Posted on 02/28/2003 9:34:51 AM PST by HumanaeVitae
We've all heard this foolish position articulated over and over again by the likes of Mario Cuomo, Paul Begala, and most recently Jennifer Granholm, Governor of Michigan.
I'll be brief. The idea here is that while the person making this statement regards abortion as morally wrong, they regard imposing their view on this issue as just as morally wrong as abortion itself. So they "personally" oppose abortion, while letting abortion itself go unchallenged.
This position reaches its most baroque apex when it's articulated by a man. (It's very comforting to know that neither Mario Cuomo nor Paul Begala will have an abortion./sarcasm off) But even when stated by a woman, it's no less absurd.
Here's what these people are really saying: "I believe that there are absolute moral values, and that according to these absolute moral values, abortion is wrong. However, absolute moral values only apply to people who believe in them, therefore people who don't believe in these absolute moral values have neither committed a crime nor a sin by having, condoning or performing an abortion."
Huh? How are values absolute if they are conditional on individual belief? When a cutpurse is brought before a judge for sentencing, does he say, "Look, I don't believe picking pockets is wrong, okay? You can let me go now", and expect to get off scott-free. It's the same thing with these people. Effectively what they are saying by taking this position is that they are moral relativists who like to dress up as believers.
Either moral values are absolute and obtain for all people at all times, or there are no absolutes and truth is relative to individual tastes. And moral relativists don't get elected very often (ouside of California that is). It's not surprising why this is a popular position.
I wish the next time Granholm or any of these other people articulate this position, someone present will bust them as what they truly are--relativists in sheep's clothing. The only relevant question as to whether or not abortion is moral or immoral is not whether it is a "personal choice"; it is whether or not a human being is destroyed in this procedure. No weasel room should be allowed here...
Cheers...
Cheers...
Yes. But this is spoken to a person that made it not to a sperm that just made it to an egg and then died for one reason or another.
Well, atleast you realize it is just a personal belief.
I was thinking about this issue over the weekend and particularly of Israel. Israel was told that if they turned their backs on God He would bring such curses on them, including that they would be so hungry they would boil and eat their babies. Obviously this was man at his lowest point. I think that abortion is just about as low, but, imagine a prophet walking the streets of Israel preaching that we should write legislation making stronger laws against child eating.
Obviously the problem is not with the laws but with the sin that caused God to allow them to go that low in the first place. The solution to the abortion problem/holocost is not to be prophets of better laws but to be prophets of God.
Two wrongs don't make a right do they ? You seriously believe that if a woman were raped it should give her the right to kill ? Thats not logical.
And where is the father??? Nobody knows. HIS life isn't ruined, yet he broke the law by raping the woman.
What does the father have to do with it ?
You claim to care so much for children yet you say you support forcing a nine year old CHILD to have a baby. Seems to me some of you only care for people BEFORE they're born. Once they're born, they don't seem to matter any more.
Wrong. Last night a 3month old baby was in my bed with my wife and I. It belongs to a young woman who was forced to have sex and became pregnant. She is living with us because her mother lost her home due to bankruptcy and we offered to help out. The baby was being fussy lately and we offered to give his mom a night off.
This baby is beautiful and I would raise him as my own if need be. I love to hold him and watch his body get all excited when I'm about to pick him up. Even in the short time he has been with us I cannot imagine him being put to death. He is a gift from God. I admire the young woman for her courage and my wife and I will do whatever we can to continue to support her and her child.
I'm giving you a universality. What are you getting at?
Be consistent in your reductionism. Reduce everything to matter in motion. Why should I care about anyone's opinion if people are simply clouds of atoms, essentially no different from other clouds of atoms? Of course this isn't true in reality. But materialism cannot provide any basis for judging either one to be essentially different or better than the other.
In my experience I've found materialists to be selective reductionists. They easily convince themselves that things they don't like, like God or absolute truth are just figments of the human imagination, yet they fail to realize that their world view subverts all truth claims (including a statement like, "I see a tree over there"). If everything is matter in motion, then the human mind must be reduced to matter in motion, and the "thought" of a cloud of atoms cannot be regarded with any greater value than the "thought" of a cloud of hydrogen atoms.
