I think honestly when you come down to it, all morality and empathy aside, there are very few people that place the same value on the life of a few week old fetus as they do a person who has already been born. Whether this is psychological, social, or instinct I don't know, but it is an observable fact. And the law recognizes this "fact" in almost all cases.
Pro-lifers, explain your perspective for me please
- Thread starter visceral_instinct
- Start date
- Status
I think honestly when you come down to it, all morality and empathy aside, there are very few people that place the same value on the life of a few week old fetus as they do a person who has already been born. Whether this is psychological, social, or instinct I don't know, but it is an observable fact. And the law recognizes this "fact" in almost all cases.
The material world is often looked down on in the larger organized relgions of today. What is valuable is the soul, bodies are containers. The afterlife is the real thing. God is transcendent, not immanent. Render unto Caesar - the earthly leader - that which is his - iow the stuff that really isn't important - and render unto God that which is God - the important intangible stuff: the soul, the afterlife, your love, your faith. And so on. It is a core split in many religions and what is transcendant is seen as better and more important, perhaps the only real 'thing' and bodies and nature and animals - and often women and certain races (though the religions are getting nicer about this two) - are seen as base, tainting, mere maya, and not so good or important. I think that belief - which is much less held by many of the spiritualities of groups the main religions colluding in killing off - has done a lot of damage.Can you explain that to me please. I don't understand
Are we were talking about the situation of the fetus?
I think its your turn to join the dots
we were talking about the decisions made by a living entity that leads to its consequent appearance within a womb versus the decisions available once having arrived
right?
hence some parents abandon their children
On a side point though, it would be a tragic scenario if governments had to legislate wholesale that parents take care of their children
more family?
I don't understand
Outspoken on incest, were they?
I wasn't aware that surmounting material nature required one develop animosity towards it
I don't think there is much discussion about the difference between the few weeks old with the already been born. The discussion are/were always somewhat about the one that has or has no souls yet. Say, the 4-9 months old inside the wombs. Are they just a lump of parasite or a human being? Both? Neither? There the debate stands.
I don't know. That's among one mystery in life. If I know where had I been, I would have known where do I want to go. :m:
yes.
Preventative measures could have been taken in each case. In fact, one could always abstain from owning a house or renting an apartment. Once one makes the decision to have and available shelter, whether for fetus or squatter, one is therefore under contract to allow anyone who comes in, despite ones own wishes, to stay there until it is best for them.
Now the child is already outside the body. Now there are options. Now the child is not part of a single super entity. it is not a part of the woman's body. And there are people who want to adopt in droves. And back in the pagan communities I loved - which were smashed by the big monotheisms - we raised those kids as communities, in complicated kindship and friendship relationships. But we were deemed primitive by the technocrats and the religious who look down on bodies and emotions.
The squatter vs. the fetus.
That was a weak argument. Are you saying that they have no morals because they do not share this moral with us? One that they do not need to be so concerned about?
You have to feel it rather than think it. It's like when people say they hate the sin and not the sinner and their ignorance of themselves makes them very calm and sure they are accurate. Would you ever say you needed to surmount your spiritual nature IN THE SAME WAY you meant it in relation to material nature?
then how do you even know if anyone has a soul? Is it science or wishful thinking?
I thought abortion included terminating fetuses less than two months old. Which is when the vast majority of abortions are done. Someone who has carried a baby for 9 months has probably forgone abortion. There is no magical moment before labor and delivery that everyone agrees on and after working in an abortion clinic I have observed that most people do not place an equivalent value of life on a fetus until it is about to be born. Whether you believe in souls or not seems to be of little relevance. The same way killing a pet you've loved dearly forever is not murder nor is killing a fetus. Because both you're pet and fetus do not have the same value placed on their lives as you have on yours. Regardless of personal feelings that is just the general consensus.
By definition, a soul is:
1. The animating and vital principle in humans, credited with the faculties of thought, action, and emotion and often conceived as an immaterial entity.
