Abortion

coffee4u said:

Human life is a human being and should be protected. I don't know why you keep wanting to go around this circle with me but it won't change just because you post again.

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A skin cell is human life. It is not a human being. I don't know why you keep wanting to go around this circle, but it won't change just because you post again.

Tinker Grey said:

A skin cell is human life. It is not a human being. I don't know why you keep wanting to go around this circle, but it won't change just because you post again.

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I hadn't, I had left the thread until they posted to me once again, so I was answering them.

This debate is not over a skin cell but a fertilized egg so I agree, a skin cell by itself is not human life because a skin cell doesn't have a soul.

coffee4u said:

I hadn't, I had left the thread until they posted to me once again, so I was answering them.

This debate is not over a skin cell but a fertilized egg so I agree, a skin cell by itself is not human life because a skin cell doesn't have a soul.

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Neither does a fertilized egg. Provide evidence otherwise.

Tinker Grey said:

Neither does a fertilized egg. Provide evidence otherwise.

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Psalm 139
13-14
For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Marvelous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well.

16:Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.

coffee4u said:

Psalm 139
13-14
For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Marvelous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well.

16:Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.

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Very poetic language.

Schlauch Mann said:

NxNW said: ↑

In my example, you can get as close as you want.

coffee4u said: The deciding factor, according to you, was the quality of being counted. Distance is irrelevant.

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The deciding factor according to me is countability. The number of potential human beings that will result from a zygote cannot be quantified at the moment of conception. The number of people in a locked room (or however you phrased it) have a quantity, even if hidden. The zygote does not.

coffee4u said:

Human life is a human being

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Saying it doesn't make it true. A hangnail is living human tissue, but it's not a human being.

I believe human life, human beings and even personhood occurs from the moment of conception

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I've already explained why this is impossible. Do 1% of zygotes contain two souls, for the identical twins? Or does the second soul wait on the sidelines until the split? Does the first soul wait in the room next door during copulation?

I believe the unborn should have as many rights as the born.

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You're trying to assign rights to the unborn that adult human beings don't have -- the right to seize another's body without permission. Slavery has been abolished.

NxNW said:

Saying it doesn't make it true. A hangnail is living human tissue, but it's not a human being.

I've already explained why this is impossible. Do 1% of zygotes contain two souls, for the identical twins? Or does the second soul wait on the sidelines until the split? Does the first soul wait in the room next door during copulation?

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Didn't I already agree that a skin cell by itself wasn't a human being, so why would a hangnail be one? Trying to say we said things that we didn't say. Typical.
Nothing is impossible with God, which is nothing that you would understand. A soul comes into existence the moment life does. If the egg splits into another person that is another soul. The zygote is a soul whether it is born or not.

You're trying to assign rights to the unborn that adult human beings don't have -- the right to seize another's body without permission. Slavery has been abolished.

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Since the egg came from the mother's own body the zygote didn't seize anything and lol you really equate pregnancy with slavery? Whatever.

Strathos said:

The 'plan' is the sum total of all of the sequences of moves that will eventually force checkmate. Black can play anything he wants, but the plan still accounts for it. You're thinking too linearly.

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Well, that's not what the bible says. It sounds like you're conveniently interpreting things to fit your argument to me.... How do you justify your position?

coffee4u said:

All things that need to be done, will be done. God doesn't care if you choose to wear black or blue or odd socks today. This is your free will.

God's overall plan is to collect a people unto himself, a people who have chosen to follow him. It is also your free will to choose to be an Atheist. Unless one of your actions impedes God's plan then God has no plans for you since you have already chosen not to follow him.



The point is God foresaw that. He already knew that the driver would change his route and he knew that the archduke would be assassinated. That was the driver's free will. if the archduke dying that day had harmed the overall plan, God would have had some way of preventing his death. One thing we do know is that God does not orchestrate or cause sin. The person who assassinated the archduke committed murder, this was their own free will too.



Your argument is taking his assassination and the World war as being absolutely tied together, it isn't. Germany wanted war, it would have happened if the archduke had died that day or not, only the blame would have been placed on something else.

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I don't see how you aren't getting this.... if god has foreknowledge of all the decisions people will make in a given universe at a given time when he creates the universe, then ultimately everything is his responsibility. If he had created things differently, then some of those decisions would be made differently. There's no escaping that.

