Is the Fetus a Human Being?

[redleghunter]

Do you acknowledge the Augsburg Confession as a true statement of what the Scriptures teach concerning salvation?

The ECLA holds to Augsburg?

 

[Aldebaran]

The ECLA holds to Augsburg?

That's what happens when Christians hold more to denominational standings than on scripture.

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

I am just as opposed to abortions as any other Christian should be, but they aren't going away. The world is ran by non-believers and sinners and they don't care about morality, so why not just play the system and get ahead of the "problem"?

According to everything in all Scripture, this cannot be done,
and
the people of God, Ekklesia in OT and NT, never tried.
Jesus never said to, and never tried to .

A false gospel world-wide makes a show of both - seeming to try to, and at the same time supporting the opposite as it pleases - playing all parts of the system against one another to create chaos as desired to gain power over it all, as planned for centuries,
as prophesied in Scripture over 2000 years ago.

 

[Karin12414]

According to everything in all Scripture, this cannot be done,
and
the people of God, Ekklesia in OT and NT, never tried.
Jesus never said to, and never tried to .

A false gospel world-wide makes a show of both - seeming to try to, and at the same time supporting the opposite as it pleases - playing all parts of the system against one another to create chaos as desired to gain power over it all, as planned for centuries,
as prophesied in Scripture over 2000 years ago.

Well then I guess it's settled. We all should stop caring and let the world burn because nothing we do or say matters and we are only fooling ourselves into thinking that any of this "God-stuff" actually works.

(Sarcasm btw, so please don't think I'm serious about this, everyone)

 

[Jennifer Rothnie]

Hey, here's a simple "solution" lol let's promote abstinence AND safe sex teaching in schools and make it easier and possible to PREVENT unwanted pregnancy? It's a wild suggestion, but what do you say?

Let's not be separated by this and instead look for REALISTIC ways to help PREVENT this instead of fighting abortions so much? It is proven that teens that are well informed and provided with resources (condoms, birth control, ect.) are less likely to have unwanted pregnancies... which can lead to less abortions... just sayin'...

http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Feature.showFeature&featureID=1041

One can be pro-life and promote helping women, as many pro-life orgs do, with resources to give them other options, financial relief, life skills training, resources, etc.

It's a huge jump from that though to believe that we can 'compromise' by focusing on ways to lower unwanted pregnancy rates vs. stopping the holocaust of the unborn.

By the way, I would recommend you check out your study again. It has serious problems with methdology and dismissing alternative factors in it's conclusion.

For example, any kid who ever encountered someone telling them 'just say no to sex' at church, school, etc. was classified as receiving formal abstinence education. ?? That's like treating a kid who was told to 'just say no to drugs' as having received a formal education as to their nature, effects, etc. Along with this, any kid taught that birth control existed at all was classified as having received 'formal sex education' regardless if this referred to a parent telling them to use a condom or a thorough course in high school, etc. Kids who self-reported neither were classified as having received 'no' sex-ed. The study admits this several times, though doesn't let it's conclusions be influenced by that limitation. [For example, "No information was available about the quality, context, or duration of either the abstinence-only or comprehensive sex education programs." They just asked kids to self-report whether they'd been told to say no vs. told to use birth control and classified them as participating in formal programs themselves.]

And if you look at the details, what they found was that the youth who received 'no sex ed' were primarily low income, black, and from rural areas. The youth who were classified as receiving 'comprehensive sex-ed' were primarily older, white, higher-income, and living in urban areas. Those classified as 'abstinence only' were primarily younger than others in the study, with low to moderate income, and from intact families.

With such biased representation in the samples, no solid conclusions can be made about the actual effects of sex-ed. Age, race, urban vs. rural, and income level are all highly correlating factors that would need to be examined for their potential impact.

Furthermore, the study takes it's group of kids that reported being told to say no to sex at some point as somehow representative of kids who go through actual abstinence programs - even though nothing in their study would support that.

