda, they were already opposed the killing of the unborn.

To trace this belief, one must simply check enough scriptures. Since we can assume that any civilized human being is opposed to murder, we'll skip the 6th commandment. The issue is whether or not the fetus is a person deserving of rights. Right off the bat, there are verses where God speaks to people of both his power and his great love and care for the individual, in which he says that he knew this person in the womb. Long before genetic distinction or any of that stuff was used in the debate, Christians believed that an unborn child was a person deserving of the right to live.

In modern times, most Christians still take this stance, as it is a natural outgrowth of belief in a loving and merciful God who knows people before they are born. If God can know someone before that person is even born, then that person is a person before birth and should be spared from a death of convenience. From a scientific angle, it is known that, once fertilized, a zygote contains the complete DNA of a unique individual, and this is enough for most Christians to consider that zygote a living human being. While the distinction may be fuzzy or lost on some Christians, there is still a larger belief that a culture respecting life and individuality should prefer to err on the side of denying some people a choice than to err on the side of systematically slaughtering a sizable percentage of its infants.

Then, to top it all off, the author uses the same Mosaic law used to bash Christians (rapists forced to marry their victims and/or pay a fine to the father) to try to bludgeon them into abandoning their beliefs, followed by an attempt to justify the whole 'quality of life' article by quoting a man in pain wishing that he'd never been born. Lots of people, from time to time, have cried out that they wished they'd never been born, but if that's enough to justify an abortion, then we'd have to induce a coma for most people's teenage years or we'd go extinct. This whole essay is just another godless heathen's pathetic attempt to use his own interpretation of the Bible to bludgeon Christians into sitting in their little corner so he can continue his own little secular crusade uninhibited.

[MtnBiker]

Death penalty? We should be progressive and moderize the term, let's just change the term to post trail abortion.

[Hagbard Celine]

Sorry if I offended your delicate sensibilities Hobbit. Hope I didn't give you the vapors. And sorry the chip on your shoulder made you read "Christians are sheep" into my post.
You're wrong about that anyway. My post and the article I quoted boil down to the fact that most Christians and so-called "right to lifers" who base their opinions on scripture are actually quoting the Bible out of context and haven't taken the time read the scriptures in context.
So if the fact that the Bible provides no real stated opposition to abortion isn't enough, you claim that tradition is enough to support the opinion that abortion should be illegal. I disagree. Nobody is advocating that infants and fetuses should be slaughtered Herod style here. You can't deny that the overruling mindset has always viewed those invitro as inherently different from people. That distinction is what matters in the "is abortion murder?" debate. This is yet another instance of the Conservative political wing of this country trying to enforce its opinion upon the general populace. If your neighbor aborts her pregnancy, it is of no consequence to you. Mind your own business.

By the way, I don't know if you read it or not, but the article I quoted addresses the bit of scripture you referred to. The bit about "knowing a person before they are born" is what I'm referring to.

[Hobbit]

Sorry if I offended your delicate sensibilities Hobbit. Hope I didn't give you the vapors. And sorry the chip on your shoulder made you read "Christians are sheep" into my post.
You're wrong about that anyway. My post and the article I quoted boil down to the fact that most Christians and so-called "right to lifers" who base their opinions on scripture are actually quoting the Bible out of context and haven't taken the time read the scriptures in context.
So if the fact that the Bible provides no real stated opposition to abortion isn't enough, you claim that tradition is enough to support the opinion that abortion should be illegal. I disagree. Nobody is advocating that infants and fetuses should be slaughtered Herod style here. You can't deny that the overruling mindset has always viewed those invitro as inherently different from people. That distinction is what matters in the "is abortion murder?" debate. This is yet another instance of the Conservative political wing of this country trying to enforce its opinion upon the general populace. If your neighbor aborts her pregnancy, it is of no consequence to you. Mind your own business.

By the way, I don't know if you read it or not, but the article I quoted addresses the bit of scripture you referred to. The bit about "knowing a person before they are born" is what I'm referring to.