Strong in Him said:

No, I'm saying that when God created it was all very good, Genesis 1:31.
He did not plan, or will, that Adam would disobey him. He knew that he would, and made provision for it - but he did not say "this is my creation which is VERY good; now, how can I mess it up and destroy it?"

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If god knew Adam would disobey him when he created Adam, then he had the option of leaving him as is and having Adam sin, or creating Adam in a way where Adam would not disobey him.

If god chose to create Adam in a way that he knew he would disobey, then that decision is also on god.

The only way to resolve the idea that god thinks it's very good is if god intended for Adam to disobey and have the whole fall of mankind thing play out.

Dave Ellis said:

I don't see how you aren't getting this.... if god has foreknowledge of all the decisions people will make in a given universe at a given time when he creates the universe, then ultimately everything is his responsibility. If he had created things differently, then some of those decisions would be made differently. There's no escaping that.

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Created what things differently? How people think? People choose to love or hate, take or give.
Just because he knows and can see what will happen does not make God responsible for what people do. Or are you saying he should step in and stop every wrong before someone makes it? Then he has taken away your free will. Do you not want your free will? If God took away People's free will they would complain about that as well, or maybe because they had no free will they wouldn't even be able to complain, instead they would be robotic.

Dave Ellis said:

If god knew Adam would disobey him when he created Adam, then he had the option of leaving him as is and having Adam sin, or creating Adam in a way where Adam would not disobey him.

If god chose to create Adam in a way that he knew he would disobey, then that decision is also on god.

The only way to resolve the idea that god thinks it's very good is if god intended for Adam to disobey and have the whole fall of mankind thing play out.

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This is the whole point, God wants mankind to choose and you can only do that with free will. When Eve was offered the fruit she could have stopped and talked to God, when Eve gave Adam the fruit he could have done the same, they didn't.

He knows when each sin will occur but he doesn't endorse it, encourage it or cause it.

Dave Ellis said:

I'd argue that again, until you can demonstrate the god in question exists, it's all unevidenced assertion regardless. You may as well be arguing about whether Darth Vader was good or evil based on what was written about him in the Star Wars scripts.

And you can certainly apply science to any testable claim the bible makes. The key word is testable though. That being said, if all you have to go on is untestable claims, then you are probably not justified in believing the claims to begin with.

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You’re not understanding the point. The debate is about morality. In this case Gods morality and you cannot apply science to morality. That is what NxNW was claiming that God was evil and using his acts in the bible. So, I was defending Gods actions as morally right according to his standard and capacity.

That's a cop out. If god is all knowing and created people (as virtually all christians believe), then he created them both with the capacity to be evil, and with the foreknowledge that they would become evil in time. That puts the ultimate responsibility back on him. He could have made people who would not have chosen to commit evil deeds.

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First how do you know this. How do you work out Gods thinking? Second using human logic if there is evil then there has to be good otherwise evil has no meaning. If people are created to not be able to do evil deeds, then they must not be able to know evil. If that is the case, then people would not understand what good is either or love and hate. What are we left with then people being puppets or robots or some unimaginative blob, who knows?

And before you try to argue the free will rebuttal, it doesn't apply. I am not a serial killer, and I would never choose to become a serial killer. Theoretically I could become a serial killer, but I would never make the decision to do so. That's just the way my brain is wired.

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Yes you cannot become a serial killer because that is associated with a mental disorder that takes away free will. But that does not mean everyone does not have free will in what they choose to do or not to do. Mental disorders affect the brain and change a persons normal ability to think rationally away. That is why people can be declare criminally insane. It sort of takes away their responsibility to really know the difference between right and wrong. But you having a so called normal brain do have a conscience and know the difference.

If god created me that way, then he could have created everyone else with similar wiring so that they wouldn't ever become serial killers. Likewise, this argument can be used for any evil behavior.

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I think you’re doing a lot of assuming and speculating about how God does things. To know for sure, I think you’d have to know the mind of God. But using human logic maybe that is how humans are made. There may be what is regarded as a normal range but to have that normal range there must be all the subnormal possibilities like the possibility that humans can have mental disorders. Just like a person can have a mental disorder a human can also be incredibly intelligent discovering treatments to help those mental disorders. Just like love means nothing without hate and good means nothing without evil. Otherwise once again if God starts cutting bits out of us, we would not be free human agents capable of many possibilities.

