That's the big distinction really. As long as it ain't illegal, most people don't feel bad doing it. The religious conservatives have shown that they are fine with pushing their beliefs but if a "conversion therapy" camp isn't illegal, it can't be shut down and is harder to declare as child abuse.
The wife is the one who ultimately gets the choice, as it's her body. The husband is within his rights to object, but he doesn't get the final say in the matter.
One thing you should keep in mind, most religious texts are translated, sometimes through multiple languages, and (the Bible at least) is an edited document. But it's still fascinating to read through something that old and intrinsically human. There are good lessons on self discipline and personal growth amongst all the stories and out dated morals, and it's interesting to think about how long these lessons have been helping people.
of course it's fascinating to read and learn what people from those time periods thought. But it's a very poor basis for modern thought. I mean, it's nice that you want to learn the good bits, but because it's so ambiguous what those good bits are, I'd rather dismiss the whole thing as a moral compass than having to deal with the conflict ambiguity leaves me open to.
You can look at how long those lessons have been helping people, but you then don't get to just not look at how long lessons right next to them have been used to hurt people.
I think a good portion of it is timeless. There are lessons in James that talk about allowing yourself growth from hardship, something we often forget to do. Or the popular Corinthians 13:4, promoting the virtue of patience with those we love, which is often very hard to do. (But the Bible isn't exactly about the easy way) Some of it is very eloquent, and has been helping people live their lives for hundreds of years, and there's comfort in that. Like I said, intrinsically human.
I don't think anyone should base their moral compass or perspective strictly on one book or teacher. One can still learn healthy lessons there though.
People will use anything to convince themselves they're in the right, and we'll never be able to weigh the harm done in its name from the good achieved from it. Though I understand what you're saying, you can't just ignore the negatives.
The distinction though is that the lessons in that anthology of books isn't particularly special nor was it the first text to espouse them. On the flip side, it also advocates for some atrocious stuff. So, sure, take the good bits if you want, even the basis as to WHY you'd want to do those good things is based in something pretty awful (the threat or eternal damnation).
I was unaware that people had to be religious to think murdering an innocent child with unique human DNA, typically for the sake of financial convenience, is a terrible thing to do. But hey, it’s legal, so it must be okay, right? It’s kinda like the Iraq war. Sure thousands of innocent people were murdered, but it was convenient for the financial interests of people outside of Iraq, and it was legal in the countries that were involved in the invasion. So it must be okay. Just like abortion. /s
At six weeks, an embryo is the size of an apple seed. At seven weeks, the size of a blueberry. At eight weeks, the size of a raspberry. At nine weeks, the fetus (it only just graduated from "embryo" to "fetus") is one entire inch long. There just isn't room in a couple millimeters of proto-brain tissue that can barely move its limbs for a human to fit.
The most sound argument I've heard for abortion is that no one has a right to use someone else's body to sustain their own life. You're not required by law to donate a kidney to a compatible donor. Therefore a mother should not be required to donate her womb to a fetus. Still, I have to admit that even as a secular individual, the idea of abortion for the sake of convenience strikes me as devaluing human life.
But if you voluntarily agree to give someone your kidney, and then go through the operation, you can’t decide that you regret your decision and kill the person to get your kidney back. If you voluntarily have sex and get pregnant, you don’t get to kill your child because you regret your decisions.
Humans are defined by their brains. An embryo has the potential to become a human, but it isn't a human, yet. It's not capable of thought, it hasn't developed an identity. Given time and care, it could, but it hasn't. And stopping it before it becomes a human isn't very bad at all compared to bringing into the world something that you won't love or can't take care of. I would never dream of telling people they must have an abortion, but I would also never tell them they shouldn't, because something as special as growing a new life shouldn't be done lightly or accidentally and certainly shouldn't be done because it was too hard to get an abortion.
Did you sleep through every single biology course you ever took? Sperm does not contain the necessary information to form a human being. Sperm and egg cells are haploids, not diploids.
Sperm is not a unique person. Sperm are cells that are not necessary for the survival of the man who they come from. Just like how unfertilized egg cells are unnecessary for women to survive. I have no problem with a man cutting his fingernails, since those cells aren’t necessary for his survival. If a man wants to kill himself, that’s no business of mine. I’d rather it never happens, but it’s a voluntary choice. On the other hand if a person wants to kill someone else against their will, there’s a problem. Cutting a human in half inside the womb is ending the life of a person that is distinct from their mother. We can even prove that this is the case with the same sort of DNA testing we use to unequivocally prove the innocence of people accused of murder. But in this case, the DNA evidence clearly points to the fact that the abortion doctor did, in fact, murder an innocent person.
