How to answer an Atheist

[slewi]

Are there any resources on how to answer an atheist? One is talking to me now and was going on about how science changed the church’s stand on abortion. When science said life began at conception the Church changed it’s view. Does anyone have anything on this?

 

[dbacks5439]

Are there any resources on how to answer an atheist? One is talking to me now and was going on about how science changed the church’s stand on abortion. When science said life began at conception the Church changed it’s view. Does anyone have anything on this?

Science has never said that. If it did, then those who abort would be guilty of murder.

 

[slewi]

Here is his quote. Is there anything to it?

The church believed it was ok to terminate a pregnancy if it was still before the time of quickening (when the baby first moves) science further explored the process of pregnancy and realized the fusion of sperm and egg. Religion quickly altered its stance. Science learned, religion reacted, not the other way around.

 

[jonk]

Excerpt from This Rock:

Q: St.Thomas Aquinas didn’t believe human life begins at conception. He taught that ensoulment doesn’t occur until several weeks later (delayed animation). How does this square with current Catholic teaching against abortion from the time of conception?

A: Notwithstanding his belief in delayed animation and ensoulment, Aquinas still taught that abortion was wrong from the moment of conception. He believed it to be a mortal sin expressive of a homicidal will, even if in the early stages of pregnancy, as he thought, homicide isn’t actually committed.

Aquinas’s opposition, then, squares perfectly with the Church’s teaching, even if there’s a difference between why Aquinas thought abortion was wrong and why Catholic theologians and moralists today think it is.

Why did Aquinas believe ensoulment happened some time after conception? Because he accepted the science of his day, which taught the theory of the spontaneous generation of life (the idea that life spontaneously arises from non-living matter).

As applied to human reproduction, this theory suggested the (apparently) non-living elements contributed by each parent–“fetal matter” in the case of the mother and seminal fluid in the case of the father–were transformed from non-living matter successively into vegetative, animal, and finally human life.

Each of these stages was thought to come about by the infusion of a soul: vegetative life by the infusion of a vegetative soul, animal life by the infusion of an animal soul, and human life by the infusion of a human soul.

Since, according to Aquinas, the soul is the form of the body–that which gives life and makes an organism the kind of creature it is–if an organism possesses distinctively human qualities, we can concluded it possesses a human soul.

Because early scientists observed nothing distinctively human at primitive stages of human development (they knew nothing of genetics and possessed no microscopes), it was concluded no human soul was present.

Modern biology has shown the conceptus does have distinctively human traits. It is living and possesses a human genetic code to guide its growth and development. If Aquinas had had the benefits of this knowledge, his principles would have led him to conclude ensoulment occurs at conception.

So the Church never believed it was okay to terminate pregnancy.

 

[banjo]

Here is his quote. Is there anything to it?

The church believed it was ok to terminate a pregnancy if it was still before the time of quickening (when the baby first moves) science further explored the process of pregnancy and realized the fusion of sperm and egg. Religion quickly altered its stance. Science learned, religion reacted, not the other way around.

From the Didache (circa A.D. 140)…“You shall not procure abortion, nor destroy a new-born child.” [2, 1]
Also from The Faith of the Early Fathers, William A. Jurgens…
Volume 1, 396a (A.D. 222). "For this reason women who were reputed to be believers began to take drugs to render themselves sterile, and to bind themselves tightly so as to expel what was being concieved.

 

[slewi]

That’s an excellent post! I believe that answers my question. As I suspected, the atheist was using misinformation to further his agenda.

Thanks again.

 

[kell0618]

Ex-Atheist.com. Christian Apologetics, Logic and Debate!

Dialogue With an Atheist on the Premises & Axioms of Atheism

I hope these help you!

 

[RikasAngel]

Hello All,

It seems there maybe two issues going on here. The question of Atheism and Abortion are different, though to some extent related. Certainly Medievils believed that a baby was not “Human” until it began moving in the womb. But one must keep in mind that no one fully understood the process of giving birth until about the Twentieth Century. Once the process was well understood, the Church was able to apply the principles of Natural Law to it properly. In that case, Science aided Faith’s understanding of the Created World.