And remember, about half of the women who seek abortions were actively using birth control the month they got pregnant. It isn't that they didn't know how to or weren't aware of its existence, but that methods fail.
https://www.guttmacher.org/news-rel...-report-using-contraception-month-they-became

So even if we imagined that if everyone received thorough contraception training and it reduced the number of pregnancies even more, we still could expect to see 450,000+ abortions a year just in the U.S. due to contraception failure.

That's still 450,000 human deaths too many.

 

[Aldebaran]

Well then I guess it's settled. We all should stop caring and let the world burn because nothing we do or say matters and we are only fooling ourselves into thinking that any of this "God-stuff" actually works.

(Sarcasm btw, so please don't think I'm serious about this, everyone)

I think we should still care. What amazes me the most is when Christians start advocating for abortions based on worldly values, even to the point of rejecting scripture in favor of the type of rhetoric we hear in the mainstream media.

 

[Hillsage]

Perhaps the use of 'convenience' is not as precise as what we are really discussing here. Which is the premeditated termination of a healthy human being developing in the womb. We cannot escape even after page after page of posts that upwards to 98% of procured abortions performed involve a decision to terminate the human life in the woman's womb with both the human fetus healthy and pregnant woman healthy.

For whatever reason is given, the above remains the fact of the matter.

True....I think. So, when man declares we have created LIFE in a test tube, what is the churches, or your, response to such claims?

But as I queried in another of my unanswered questions, a ways back; Are not abortions often performed for the very same 'personal' reasons our government uses to justify wars and the killing our healthiest living youth? And in my case....drafted. And then the church waves the American flag and makes us stand up in church for pats on our flesh for keeping them free. I'm sorry that's just a lie since WW2. Much like the lie that this country was built on 'religious freedom'....another sales pitch. The Boston tea party wasn't about 'religious freedom'. It was about not wanting to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" IOW TAXES. And none of us likes paying taxes do we? Sometimes we're so awestruck with the building, but we're forgetful as to its 'very' foundation. I'm still looking for 'that' here.

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

Well then I guess it's settled. We all should stop caring and let the world burn because nothing we do or say matters and we are only fooling ourselves into thinking that any of this "God-stuff" actually works.

(Sarcasm btw, so please don't think I'm serious about this, everyone)

GOOD ! (no problem with the sarcasm) ....
But no, just care the way God says to, the way Jesus taught/ teaches in His Word - not the way the world does.

"INSTEAD" of any or all of the world's ways, which are all "of the world" and have not worked and keep making things worse;

DO , be a "DOER" of GOD's WORD, in JESUS, His Way, by faith and trusting HIM that HE IS RIGHT and GOOD and TRUE
and
that HE KNOWS...... and that HE MAKES KNOWN HIS WAY in JESUS.

See what happened(-s) when men everywhere
come up with many devices (wicked) opposed to God's simplicity ?

So much and so many religion(s) devised by men (or hasatan)
outnumbering the true followers of Jesus over 1000 to 1 on earth
and deceiving billions ?

There is no hope in man's ways , without Christ and with no hope in the world.

God's Way is the only right and good way, abiding in Him, with Him , always doing as He Says (again, not man's way).....

and the whole world rebels against God and God's Word and God's Way,
so
there is persecution for everyone, as Jesus Stated, for everyone who stands up for the Truth.... the whole world hates Jesus, and hates His followers.... still to this day, as they did in the first century,
as they
did in the days of NOAH.....
as they
did in sodom and gomorrah....

will the son of man find faith in God when he returns to earth ?

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

I think we should still care. What amazes me the most is when Christians start advocating for abortions based on worldly values, even to the point of rejecting scripture in favor of the type of rhetoric we hear in the mainstream media.

Yes,
whenever 'Christians' start advocating for things based on worldly values
(man's way(s) ) , they are rejecting Scripture in favor of ...... "instead of Christ" ways ....

 

[Jennifer Rothnie]

[Staff edit].