2. The spiritual nature of humans, regarded as immortal, separable from the body at death, and susceptible to happiness or misery in a future state.
3. The disembodied spirit of a dead human.
4. A human: "the homes of some nine hundred souls" (Garrison Keillor).
5. The central or integral part; the vital core: "It saddens me that this network ... may lose its soul, which is after all the quest for news" (Marvin Kalb).
6. A person considered as the perfect embodiment of an intangible quality; a personification: I am the very soul of discretion.
7. A person's emotional or moral nature: "An actor is ... often a soul which wishes to reveal itself to the world but dare not" (Alec Guinness).
8. A sense of ethnic pride among Black people and especially African Americans, expressed in areas such as language, social customs, religion, and music.
9. A strong, deeply felt emotion conveyed by a speaker, a performer, or an artist.
10. Soul music.
2. The spiritual nature of humans, regarded as immortal, separable from the body at death, and susceptible to happiness or misery in a future state.
3. The disembodied spirit of a dead human.
4. A human: "the homes of some nine hundred souls" (Garrison Keillor).
5. The central or integral part; the vital core: "It saddens me that this network ... may lose its soul, which is after all the quest for news" (Marvin Kalb).
6. A person considered as the perfect embodiment of an intangible quality; a personification: I am the very soul of discretion.
7. A person's emotional or moral nature: "An actor is ... often a soul which wishes to reveal itself to the world but dare not" (Alec Guinness).
8. A sense of ethnic pride among Black people and especially African Americans, expressed in areas such as language, social customs, religion, and music.
9. A strong, deeply felt emotion conveyed by a speaker, a performer, or an artist.
10. Soul music.
So in this context of discussion (as in no. 2), I'll say a soul is something occupying a living human. So that should be a clear boundary between the dead and the alive.
[Religiously (according to Islamic teaching), a soul is starting to occupy a body after 120 days inside a womb.]
Last edited:
Is it?
I really don't know that. By most laws, even Islamic law, it is apparently not forbidden to abort the below 4 months pregnancy. So where is the problem then?
Last edited:
hence abstinence is often celebrated as the most effective contraception
whatever the options may be, actually parents can attest that the demands of a newborn baby are greater when they are outside the womb (and the demands continue to get greater .... probably why finishing it in the womb is seen as attractive)
but family, by definition is something arrived at through birthright
I'm saying that they don't have sufficient morals to surmount their senses. (sleeping, eating, mating and defending are where its at for animals ... and sure, humans also share those traits, but if there is no scope for anything else but the pursuit of these ends, its simply continuing yet another chapter of conditioned life)
IOW its kind of an oxymoron to call someone a sinful dog since dogs don't have the capacity to sin
:shrug:
Kind of a complicated request since it casts a wide net over understandings of the relationship between god, the living entity and this phenomenal world.
In short though, there are always problems of a neophyte ambition to be spiritual resulting in a catastrophic treatment of their material conditioning (often arising from the assumption that one has to develop animosity towards it).
If the living entity and the material nature are both energies of god ... and if the material nature enjoys a superior position of quantity (in the sense that it can place the living entity in illusion) but not quality (in the sense that it is not a separated part and parcel of god ... IOW it is not conscious , capable of independence etc) then animosity is just as futile as exploitation of it. In fact the very nature of being conditioned by it is described as to be composed of these two attitudes.
as for surmounting spiritual nature, I'm not sure how one would go about that ... maybe taking the resolute stance that they are just an automaton dictated by the elements .... surmounting is probably not the right word for it though.
and since one can abstain from having an abode, one is always responsible for anyone who comes in there. To the extent that they get to set up home there.hence abstinence is often celebrated as the most effective contraception
Sure they can say that. But others will come and take care of that child. In womb that child is a unit with the mother.
Not the way most of the big religions view things when you get down to souls.