Many will use Science as a Billy Club to Faith, but those who do this misrepresent the relationship between Science and Religion. There are several major works that can aid one’s outlook on this subject:

A Guide for the Perplexed by E.F. Schumacher

The Science Before Science: A Guide for Thinking in the 21st Century by Anthony Rizzi

The Limits of a Limitless Science And other Essays by Fr. Stanley Jaki

As for Atheism in General, there are several works one can look into:

On a Basic Level:

Beginning Apologtics 4: How to Answer Atheists and New Agers by Jim Burnham and Fr. frank Chacon

The Case for a Creator: A Jounalist Investigates Scientific Evidence that Points to God by Lee Strobel

The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus by Lee Strobel

Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

For More Indepth Works:

Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton

Handbook of Christian Apologetics: Hundreds of Answers to Crucial Questions by Peter Kreeft and Fr. Ronald Tacelli

Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe by Michael Behe, William Dembski, and Stephen Meyer

Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe by Peter Ward and Donal Brownlee

The Drama of Atheistic Humanism by Henri De Lubac

God and Philosophy by Etinne Gilson

God and the Cosmologists by Fr. Stanley Jaki

Miracles by C.S. Lewis

The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis

Beyond Death by Gary Habermas and J.P. Moreland

As for any of the Moral Questions, these might help:

Beginning Apologetics 5: How to Answer Tough Moral Questions Jim Burnham and Fr. Frank Chacon

The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis

Three Approaches to Abortion by Peter Kreeft

Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments by Randy Alcorn

I know these are a lot of titles to through at you, but they can have a big impact on your own thought and how to respond to anti-religionists. I hope these all help. :tiphat:

 

[Digger71]

Excerpt from This Rock:

So the Church never believed it was okay to terminate pregnancy.

I believe ensoulment occurs at first breath. otherwise God is creating so many souls that never make it to settling in the womb, let alone birht, that one find oneself comparing it to all those sperm that never make it to the egg.

An opponent to Intelligent Design said of this “If i had done this, I would have made just one sperm per ejeculation…but what a spematoza that would be”

Wish i could find the quote.

 

[jonk]

What are your beliefs and what do you base your belief on ensoulment on?

It is not comparable at all to the sperm not making it to the egg, because that would make the chance of a woman becoming pregnant over the course of her lifetime a million to one. The human race would be extinct within a generation.

 

[Maranatha]

I believe ensoulment occurs at first breath. otherwise God is creating so many souls that never make it to settling in the womb, let alone birht, that one find oneself comparing it to all those sperm that never make it to the egg.

An opponent to Intelligent Design said of this “If i had done this, I would have made just one sperm per ejeculation…but what a spematoza that would be”

Wish i could find the quote.

The fact of the matter is you and I can not not state definitively if the soul is infused at conception or at first breath. Since we don’t know and since destroying a soul is such an horrendous crime (murder) then we have to assume that, until we know otherwise, that destroying a fetus is destroying a soul.

For an argument against abortion that uses non-religious logic check out: catholiceducation.org/articles/abortion/ab0045.html

 

[Digger71]

The fact of the matter is you and I can not not state definitively if the soul is infused at conception or at first breath. Since we don’t know and since destroying a soul is such an horrendous crime (murder) then we have to assume that, until we know otherwise, that destroying a fetus is destroying a soul.

For an argument against abortion that uses non-religious logic check out: catholiceducation.org/articles/abortion/ab0045.html

As i said, I believe. It’s a faith position like any other. I give it as much weight as it deserves.

However, God, if omniscient, would be guilty of ‘murder’ by ensouling eggs that God knows will never settle in the womb, because the souls would never even have a chance of gestation. Perhaps this is different to willful termination of a fetus, but it essentially the same if a soul is present…no birth. This applies to all miscarriages as well.

Worse, if omniscience is present, then God knows that a fetus is to be aborted, so inserting a soul ppredestines the fetus no no earthly existance and makes murderers of the people involved. That’‘s pretty harsh on the fetus’ soul, if nor the aborters. But with a slighht re-arrangement it wouldnt hurt either.

Of course, not inserting a soul would mean denying the potential aborters the opportunity to avoid committing murder, after all, what is virtue without temptation? So it may be that souls are created to give potential parents the opportunity to avoid temptation. Which is again harsh on the created souls, but maybe they get recycled.