An organism is "a discrete and complete living thing, such as animal, plant, fungus or microorganism"

A cell is "the basic unit of a living organism, consisting of a quantity of protoplasm surrounded by a cell membrane, which is able to synthesize proteins and replicate itself."

The DNA of a complete *organism* determines what that organism looks like as a whole (species, markings, etc.) That complete organism is genetically and spatially distinct from other organisms. The DNA of the organism instructs the individual cells within it how to differentiate, and in some cases cells can divide out of control, such as cancer. The only time an individual human cell can be taken as a complete organism is the first cell - the zygote. After that the human develops into a multi-celled organism.

One needs several factors to be a living human, not just DNA: #1 genetic distinction/discretion from *other organisms* [not its own cells] #2 complete organism (not a unit or part of a larger organism) and #3 Developing.

Cancer, despite sharing DNA with its host organism, is not a complete human organism. DNA is only one factor.

An unborn child is a complete human organism, genetically distinct from the mother and even discrete in space (before the placenta joins them there is even a time as the fertilized egg travels when it is completely unattached.) An unborn child is developing - from zygote to blastocyst to embryo to foetus to infant to child to adolescent to adult, etc. and will continue growing until death. (Some individual cells even keep developing after death for a time, but again they are not a complete human organism.)

 

[redleghunter]

Now "controlling a woman's life" is something you think is worse than killing a baby? Is life really that disposable to Lutherans???

Not all. I am close friends with LCMS Lutherans.

This is their view on abortion (see attached pdf)

 

[redleghunter]

For that matter, I'm a pregnant woman.

Praise God! May the Lord bless you, your baby and husband during this most beautiful miracle in your lives!

 

[Aldebaran]

Not all. I am close friends with LCMS Lutherans.

This is their view on abortion (see attached pdf)

It's strange to read that and then read from Lutherans the sort of thing we've seen in this thread.

 

[redleghunter]

An early stage foetus cannot be considered a "baby" and no-one would call it this unless they were trying to lie and deceive.

You may be right. The proper term is human being developing in the womb.

 

[redleghunter]

It's strange to read that and then read from Lutherans the sort of thing we've seen in this thread.

Well a LCMS site called Lutheran satire made this video which should explain a lot. I posted this yesterday but it might have been buried:

 

[redleghunter]

What about this one? Does this look like a human being to you?

View attachment 234775

Yes, both you and I (I was probably more handsome at that stage of course) looked just like that when we were human beings at that stage of development.

 

[Jon Osterman]

Yes, both you and I (I was probably more handsome at that stage of course) looked just like that when we were human beings at that stage of development.

I didn't. I don't know about you. That was a picture of a dog foetus I posted.

 

[JacksBratt]

If a fetus can survive outside the womb then we start to have reasons to scrutinize the personal choice about abortion.

So, what you are saying is:

"If the human can survive outside of the place that protects it while it's growing.... then you can't abort it.
But....if it cannot survive and relies on the womb to protect it....then it's not protected from abortion."

In other words....

If it needs protection...it has none.... If it is strong enough to live outside unprotected... then protect it.

Does anyone else not see how backward this is?

 

[ubicaritas]

Would you say that God is Just? Because we do know that "Righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne." (Psalm 97:2)

Justice and mercy meet in the same reality in God.

Does the ELCA call them the 10 Guidelines?

No. But we understand "commandment" differently in terms of the function of the Law in relationship to the Gospel, so I used different language to try to accentuate that. The Third use of the Law for Lutherans is more like "guideline" than being some kind of law of nature.

 

[ubicaritas]

Actually the pastor was being a pastor.

Does pastor Fisk have the NT in his canon? Really I have to ask as you were presented several passages from the NT only to reply "Law" each time.

Law is found in the NT just as Gospel is found in the OT. It depends on what the passage is doing. If it's potentially accusing us of sin, it's Law. If it's promising forgiveness, grace, mercy, and eternal life, it's Gospel.

This is a significant difference between Lutherans and Reformed. Reformed tend to focus on covenant theology that blends the Testaments together and obscures Law and Gospel.