But Christians also believe that we were perfect in Gods paradise and did not have these mental disorders, diseases or death. But once sin entered the garden things changed and humans could then experience physical death, pain, and all the afflictions we have today.

If he decided to create people wired to become serial killers one day, knowing that they'd go out on a murder spree at some point, then ultimately that's on him too. He could have created people not to do that, and decided to do so anyway.

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Not really. I always picture Gods position as the butterfly effect. If he starts messing with peoples lives and their thinking, then they are not longer in control of their lives and free will. This can have consequences for others and being a free agent. Every event that happens has 100’s of connected decisions and acts and if one is changed it can affect an entire chain of events that could create chaos.

God is in this position where he created free agents and must allow them to be free yet knows what will eventually happens so has to bide his time to let things play out otherwise it could have implications for all humans such as take away their sovereignty and right to be autonomous beings .

I addressed this in slightly more detail in another post, but it largely is based upon well-being. That's not to say there aren't possibly grey areas, but the vast majority of moral questions really aren't that hard to figure out, and a god is not needed to do so.

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Yes that’s Sam Harris’s idea the Moral landscape. Though I think he has some good points with this idea using human well-being as the measure for morality has been shown to be unreliable. It takes a utilitarian approach and morality is measured by humans happiness and pleasure which can mean anything from self sacrifice to self pleasure (hedonism) and sadism.

You can not have all things happening according to gods plan, and have free will at the same time. They are mutually exclusive propositions. It's a contradiction to say both are happening at the same time.

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But once again you are assuming a lot and perhaps injecting your perception of what you think it was like for God and how he should have acted. You don't know that and to know everything involved in when God created the universe and everything you would have to know the mind of God. So your speculating is unqualified.

But taking our human perspective how do we know God did not create the universe and everything else as perfect. That his original plan was for a perfect world and that sin came and corrupted things. That now sin has come it has to run its course to allow evil to eventually be weeded out of everything. The bible speaks of sin being allowed to run its course so that it can be completely defeated otherwise Satan will think he still has a chance. That may be how it is and God cannot cut things short to establish the law and Christ to defeat sin.

For example, could you ever decide to do something that doesn't align with god's plan?

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Yes as Christians we can often sin and do our own will. I know I have and then later have come full circle to realize that my way did not work and the later seen the wisdom of Gods way. Gods plan is not happening now with many people sinning and rejecting him. The bible said God desires that all should be saved.

If yes, then not all things happen according to god's plan.
If no, then you don't have free will.

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I don't understand this logic. If your boss made a plan at work to do something and then you decided change that plan and not follow it then whose fault is that. You had the choice to follow the plan but didn't. God has a plan and people had the choice to follow it. They didn't so now that plan has been put in jeopardy and is causing all sorts of problems. Just like you not following your bosses plan and the wheels come off his new project and have ramifications for everyone and the company.

I can do that too...If God knows our free will choices, do we still have free will? | CARM.org

Ephesians 1:11 - All things are done according to God's plan and decision; and God chose us to be his own people in union with Christ because of his own purpose, based on what he had decided from the very beginning.

So what you have is a biblical contradiction. All things are done according to god's plan based on what he decided in the beginning. That means anyone that "chose" to reject him was acting in accordance with the plan that god decided on right from the start.

If the people that rejected god were acting in accordance with the plan that god himself devised, then it was god's decision to have those people reject him. It would therefore be heinously immoral and sadistic to kill and then torture those people in the afterlife.

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This bible verse is read out of context. Paul is writing to the Ephesians who are already Christians. He is telling them that God has a plan for them. God knows they would be saved and therefore he always had a plan for them. You speculate that God set a plan for everyone in place and we have no choice yet the bible is full of verses that talk about making choices and choosing to believe or not.

When God says he has a plan it does not mean he has already planned for some to be saved and for some not to be saved. We still have the choice in the matter. It is hard to understand Gods sovereignty on this so we have to believe that He is doing the right thing. We cannot apply human logic here as God does not work to time and space and our reality as we know it. He somehow knows before anything was made who would be saved yet also allows individuals be choose salvation or not in the time and place they do. To understand this would be to understand what was before the big bang. We can only speculate.

If God is the ultimate judge and has the right to Judge all through Christ then there must be a fair way to do this where everyone is held accountable even more so than our highest court. The bible states this is the case so in quoting verses you have to take all into consideration and see what it is saying overall about God as creator and judge of everyone. You can't pick and choose verses without considering what the bible says about who God is in its entirety.