Moreover, under a materialist worldview, the human mind must logically be reduced to a fallible machine (at most). In such a world there would exist no fixed ground from which to determine whether such a machine was malfunctioning. Materialism undercuts the possibility of all truth claims.
Yet we do not live in such a world. In reality, we can know truths with certainty, such as the principle of non-contradiction, that something cannot be something else in the same sense and at the same time. Therefore, the theory of materialism doesn't correspond to reality and is therefore false.
It's a matter of logic. Everything is under God's control. It's in the job description. How can this fact be reconciled with the fact that God is all good? Logically, He must allow evil only in order that a greater good may come.
For Aquinas, God is the cause of things by causing their existence. Evil is a privation, i.e. it is the lack of some due perfection or existence in something that already has existence. There can be nothing that is "pure evil;" an evil thing is first a thing. Consequently it has some existence, and so has some good, of which God is the cause. Since evil is the lack of existence, God is not the direct, i.e. per se, cause of it; He is the cause of evil only indirectly, i.e. per accidens, insofar as He causes things to exist in which there is found some evil. So, Aquinas believes that the existence of God can be proved from the fact that things exist and do not cause their own existence. This being so, i.e. that God exists, the existence of evil does not undercut the proof, since even the existence of evil presupposes the existence of things. Thus, the answer to the problem of evil is whether God, while not directly willing evil, can indirectly allow evil and still be all-good and all-powerful. His answer is that God is so powerful, that He allows evil in order to bring good from it. Ultimately, I think, Aquinas does not show HOW this is the case in every evil we experience. He believes, however, THAT it must be the case, since we already know that God exists and that He is all-powerful and all-good.
In one sense yes, in another no. The essence of something is simply what a thing is. I remain a man after death, yet my existence is torn in two. The soul (the act or form of the body) is separated from the body (the matter). The soul persists after death for a time separated from the body. In that sense my essence or substance persists, yet it doesn't persist in the same way as before death, since the soul is no longer united with the body and all knowledge thereafter must be infused directly by God.
So where is the point of death?
When the soul separates from the body.
What changed? Is death a moment in time or an interval of time? If an interval, however short, does your essence change between the first part of death and the last part? It must.
See above. Death logically creates greater problems for the materialist. Since the arrangement of the atoms in a dead body is usually no different than it the moment before death, what is fundamentally altered? Why does the body cease to generate (or self-organize) and thereafter decompose?
I attribute their daughters' misbehavior to their mother for this reason. Poor judgement regarding abortion means poor judgement elsewhere.
However, if one is of the opinion that God does not always intervene to make sure that good things happen to good people, then it's not much of a stretch to also believe that he's not taking an active role in all the bad things that happen.
It's a question of whether God directly intervenes in everything that happens, or whether he allows events to occur naturally.
I hold the latter opinion, and believe that prayer is the asking for active intervention which might otherwise be withheld.
I agree. IMHO, the meaning of the Garden of Eden story and God's covenant with Noah is that human beings have been given the gift of free will and conciousness and God will not again destroy mankind even if we use our free will for evil. The evil in this world comes from the actions of people, not God.
So people who are in comas aren't people?
No, that was the AMA. They had to change their official definition of the beginning of human life so that the "pill" wouldn't be classified as an abortifacient.
I think we have already decided that is best to err on letting a guilty man go free. Its just that I don't know enough about these cases to determine what "exoneration" means.
I don't know what you mean by "intervenes." I think of divine intervention as the miraculous. Normally, God allows things to occur "naturally" in the sense that he sustains everything in existence and also sustains human free will. He also works supernaturally as he bestows grace upon us.
I hold the latter opinion, and believe that prayer is the asking for active intervention which might otherwise be withheld.
Since God moves us to prayer, I don't think it's quite correct to say that God's "intervention might otherwise be witheld."
In hearing our prayer God does not change His will or action in our regard, but simply puts into effect what He had eternally decreed in view of our prayer. This He may do directly without the intervention of any secondary cause as when He imparts to us some supernatural gift, such as actual grace, or indirectly, when He bestows some natural gift. In this latter case He directs by His Providence the natural causes which contribute to the effect desired, whether they be moral or free agents, such as men; or some moral and others not, but physical and not free; or, again, when none of them is free. Finally, by miraculous intervention, and without employing any of these causes, He can produce the effect prayed for.
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