It's still the very same butchering of scripture the guy is accusing Christians of doing, and he IS making the 'Christians are sheep' argument, because his basic assertion is that abortion opponents listen to a couple of quotes from some televangelist, memorize a couple of verses, and then go out thumping their Bibles without question, and that if they actually read the Bible, they're agree with him, because he's so much smarter than they are.

He's got a few verses of theorycraft that equate 'it would have been better if he hadn't been born' with 'go ahead and kill your children before they're born if you think they'll turn out bad' and 'accidentally harming a woman enough to cause a miscarriage (not that hard to do) is a lesser penalty than killing the woman herself' with 'unborn children aren't people' to go up against millennia of practicing Christian respect for human life. It's a preposterous position taken by a guy who probably doesn't even get the POINT of the sermon on the mount, probably the most important section of the Bible for all of Christendom, nor does he have any grasp of basic Christian principles. He sees the Bible as a set of rules, exceptions and excuses to be scoured for technicalities, loopholes, and legalisms to support his point, when, in fact, the teachings of Jesus damn such acts as hypocrisy and instead address the underlying attitudes and principles upon which the rules are based. Any person who cannot grasp this most basic concept has no business arguing to anybody what the Bible does or does not say is moral, for every step in that direction is a direct insult to the teachings of Jesus.

[Hagbard Celine]

It's still the very same butchering of scripture the guy is accusing Christians of doing, and he IS making the 'Christians are sheep' argument, because his basic assertion is that abortion opponents listen to a couple of quotes from some televangelist, memorize a couple of verses, and then go out thumping their Bibles without question, and that if they actually read the Bible, they're agree with him, because he's so much smarter than they are.

He's got a few verses of theorycraft that equate 'it would have been better if he hadn't been born' with 'go ahead and kill your children before they're born if you think they'll turn out bad' and 'accidentally harming a woman enough to cause a miscarriage (not that hard to do) is a lesser penalty than killing the woman herself' with 'unborn children aren't people' to go up against millennia of practicing Christian respect for human life. It's a preposterous position taken by a guy who probably doesn't even get the POINT of the sermon on the mount, probably the most important section of the Bible for all of Christendom, nor does he have any grasp of basic Christian principles. He sees the Bible as a set of rules, exceptions and excuses to be scoured for technicalities, loopholes, and legalisms to support his point, when, in fact, the teachings of Jesus damn such acts as hypocrisy and instead address the underlying attitudes and principles upon which the rules are based. Any person who cannot grasp this most basic concept has no business arguing to anybody what the Bible does or does not say is moral, for every step in that direction is a direct insult to the teachings of Jesus.

Butchering? Hardly. He quoted entire swathes of scripture (whole) without taking them out of context and then reiterated their meanings straighforwardly and he completely obliterated the "abortion is condemned by the Bible" argument that is at the forefront of the "anti-women's choice" movement. He even demonstrated how certain scriptures in the Bible can be used to support the use of abortion.
I, for one, have never alleged that anything in the Bible is or is not moral. I'd even say that the Bible is probably the foundation block of all Western "moral" ideas.
But I am capable of reading the Bible as much as you are. And when I do, and I have, I find that it sure as hell doesn't say what Conservatives in this country want me to think it says.

[manu1959]

is killing an unborn human a good thing or a bad thing....

is killing a mass murderer a good thing or a bad thing.....

seems pretty easy to me.....

[Hagbard Celine]

is killing an unborn human a good thing or a bad thing....

is killing a mass murderer a good thing or a bad thing.....

seems pretty easy to me.....

The world isn't black and white. From an overall perspective killing an unborn person is a bad thing because we value life. But that doesn't take into account any of the hundreds of other factors that come into play in real life situations. Does the mother want it? Does the father want it? Was it concieved in wedlock? Will it endanger the mother's health? Can the parents afford to give it a good life? What kind of environment will it be born into? Will it be mentally handicapped? Will it be a burden on its caretakers? Etc.
It isn't yours or anyone else's job to make blanket decrees on how everyone will handle their own pregnancies. You wouldn't want your neighbor poking around in your personal business so why are you so adamant about poking around in theirs?