Nonsense. I don't know everything about Jeffrey Dahmer, however I don't need to know everything about his life story or personality to know he committed evil acts.

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So are you saying there was nothing in his upbringing or that he may have been born with that caused him to have delusions or neurological disorders that caused him to not understand his acts as evil like you or I would understand them.

To say you can't make a moral judgment about a person (or god) until you have a complete and total understanding of that person or thing is silly. If morality has an objective basis, then god is also bound to that moral standard. If he commits an evil or immoral act, he's not excused from it because he has immense power.... if anything he should be held to a higher standard than we are.

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But we cannot apply our understanding of morality to God. It is God who created us and is applying his morality to us and not the other way around. The police have the right at times to break the laws they apply like breaking the speeding laws to get to a crime or breaching peoples rights to privacy to get information. People can breach moral objectives such as killing someone in self defense of their family or stopping a evil dictator like Hitler in war who is killing millions.

This applies to God even more so and the context I am talking about with God is even greater than we know when we apply those examples I mentioned. For God it is about a spiritual war against evil that we don't comprehend. It is about his plan to install a Savior and about stopping sin destroying the world and everyone. If we say that it is OK for the UN to say its OK to go to war against some dictator or to kill in self defense the who are we to say that God who knows even better everything that needs to be considered so that things are fair and judge fairly has the right to do so.

Citation needed

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How can a person give a citation for this. We are talking about morality and theology. You asked a theological question. Why would you want a scientific citation.

pleinmont said:

If the male of the species got pregnant I suspect those who oppose abortion might think rather differently.

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You never know this may be possible soon.

ToddNotTodd said:

The implication would be a world without evil acts.

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And probably good acts and without love and hate. Not sure what sort of creatures we may be, perhaps some alien ones that just sit around looking at the light without much meaning to life. Only acting when some chemical impulse urge them to.

Does my lack of desire to kill, steal, rape etc. make me less human than someone that does?

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If you were placed in a situation where you had to defend yourself or family from someone trying to kill you you would quickly find the desire to take them out. What you are not considering is that most people don't desire to kill or plan to kill. It often happens as a result of other situations that involve heightened emotions like hate, anger and jealousy. In that sense everyone can relate and these same feelings make us humans as they also bring love and compassion.

So what is seen as evil often happens as a result of what people don't consider evil such as some human emotions. Like the seven deadly sins pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. They can all lead to further harm and what people can consider as evil. Christ said even if some gets angry with his brother is in danger of being judged. So anger is seen as a sin that can cause a lot of harm.

Ask a rape victim if they prefer living in a world where rape exists because the “grand tapestry of existence”, which includes evil acts, makes helping an old lady across the street more “meaningful”.

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As mentioned above rape stems form a human emotion of lust gone to the extreme. If we rid ourselves of lust we also rid ourselves of the act of love making. There can be far reaching implications that we cannot understand by God meddling around with human sovereignty and the right to autonomy.

Dave Ellis said:

Well, that's not what the bible says. It sounds like you're conveniently interpreting things to fit your argument to me.... How do you justify your position?

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The Bible doesn't say what you claim it says. You're insisting on an overly narrow interpretation.

coffee4u said:

Since the egg came from the mother's own body the zygote didn't seize anything and lol you really equate pregnancy with slavery? Whatever.

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What would you call it if someone uses the body of another without permission?

Slavery? Rape?

coffee4u said:

This is the whole point, God wants mankind to choose and you can only do that with free will. When Eve was offered the fruit she could have stopped and talked to God, when Eve gave Adam the fruit he could have done the same, they didn't.

He knows when each sin will occur but he doesn't endorse it, encourage it or cause it.

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But God is vicariously responsible in creating entities with flawed capacities like Adam and Eve had in regards to being able to choose and knowing they would screw up more likely than not.

God would know the likelihood of such things and is hedging their bets that we choose to be sycophants rather than exercise free will even if it doesn't pay it any praise, which sounds utterly egotistical in setting things up so that adherence to its will and mandates is the only way to get eternal happiness rather than eternal suffering (or annihilation, depending on your theology)

Strathos said:

The Bible doesn't say what you claim it says. You're insisting on an overly narrow interpretation.

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And the Bible doesn't necessarily claim what you interpret it to say either, that's the thing with God's supposedly clear revelation, it's not.