The hypocrisy of being "pro-life"

KomatiiteBIF said:

Catch up with the conversation. Who says a day old embryo is human? It doesn't say that in scripture.

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So you are proposing that a day old embryo is what exactly?
A pig? A fish? a flamingo?

And the topic is titled "the hypocrisy of being "pro-life"

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The topic itself is thehypocrisy by pretending that pro life has some kind of double standard.
All human life is sacred
All human life has worth
All human life should be treated with dignity

Now you tell me what is hypocritical about that.

Are there individuals who say they are pro life but have some kind of double standard to what they say -of course, as does every other movement or thing that you can think of, we don't control peoples thoughts or actions. This does not make the belief that all human life has worth wrong, it means those individuals are wrong.

I'm simply pointing out that if someone can shoot a deer through the lung with a bow and arrow, watch it scream in pain and fear and bleed out as it collapses on the ground, so that we can stuff its body parts and hang them on the wall for fun, then there's no reason for them to think that they have a moral high ground for protecting non pain feeling, non sentient embryos

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Why do you think the pro life movement believes that for even one second? Have you read a pro life statement of belief and seen that shooting deer for fun is part of it? No, let me guess, you know someone in real life who says they are pro life but goes hunting? Back to some individual who does not not speak for the pro life movment.
I am pro life
Pro gun control
pro no hunting for fun.

especially in instances involving rape

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There is a women here on CF who was raped, got pregnant and had her baby. She said it was the best decision she ever made. Do you as a man think you know better than her?

or where the mothers health is jeapordised by the pregnancy.

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Ah back to this pretend mother who doesn't exist. Pro choice clings to this figment of the imagination to invoke feelings of righteousness for its position.

Hundreds of doctors have a signed a statement that puts the situation in perspective. In part, the statement reads:
There is never a situation in the law or in the ethical practice of medicine where a preborn child’s life need be intentionally destroyed by procured abortion for the purpose of saving the life of the mother. A physician must do everything possible to save the lives of both of his patients, mother and child. He must never intend the death of either.
A tubal (or ectopic) pregnancy, for instance, can indeed be life-threatening. But the treatment, even if it is fatal to the child, is not a “procured abortion.” The doctor wants to save the baby, but knows that is perhaps unlikely. There are lifesaving procedures that can be done that allow for the ectopic babies to be transplanted into their mothers’ womb. This is a fairly new concept but has existed for nearly a hundred years.
Common Abortion Exceptions - The Mother's Life - American Life League
Ectopic pregnancy survivor

And if one is culturally accepted, I'd say the other should be too, for the sake of being consistent.

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Do you mean hunting for sport? Who says we accept it? I certainly don't.

KomatiiteBIF said:

The reasoning is fair. As I said in my post just above, when discussing taxonomy, we are using man-made scientific definitions for things.

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I think you're playing a little fast and loose with the term "man-made" when it's really the result of a process based on [really simple] observation.

This is not equivalent to God's word. This is man's word.

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Well, it's God's creation we're observing with the five senses and rational faculties God endowed us with. You're really mischaracterizing the process to make it appear that the results of observations of biological processes are fictional creations. I understand why you need to mischaracterize it - you want to make it appear that you're doing God's will and your opponents are making everything up whole cloth.

Our scientific definition of any animal is our definition alone. And when God created us in his image, I don't think that God meant that he created us with a spinal cordarms and two legs and two eyes and a nose.

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I think God endows all humans with a gift of life and so all humans have a God-given right to life. Embryos resulting from the conception of human males and females are also human; they don't magically become a human at some later, arbitrary point. God has given us the faculties to observe and make sense of the world in a reliable way, and it doesn't take much to observe that embryos resulting from human conception follow human development processes from conception through death; and so it's not really even controversial to classify them as human. And then you believe it's ok to kill these humans in utero and think this is morally permissible for some as-of-yet well articulated moral reason.

All of these things are just concepts that we the scientists use to define things for ease of discussion. But if a human is born without two arms or two legs that doesn't make them any less created in the image of God.

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In the academic literature, is there currently a discussion as to using the number of limbs as a method of taxonomy? Or is this you mischaracterizing the situation again?

Being created in God's image is not something dependent upon taxonomy, morphology, or any specific physical traits.

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On your position is it ok to kill a human before they have achieved the status of image bearer of God?

coffee4u said:

So you are proposing that a day old embryo is what exactly?
A pig? A fish? a flamingo?

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I'm not sure on his view that classifications like this can exist...

I'll try to elaborate some more. And thank you for taking the conversation a step further than the other person.

Taxonomy, and our scientific naming system, Is something that people have conjured up in our minds. Taxonomy is subject to change and changes all the time. And everyone knows this and there's nothing wrong with it. The nature of taxonomy is an effort to classify things based on morphology and which form of life is more or less related to something else.

But taxonomy changes all the time and that's okay. It's just the nature of human science to correct itself over time.

But the point is that being created in the image of God is not something dependent upon physical traits. something that can be defined by taxonomy. Scientifically we can say that a human being is a chordate. But this is not equivalent to imago dei. This is man's word, man's definition of "human", it is not God's definition.

And if someone is born one day without a spinal cord, And one day let's say they are born beyond the commonly understood definition of a homo sapiens sapiens, That doesn't make them any less created in the image of God.