Oh, and if you read the website you linked to you would realise the argument is nonsense. An apple starts out as a pollen grain fertilizing a female. it isn’t big, green/red, juicy, sweet and good to eat, or indeed visible. It simply has the potential to be all those things. And if you look at an apple tree, it loses lots of apples as other ripen.

So, we know what an apple is, and that swelling below where the flower used to be is not an apple. It doesnt look like one, is doesnt taste like one, it doesnt have the sugar content, it doesnt contain ripe seeds.

It’s not an apple, we know what an apple is. And that swelling is not an apple.

And as hist first argument collapse, the rest follows.

 

[Digger71]

What are your beliefs and what do you base your belief on ensoulment on?

It is not comparable at all to the sperm not making it to the egg, because that would make the chance of a woman becoming pregnant over the course of her lifetime a million to one. The human race would be extinct within a generation.

Partially tradition. It’s an old tradition, out of favour. But it is a tradition.

Partly Thmoas Aquinas, he identified two souls, and animalistic, that provides motive force, and the human that provides the soul.

Again Aquinas, he stated a human soul cannot be held in a non human form. I accept that.

Partly biology. Human chemistry is not the same as a human being. A fertilised egg doesnt have all the bits, though it may in future. In claiming ‘first breath’ is presupposes enough of a person to breathe, which presupposes all the bits, which presupposes independent rather than parasitic existance.

Waste: billions of fertilised eggs are lost through failure to settle, and miscarriages are very common. All those souls represent no effort to create to a being of infinite power, but to the soul in question it is everything.

Biology: fetuses exist in a state of deep, deep sleep if referenced in terms of hormones and brain activity. This lapses during birth,

That’s about it. I may remember some more later.

Does this help?

Finally, a well designed sperm would always make it to the egg. It would have powerful engine, a long life time, acute senses… Your counter argument only works for sperm as they are, not the perfected sperm with which there is no waste.

 

[Digger71]

What are your beliefs and what do you base your belief on ensoulment on?

It is not comparable at all to the sperm not making it to the egg, because that would make the chance of a woman becoming pregnant over the course of her lifetime a million to one. The human race would be extinct within a generation.

Partially tradition. It’s an old tradition, out of favour. But it is a tradition.

Partly Thmoas Aquinas, he identified two souls, and animalistic, that provides motive force, and the human that provides the soul.

Again Aquinas, he stated a human soul cannot be held in a non human form. I accept that.

Partly biology. Human chemistry is not the same as a human being. A fertilised egg doesnt have all the bits, though it may in future. In claiming ‘first breath’ is presupposes enough of a person to breathe, which presupposes all the bits, which presupposes independent rather than parasitic existance.

Waste: billions of fertilised eggs are lost through failure to settle, and miscarriages are very common. All those souls represent no effort to create to a being of infinite power, but to the soul in question it is everything.

Biology: fetuses exist in a state of deep, deep sleep if referenced in terms of hormones and brain activity. This lapses during birth,

That’s about it. I may remember some more later.

Does this help?

Finally, a well designed sperm would always make it to the egg. It would have powerful engine, a long life time, acute senses… Your counter argument only works for sperm as they are, not the perfected sperm with which there is no waste.

 

[Maranatha]

As i said, I believe. It’s a faith position like any other. I give it as much weight as it deserves.

However, God, if omniscient, would be guilty of ‘murder’ by ensouling eggs that God knows will never settle in the womb, because the souls would never even have a chance of gestation. Perhaps this is different to willful termination of a fetus, but it essentially the same if a soul is present…no birth. This applies to all miscarriages as well.

Worse, if omniscience is present, then God knows that a fetus is to be aborted, so inserting a soul ppredestines the fetus no no earthly existance and makes murderers of the people involved. That’‘s pretty harsh on the fetus’ soul, if nor the aborters. But with a slighht re-arrangement it wouldnt hurt either.

Of course, not inserting a soul would mean denying the potential aborters the opportunity to avoid committing murder, after all, what is virtue without temptation? So it may be that souls are created to give potential parents the opportunity to avoid temptation. Which is again harsh on the created souls, but maybe they get recycled.