[Missileman]

is killing an unborn human a good thing or a bad thing....

I can think of examples for both good and bad.


is killing a mass murderer a good thing or a bad thing.....

I can't think of any bad examples...must be a good thing!

[manu1959]

The world isn't black and white. From an overall perspective killing an unborn person is a bad thing because we value life. But that doesn't take into account any of the hundreds of other factors that come into play in real life situations. Does the mother want it? Does the father want it? Was it concieved in wedlock? Will it endanger the mother's health? Can the parents afford to give it a good life? What kind of environment will it be born into? Will it be mentally handicapped? Will it be a burden on its caretakers? Etc.
It isn't yours or anyone else's job to make blanket decrees on how everyone will handle their own pregnancies. You wouldn't want your neighbor poking around in your personal business so why are you so adamant about poking around in theirs?

moral relativisim sure make leading a guiltless self indulgent life easy.....

actions have consequences......

the govt. pokes into my life and makes me accept and tollerate things i belive are wrong...fuurther the take my money at a greater rate than these same people and support the lifestyle i do not condone....seems like a double standard to me....

[Hobbit]

The world isn't black and white. From an overall perspective killing an unborn person is a bad thing because we value life. But that doesn't take into account any of the hundreds of other factors that come into play in real life situations. Does the mother want it? Does the father want it? Was it concieved in wedlock? Will it endanger the mother's health? Can the parents afford to give it a good life? What kind of environment will it be born into? Will it be mentally handicapped? Will it be a burden on its caretakers? Etc.
It isn't yours or anyone else's job to make blanket decrees on how everyone will handle their own pregnancies. You wouldn't want your neighbor poking around in your personal business so why are you so adamant about poking around in theirs?

Yes, yes it IS butchering. Did you not read the part about Jesus being really, really pissed off at people trying to loophole their way through scripture and argue rules and terminology rather than the underlying point? It's also trying to fit the scripture to the view rather than vice versa, and is something I DO NOT tolerate. Under all that pseudo-intellectual idiocy is nothing but a whiney child trying to prove he's smarter than everybody else by completely missing the point of everything he quotes. It's like when 7-year-olds claim that they can't be punished for wrongdoing in a 'free' country.

[PostmodernProphet]

Hagbard, there was one verse you overlooked.....Christ said, "suffer the little children to come unto me".....I'm sure you can make that into a proabortion prooftext somehow......

[Hagbard Celine]

moral relativisim sure make leading a guiltless self indulgent life easy.....

actions have consequences......

the govt. pokes into my life and makes me accept and tollerate things i belive are wrong...fuurther the take my money at a greater rate than these same people and support the lifestyle i do not condone....seems like a double standard to me....

No one can force you to accept anything unless they torture you and make you say "I accept it" (kinda like the Spanish inquisition). Since the US government isn't doing that, I'd say you're probably just mad that gays have rights now. Being an intolerant bigot is very moral. Congratulations on leading such a moral life pal.


actions have consequences......
I'm shakin' in my boots. I guess I'll find out what the consequences of letting people enjoy their free will are when I'm dead. Until then I guess nobody knows for sure and anyone who says they do is simply full of sh*t. :dance:

[manu1959]

No one can force you to accept anything unless they torture you and make you say "I accept it" (kinda like the Spanish inquisition). Since the US government isn't doing that, I'd say you're probably just mad that gays have rights now. Being an intolerant bigot is very moral. Congratulations on leading such a moral life pal.


I'm shakin' in my boots. I guess I'll find out what the consequences of letting people enjoy their free will are when I'm dead. Until then I guess nobody knows for sure and anyone who says they do is simply full of sh*t. :dance:

i did not mention gays in my post .....

[Hagbard Celine]

Hagbard, there was one verse you overlooked.....Christ said, "suffer the little children to come unto me".....I'm sure you can make that into a proabortion prooftext somehow......