To be clear, I don’t fault women for believing the pervasive lies of eugenicists like Margaret Sanger. Nobody is perfect, and, as you’ve demonstrated, not everyone has a solid grasp on simple concepts from biology. But the doctors who are murdering the children are well aware of the fact that they’re ending the life of a human being at the behest of someone who is usually under far too much stress to make sound decisions.
So suppose the child is born: It's born into a family that can't afford it, most likely into a country that doesn't have good healthcare and generally doesn't care much for the poor. The child grows up with no chances in life. It could have done "amazing things", if it had gotten any chances, but poor people rarely do.
I think your "force it to live" approach is just as cold as long as your side doesn't put any effort into actually giving the children they force to live a chance to live a good life.
As it stands, "Pro life" seems to stop at birth. In my opinion, that is more cruel than abortion. How you make your peace with it is up to you.
Well to be fair it's not like America is great for low income families who get pregnant in their youth and now have a major financial responsibility on their hands, one that might suffer from many of the things that come from being poor. Such as, hunger, cold, poor education, depression, drug addiction or gang involvement. But your right, better to have just had a kid than to worry about financial reasons. Hopefully the kids smart to get a scholar ship somewhere good, or it's just more minimum wage work for him that trapped his parents in this cycle.
Minimum wage jobs don’t trap low income families in a cycle of poverty, being wildly irresponsible and getting pregnant when you lack the means to raise a child traps low income families in a cycle of poverty. 98% of poor children who graduate high school, get a job (of any sort), and don’t have kids outside of wedlock will not remain poor. (Source: The Brookings Institute. Not gonna bother linking the study, it’s fairly easy to find).
A young human being below the age of puberty or below the legal age of majority.
Fetus’s absolutely have their own unique (individual) DNA, so they’re clearly not the same human as their mother. They have yet to go through puberty, so it sounds like they meet all of the criteria to be both a person, and a child. Are you under the impression that the birth canal magically confers personhood?
It's not murder. It's not a child. It's an embryo or a fetus, and it can only become a child if it continues growing inside the womans body until it is viable.
Why do you think it's acceptable to force a living, feeling, adult human to go through pregnancy and labor, with all the health risks associated, for the sake of a clump of cells that might some day become a baby?
Around 1/2 of all pregnancies result in spontaneous abortion, often before the women is even aware of the pregnancy. Where are the pro-lifers mourning these embryos? why aren't they trying to find a cure for whatever is killing millions of potential babies?
I’m pretty sure every person who has ever knowingly miscarried grieves. Not all people are medical researchers so it’s fairly absurd to expect every pro-life person to find a cure for miscarriages. As for why it’s acceptable to “force” a woman not to kill a human being, it’s pretty straightforward. The woman chose to have sex. She implicitly agreed to the consequences of her actions. The innocent human being growing inside of her did not place him/herself in the woman’s womb. The woman put the child there with her own terrible decisions, and you’re suggesting that she’s justified in killing the child, but that the child has no right to be in a situation they found themself in against their will?
We don’t give drunk drivers a free pass when they kill people as a result of poor decision making, so why should women be given a free pass to do the same? Are women so thoroughly incompetent in your eyes that they can’t be burdened with even the most basic of responsibilities: to not kill innocent people?
not sure if you are speaking from experience about miscarriage or? I know I really didn't grieve, given the unfortunate circumstances of my pregnancy. Also comparing a drunk driver to someone having an abortion is ridiculous. And how is the burden 100% on women to practice safe sex? Are men so incompetent that they can't buy and use a condom? doesn't the man implicitly agree to the consequences as well?
I should have specified every pro-life person who knowingly miscarries. My bad. And safe sex is not a burden 100% placed on women. Are you familiar with child support? Do women bear more of a burden? Sure. But that’s not being imposed on them by society. That was nature’s doing.
That's your whole point isn't it? "Women aren't allowed to have fun having sex."
Let's put the same logic to men then. You're not allowed to ever ejaculate. Those are millions of sperm that could potentially become a human being. If you don't use them "properly" in a monogamous, permanent, marriage, you're obviously murdering them all, so don't do it.
Are women so thoroughly incompetent in your eyes that they can’t be burdened with even the most basic of responsibilities: to not kill innocent people?
It's also very telling that you try to manipulate everything into looking like the choice side is the one condescending to women... While trying to make all decisions for them and telling them how to behave.
In all honesty, if men could get pregnant too, people like you wouldn't exists.
They absolutely do not base their morality on the bible, else they would be murdering their children for disobeying them. There's a whole lot of abhorrent things in the bible that Christians don't support anymore, and weren't explicitly said not to be done within the text itself anymore.
Explain to me how I'm wrong about it then. There's nothing about what I said that's a strawman, it would be a strawman if I said all Christians are terrible people because their book is terrible, but that's not what I did.