And to go back to my point earlier about the ham sandwich, When God creates, God is bringing human life into existence from non-existence. Human life is not defined by the reshaping or reforming of physical traits. Human life is not defined by scientific taxonomy. And when our body rots and decays into dust, a human being doesn't just stop existing. The human creation lives on in heaven.

And just as the human life is not dependent upon the existence of its physical form and just as the human life does not end when the body dies and decays, It is also true that the human Life is not dependent upon when the human body first begins to form. Or it is at least fair to say that scripture does not say that this is the case.

Just as life continues (in heaven) after the taxonomically defined body decays and rots, And is not dependent upon physical form, It is also true that the human life is not dependent upon when that physical form begins to take shape. Nor is it dependent upon any specific physical trait.

Indeed being created in the image of God cannot be dependent upon any physical trait, because If it were, then there would be people created outside of God's image because they didn't have specific cladistics based features.

We just cannot use science to define God's word.

Yekcidmij said:

I think you're playing a little fast and loose with the term "man-made" when it's really the result of a process based on [really simple] observation.



Well, it's God's creation we're observing with the five senses and rational faculties God endowed us with. You're really mischaracterizing the process to make it appear that the results of observations of biological processes are fictional creations. I understand why you need to mischaracterize it - you want to make it appear that you're doing God's will and your opponents are making everything up whole cloth.



I think God endows all humans with a gift of life and so all humans have a God-given right to life. Embryos resulting from the conception of human males and females are also human; they don't magically become a human at some later, arbitrary point. God has given us the faculties to observe and make sense of the world in a reliable way, and it doesn't take much to observe that embryos resulting from human conception follow human development processes from conception through death; and so it's not really even controversial to classify them as human. And then you believe it's ok to kill these humans in utero and think this is morally permissible for some as-of-yet well articulated moral reason.



In the academic literature, is there currently a discussion as to using the number of limbs as a method of taxonomy? Or is this you mischaracterizing the situation again?



On your position is it ok to kill a human before they have achieved the status of image bearer of God?

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We only observe that which already exists taking new shape. We are not observing anything coming into existence from non-existence, ie creation.

Just as the example goes with the ham sandwich, When I take ham cheese and a couple slices of bread, I am not bringing a sandwich into existence.

I am simply reforming that which already exists, and that is not how God creates life. God doesn't take that which already exists and reforms it to create you and me. You and I did not eternally exist. When God creates he bring something into existence from non-existence, He brings life into existence from non-existence.

And we cannot say that two cells fusing is equivalent to God bringing life into existence from non-existence, because two cells fusing is merely a physical occurrence in a material world of things that already exist that are simply reshaping themselves.

You are taking a materialistic approach in which your understanding of God's actions is dependent on science rather than being dependent upon God. Your understanding of when life is created (brought into existence from that existence) is based on a materialistic observation of the fusion of two pre existing cells (conception). It is not necessarily based on an act of God.

" Embryos resulting from the conception of human males and females are also human"

This is true according to science and according to people. But you should understand that this understanding has science and materialism at its foundation, not scripture.

I completely agree that in scientific terms when two human beings conceive, they conceive of a human (usually, though this won't always be the case because our morphology is always changing).

But this is our assignment of names for simplicity of discussion. It is a conclusion that is derived completely independent of scripture.

And I would say that our taxonomic definition of homo sapiens sapiens, is not to be confused with the image of God with respect to imago dei in scripture.

The reason the embryo matters so much in this discussion, is because some people are saying that we are created in the image of God. And then we see people equating that passage in scripture to the man-made scientific definition of homo sapiens sapiens.

And that's where there is a disconnect. Because in fact being created in the image of God is not something that can be measured by science. It's not, he is therefore created in God's image.

No, this cannot be true. Because some people are born without traits that are commonly used to classify homo sapiens sapiens. And in fact in our ever-changing morphology, Homo sapiens sapiens does not have a rigid definition. indeed no taxonomic classification in existence has a specific rigid molecule for molecules definition.

which is why we constantly argue over tax out of me for every species over time.

But God's truth is eternal, it isn't something that can be debated or redefined or reshaped.

God's eternal Truth and his statement that we are created in his image, and his image, is not equivalent to man-made fluctuating taxonomic definition.

The mic is dropped.

Yekcidmij said:

So in your professional biology experience, in the academic literature what are the currently identified and debated genus and species for embryos in human females?

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And I have to say it because I really love this response, But as we know in the world of science, our genes are ever changing, and our morphology in response, is ever changing. Indeed right now we have what we call homo sapiens sapiens, But this is not a rigid classification. No taxonomic classification is rigid with specific borders. Which is why we constantly debate over the names of species because there's no rigid morphological border that defines them.

And because there is no rigid boundary, we can't equate this to God's eternal and unchanging image. We cannot equate man-made science with God's word.

It's not that scientists are wrong. It's that the complex world is ever changing, and so man's taxonomic definition is also ever changing to continually define it (for ease of discussion). And so God's image cannot be equated to this. Because the moment we try to equate God's Image with something physical, we would then fall out of God's image upon changing.

And if God's Image is not defined by physical morphology, then it's not reasonable to conclude that an embryo is human (based on morphology), and that because the embryo has a specific morphology, that it is therefore created in the image of God.