It's not pro or anti abortion. The point of the article is that the Bible has no stance on it. It does show that abortion in Biblical times was common place and that the consequences for causing a miscarriage were akin to those associated with destruction of property--NOT MURDER.
You're not going to make me feel guilty by quoting "suffer the little children" like some stale chain email about 9/11.
I'm not a green-skinned baby-eating monster. But I agree with the law, which says that abortion is a valid medical procedure that should be available legally if women choose to use it. (shrug)

[Hagbard Celine]

i did not mention gays in my post .....

Oh my bad. You must've been talking about your dislike of tomatoes and those who eat them when you said:

the govt. pokes into my life and makes me accept and tollerate things i belive are wrong...fuurther the take my money at a greater rate than these same people and support the lifestyle i do not condone....seems like a double standard to me....

[manu1959]

Oh my bad. You must've been talking about your dislike of tomatoes and those who eat them when you said:

what topics were we discussing.....abortion and the death penalty.....so what lifestyel was i refering to.....so quick trying to be right at the expense of being correct.....you really should try to argue both sides of an issue ..... you have become myopic .....

[PostmodernProphet]

It's not pro or anti abortion.

oh come on....you aren't trying hard enough.....put some spin on it like you did the other passages.....


I'm not a green-skinned baby-eating monster.

I never thought you had green skin......

[actsnoblemartin]

I am not the spokesman for the pro life movement

The bible is clear about this, and eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth.

Once a scum buckets kill's someone, we have the right to take his life.

And finally, If i kill someone in self defense thats not murder.

If i kill someone on purpose, NOT accidental... like manslaughter and involutary manslaughter


One of the main arguments of pro-life activists is "Only God can take a life."
So how does that not carry over to the death penalty?

Also, define "purposely."

[actsnoblemartin]

im confused on the death penalty.

Part of me says only god should be able to take a life, and other says, hey if they killed someone, they broke god's law, they should have to pay, and we have the right to punish them




I agree with you martin. I am pro life and I feel that in this day, there is really no reason for unwanted pregnancy. I know it will happen no mater what,but only out of irresponsibility. I know there are cases here and there of women getting pregnant on the pill,that is rare tho. Using abortion as a form of birth control should definitely be stopped.

The death penalty is a little trickier to me. Part of me is o.k. with it,but I was listening to Glenn Beck one day and he was talking about it. He said that he would not want to answer to God as to why our society decided it had the right to take a life when it is for him to decide.

[manu1959]

im confused on the death penalty.

Part of me says only god should be able to take a life, and other says, hey if they killed someone, they broke god's law, they should have to pay, and we have the right to punish them

god would not have let man invent the death penalty if he did not want him to use it....:poke:

[Yurt]

god would not have let man invent the death penalty if he did not want him to use it....:poke:

if one believes the bible, God, not man, created the death penalty because the wages of sin are death. further, God commanded israel with certain death penalties.

[manu1959]

if one believes the bible, God, not man, created the death penalty because the wages of sin are death. further, God commanded israel with certain death penalties.

well ya got me there.....

[diuretic]

im confused on the death penalty.

Part of me says only god should be able to take a life, and other says, hey if they killed someone, they broke god's law, they should have to pay, and we have the right to punish them

It's easy martin. The state decides what it will do and it usually grants itself immense power to be able to do what it decides to do.

If the state decides that killing someone who has been convicted of killing someone is a good idea then it has its legislature passing a law that says the state can kill someone who is convicted of killing someone.

This can be done in any state (and by "state" I mean a political entity, not a state as in New Mexico), there's no need for any religious authority to say it's okay.

The state doesn't need a god to okay this, the state decides it will do it because it thinks it's a good idea. So, in the former USSR, which of course was an atheist state, the state thought it was a good idea so it did it. In atheist China they do it too.

In the United Kingdom which has Anglicanism as its approved religion the state decided that the death penalty wasn't a good idea and stopped it.

See? God doesn't make a difference. God can be brought into the equation by politicians who want to put a veneer of respectability over their decision to kill people who are convicted of killing someone, but it's not necessary because the state will do as it wishes.

Does that help?

[Yurt]

well ya got me there.....

what is "got"

:D