Oh, and if you read the website you linked to you would realise the argument is nonsense. An apple starts out as a pollen grain fertilizing a female. it isn’t big, green/red, juicy, sweet and good to eat, or indeed visible. It simply has the potential to be all those things. And if you look at an apple tree, it loses lots of apples as other ripen.

So, we know what an apple is, and that swelling below where the flower used to be is not an apple. It doesnt look like one, is doesnt taste like one, it doesnt have the sugar content, it doesnt contain ripe seeds.

It’s not an apple, we know what an apple is. And that swelling is not an apple.

And as hist first argument collapse, the rest follows.

Should God not insert a soul if He knows the baby will die at 5 days old? What about 20 days? What about 1 year? The fact is, we don;t know the ways of God and we don;t know exactly when He infuses a soul. therefore, we need to assume the worst.

As for the apple argument - the argument doesn’t rely on how an apple is gestated. It relied on weather you really know what a apple is. (depending on if you know the definition of is.)

 

[Digger71]

Should God not insert a soul if He knows the baby will die at 5 days old? What about 20 days? What about 1 year? The fact is, we don;t know the ways of God and we don;t know exactly when He infuses a soul. therefore, we need to assume the worst.

As for the apple argument - the argument doesn’t rely on how an apple is gestated. It relied on weather you really know what a apple is. (depending on if you know the definition of is.)

Your first response is worthy, and i accept that there could a cut off when the child first speaks, when they reach puberty, when they get married. Yes, it’s all possible. But none compare to the first breath. Which objectively separetes child from mother. And which avoids the issue of billions of souls made to be destroyed before birth.

Of the second issue, an apple isnt an apple until it’s an apple. An apple is a sweet, wholesome fruit, green.red in colour that will drop of a tree when it is ripe. Before that…it’s not an apple, it’s a bud, a swelling an unripe (meaing inedible to us) apple. And even then, the apple is for eating so the seeds can spread. The argument still holds no water, because before an apple is ripe for eating the seeds arent ready, so it serves no purpose. I am afraid the apple is an apple AFTER gestation.

that is why the argument is facile.

 

[cpayne]

If we’re going to talk about when God infuses the human soul (what is called the intellectual soul), we need to be clear about what a soul is. According to Aquinas (and generally accepted by the Church), the soul is the form of something developing, that which causes it ultimately to be the mature expression of what it is. Note it is the FORM, not necessarily the SHAPE. So the apple analogy is off a bit–even though we tend to think an apple is an apple when it looks like a mature expression of an apple, it actually is a developing apple from the beginning of its development. It has an apple “form,” even though it does not yet have an apple “shape.” The same is true of the developing human being. The conceptus does not become a human at “first breath” or “viability” or any other such functional ability. It is a human when its soul begins impelling its development toward its mature expression. In other words, the zygote is a human, but at the earliest stage of human development. Aquinas, following Aristotle, thought the human intellectual soul was infused when the embryo began to look human. However, as he himself admits, his information was empirical in nature, not metaphysical. If he had known about human DNA and the self-organizing ability of the zygote (current empirical knowledge), he doubtless would have pushed the infusion of the human soul back to conception.

 

[cpayne]

One more thing I left out of previous post: This is also why the Catholic Church was willing to change its scientific stance regarding the conceptus. The metaphysical principle remained the same–in other words, the conceptus is human when it is capable of receiving a human soul. What changed was the empirical information: Now we know the conceptus begins its actual human development at conception, with no “vegetative” or “animal” preliminaries, and so the metaphysical principle still applies–it’s just that the conceptus is capable of receiving the human soul at conception, since it is empirically / genetically human.

 

[dsb1808]

Of the second issue, an apple isnt an apple until it’s an apple. An apple is a sweet, wholesome fruit, green.red in colour that will drop of a tree when it is ripe. Before that…it’s not an apple, it’s a bud, a swelling an unripe (meaing inedible to us) apple. And even then, the apple is for eating so the seeds can spread. The argument still holds no water, because before an apple is ripe for eating the seeds arent ready, so it serves no purpose. I am afraid the apple is an apple AFTER gestation.

that is why the argument is facile.

Forgive the intrusion. Your discussion of the apple has confused me a bit.

(1) While it is true that an “apple isn’t an apple until it’s an apple”, if you mean simply that a = a (and that a = ~a is false). But you seem to mean that an apple isn’t an apple until it is fully formed, and that isn’t so obvious since it is not a simple identity statement.