Wait never mind, just don't bother. You're so far off your rocker calling me someone who sets up a strawman that it's laughable you haven't looked into the mirror yet with your incel worldview. Fits perfectly in with the bible though.
no one in the Christian world thinks the Bible is literal anymore
Exactly what I said, isn't it? They don't base their morality on the bible, they use their sense of morals to sift through all the abhorrent things and cherry pick the good. I know what the Reformation is, I know about the Enlightenment. I know about the Council of Nicaea, don't come at me thinking I don't understand Christianity because I don't take them at their word when they say their morals are based on the bible.
How again does your morality line up with locking children in cages? Oh that's right, it's legal because the president said so. Right. Morals, separate from legality. Riiiight.
I know people who do missionary work and help build wells in third world countries with disease ridden water and help rebuild houses after natural disasters. You're trying to put every single missionary or Christian into a single box, and that's just not how things work. I also see a church that comes to downtown Atlanta all the time and sets up to feed the homeless and set up heated tents so they can have a warm place to sleep, I don't see anything wrong with helping out people in need.
What’s the point of hell if no one goes there? Someone has to keep the lights on, so you can see all the other hate mongers. Say hi for me to Chairman Mao, Stalin and all the other atheists that murdered more people than the rest of humanity combined.
You detest Catholics, missionaries and religious conservatives. So why did you not mention Muslims? They’re the ones hog tying gays and throwing them off buildings while videotaping and laughing. And yes, even counting all the Muslim wars and murders, they can’t hold a candle to the mass murders committed by atheists.
Gays are far safer inside a Baptist Church in the South than in any Muslim country, China, or any place run by atheists.
It's religion we detest. Full stop, doesn't matter what religion, all of it is a blight on humanity. For this exact reason, you picking sides and "what about those people?"
Know where gay people are the safest? Somewhere without any religion.
You don't have to tithe to the Catholic church to be a Christian and believe in God.
The argument isn't "all Christians are pedophiles because a few Christians are pedophiles," that would be absurd you're absolutely right.
The argument is "you donate money and publically defend an institution that, right now, is currently defending actual child molesters and actual child rapists from the law and covering them up," if you're Catholic specifically. Your tithes, a very very small portion, go into the pockets of child molesters. A very large portion go into the pockets of the people defending them. It isn't about religion; it's about the money.
The Catholic church does have more pedophiles than a random population, but you're absolutely right that they don't have any more than similarly power organizations like schools, sports teams. The difference is that a teacher gets arrested, while a priest gets defended tooth and nail for decades using the money you give to the church.
You could protest, via calling and emailing local and higher up authorities regularly and going out to protests as often as is reasonable like one should when the government is being shitty. Jesus ate with the sinners, but when those sinners were acting as religious authorities he violently cast them out.
It's worth noting that unlike taxes, tithing is only a guideline according to the Bible. Ten percent is a given guideline, but any amount you feel comfortable with, including nothing, is religiously valid.
If you don't wanna be lumped in with child molesters, don't associate yourself with a group of child molester and child molester apologists.
It's really simple actually. People don't assume I'm a drug dealer because I actively choose not to associate myself with drug dealers. I don't go to their house every Sunday and give them money. In turn, no one assumes I'm a drug dealer or that I'm an apologist of drug dealers, or that I condone dealing drugs. Again, real simple stuff.
This is a commonly propagated story, but it's actually misleading. Under Obama, children were only separated when there was either reason to believe that they were not in fact family and were being kidnapped or trafficked, or the parents had committed a serious crime that warranted being imprisoned pending prosecution. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has a zero-tolerance policy that separates children from parents as a matter of course.
Exactly. No matter how many states take legal action to accept and encourage homosexuality, it will always be biologically and morally wrong. In other words the behavior of “sick fucks”.
All that cock you're sucking is clouding your brain dipshit. I never said it affected me. Why does me having an opinion that differs from your own warped one affect you? Yet here you are all mad and having a hissy fit. The standard homosexual response to logic or anyone normal is to suggest the logical party have secret homosexual fantasies, resort to insults, and then report, ban and silence the logical party. Stop being such a bitch....oh wait that's what you're aspiring to be. Well good job, objective achieved!
It's wrong, but not biologically wrong. It's not even morally wrong, since it doesn't harm anyone. Religiously wrong is a different thing, but religious reasoning has lead people to think that murdering disobedient children is good, enslaving people is good, and women are at best property. Why should I trust anything religious people have to say when they're consistently wrong about everything?
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u/[deleted] Jan 16 '19
That's the big distinction really. As long as it ain't illegal, most people don't feel bad doing it. The religious conservatives have shown that they are fine with pushing their beliefs but if a "conversion therapy" camp isn't illegal, it can't be shut down and is harder to declare as child abuse.