But they do. In fact their senses seem acutely focused, at least in quite a few animals I have known, to levels of existence, even some considered spiritual, that humans are quite ignorant of. I see very few humans capable of making some of the tough ethical choices some of the dogs I've had made out of love.
They don't believe that. Though actually I dislike the whole sin model.
right here you lose a good number of the monotheists.
This sounded like it included a negative judgment of material nature, but I am not sure.
Oh, I am quite sure much of material nature is conscious.
yes, because it is not seen as a negative thing that needs to be surmounted.
If you measure its failure rate the same way standard with all other forms of contraception, it has one of the highest lifetime failure rates of all.light [/quote said:
It is among the least effective forms of contraception, by standard measure.
And it's VD transmission rate is very high, as well.
I have never met, personally, or run into in my community, a single "prolife" person or organization that routinely treated three month embryos as human beings (with souls, rights to life, etc) in any context other than abortion. The local Catholic hospitals, for example, have for centuries been throwing miscarried embryos into the incinerator or whatever with all the other medical waste, without even ascertaining whether they were alive or dead. They simply hadn't noticed anything odd about such a practice. And such circumstances are completely typical.
actually your squatter analogy probably shares a parallel with rape (since just like their are statutory laws that surround trespass, there are statutory laws that surround rape)
I mean one would have to be pretty promiscuous to view their genitals as an open door on a vacant building flapping in the wind
lol
sure, you can say that ...
the life of the child is contingent on the mother (even after birth)...but then human society is composed of such relationships of contingency so I fail to see your point
you still haven't explained what you mean by "more" family
surmounting the senses means to actually act in a way that one is in control of the senses, as opposed to being a servant of them. Dogs are a poor example of that.
Not that this makes dogs bad or whatever.
It simply makes them a poor candidate for such things.
,,, and as it pertains to the topic, the very act of falling pregnant and besieged by the conundrum of abortion is more often than not a consequence of being unable to master one's senses
small wonder since they aren't even capable of it
At a guess you also have similar problems with god having a personality and form too, yes?
I'm only speaking of the discipline I have been educated in
why?
so a chair is conscious in the same way a tree was before it was chopped down to make it?
yes because it is seen as the genuine thing one is composed of (... now compare to taking the view that one is ultimately just a bunch of elements and that self hood is simply a consequence of a particular arrangement of elements)
Last edited:
What STD's is an abstinent person running the risk of acquiring?
How do you propose abstinent people fall pregnant on such a regular basis that it is deemed a high risk alternative to say condoms?
there are some traditional customs in other cultures that recognize the embryo at different stages through different ceremonies (or "samskaras") ... before western models became more popular, new born children were aged at 1 (since it seemed quite absurd to think it was 0 up until it came out the womb ) and similarly, in the case of twins, the first born is recognized as the youngest (since the second born is actually conceived first)
How could they possibly know that?
I draw the line at it's having a functional nervous system. Before that, it's just meat, but it's also an outgrowth of the woman's body, and therefore it's her prerogative to decide it's fate. We shouldn't even be having this discussion, safe and effective birth control pills for men need to be invented and mass produced.
Young people under the influence of powerful hormones, cannot be expected to control themselves. It's unrealistic to rely on moral fortitude. Evolution has favored too long our animal instincts to procreate. Now, it's too much, we have become a cancer on the Earth. That's not justification to cause people harm, but we have to realize that legal abortion is a pro-life point of view. Of course, with a monotheistic viewpoint, you think mankind is the primary purpose of the Earth.
Young people under the influence of powerful hormones, cannot be expected to control themselves. It's unrealistic to rely on moral fortitude. Evolution has favored too long our animal instincts to procreate. Now, it's too much, we have become a cancer on the Earth. That's not justification to cause people harm, but we have to realize that legal abortion is a pro-life point of view. Of course, with a monotheistic viewpoint, you think mankind is the primary purpose of the Earth.
Last edited:
- Status