(2) Sweet, red/yellow, ripe would be, at best, definition by property or cause but not an essential definition which would require a proximate genus and a specific difference.

(3) The properties you pick, especially when you mention “inedible to us” or “ripe for eating” (presumably by us), are not really properties of the apple itself but properties relative to us (what about “ripe for worms”?).

(4) When you say “it is not an apple, it’s a bud”, you later in the same sentence contradict yourself by saying it is an “unripe…apple”. The former denies the bud is an apple, the latter affirms it is an apple that has the property of being unripe. Rejecting the later phrase won’t help because it assumes the existence of a “bud”, a universal term assumed to be particular. The “bud” you speak of can only be an apple bud, or an apple at the bud-stage of its development (there are no “buds” in reality but only apple buds, etc.). Your use of the term is much like saying “it is a fetus and not a human”, which is troubling both as a matter of logic and as a moral matter. I don’t know if you intended that.

Thanks,

David

 

[Catholig]

As i said, I believe. It’s a faith position like any other. I give it as much weight as it deserves.

However, God, if omniscient, would be guilty of ‘murder’ by ensouling eggs that God knows will never settle in the womb, because the souls would never even have a chance of gestation. Perhaps this is different to willful termination of a fetus, but it essentially the same if a soul is present…no birth. This applies to all miscarriages as well.

Worse, if omniscience is present, then God knows that a fetus is to be aborted, so inserting a soul ppredestines the fetus no no earthly existance and makes murderers of the people involved. That’‘s pretty harsh on the fetus’ soul, if nor the aborters. But with a slighht re-arrangement it wouldnt hurt either.

Of course, not inserting a soul would mean denying the potential aborters the opportunity to avoid committing murder, after all, what is virtue without temptation? So it may be that souls are created to give potential parents the opportunity to avoid temptation. Which is again harsh on the created souls, but maybe they get recycled.

Oh, and if you read the website you linked to you would realise the argument is nonsense. An apple starts out as a pollen grain fertilizing a female. it isn’t big, green/red, juicy, sweet and good to eat, or indeed visible. It simply has the potential to be all those things. And if you look at an apple tree, it loses lots of apples as other ripen.

So, we know what an apple is, and that swelling below where the flower used to be is not an apple. It doesnt look like one, is doesnt taste like one, it doesnt have the sugar content, it doesnt contain ripe seeds.

It’s not an apple, we know what an apple is. And that swelling is not an apple.

And as hist first argument collapse, the rest follows.

Digger71,

Since the soul is created at conception (And “ensouled” because according to Thomas Aquinas the soul doesn’t exist before it is attached to a body - man being both soul and body in equal proportions.) a person exists - both body and soul. What happens to the soul after the body dies doesn’t change whether the person lives to be 100 years old, 1 year old, or even 1 day old. The soul isn’t “destroyed” or “waisted” because it didn’t fulfill some quota of time it is obliged to remain in the body; there is no such quota. The soul of an unborn child, indeed an embryo even, is treated like the soul of anyone else.

In fact the error caused by the belief that the soul exists either before the body is created or the body before the soul is created reeks more havoc on Christian/Catholic Theology, IMHO, than the idea that god creates a soul that remained in the body only briefly. For instance if you believe that the soul exists before the body, according to Aquinas, you have to question why it would be drawn a body after so long a time without one. And also to my understanding it would mean that there is no difference between the Angels and our metaphysical soul. Also it’d raise the interesting question of whether a body - a human body - can exist w/o a soul. In short it overemphasizes the soul above the body - an abomination I believe Aquinas called it. On the other hand if you believe that the body exists before the soul you’d fall into a different trap. It would mean that man is more animal than soul.

As for the souls creation, and the persons existance in the womb to say that its sole purpose is to tempt someone to either commit homicide or not to that is simply devaluing a person. God loves his creations - why then would he have them demeaned to be nothing but a hinderance to someone’s spiritual developement or a test? It’s really a sad thought

Concerning the comment you made about the recycling of souls - again just because the soul didn’t fulfill some quota doesn’t mean that it is “different” than any other soul. We don’t believe in re-incarnation. The soul will be judged as any other.

Hope this helps,

Catholig