Need Assistance with an Abortion debate

  • Thread starter Thread starter NewCatholic1207
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
N

NewCatholic1207

Guest
Below is a conversation I am having with an atheist on abortion. He keeps throwing the “God murdered innocent children in the Old Testament” thing at me and I would like some assistance in answering his last post.
Non-Believing Atheist
I know you’ve been busy, but you skipped over a question I had for you. Since abortion is killing a human being as you say, and we call that murder in this country, are women/doctors who have/perform abortions guilty of murder? Should abortion be criminalized, and if it is killing an innocent person as you say, should that crime be murder?

Me
Sorry if I skipped anything, I’ve been jumping in and out of FB when I have a chance…

In answer to your question lets establish several points.
  1. Roe v. Wade IS law.
  2. Scott v. Sanford WAS law… See More
  3. All law is not correct OR just.
This I have illustrated several times in our conversations with (#2) the Scott v. Sanford Supreme Court case (The Dred Scott Decision). And by the fact that slavery WAS law as well. (Something both you and James have never addressed)

I would hope you would not agree that human slavery was a good thing and should be legal.

My point? Unjust laws should be resisted and changed. The killing of innocent, defenseless children is no less abhorrent than human slavery. Both were at one point legal in this country. One is no longer legal.
Dred Scott was one of foundational causes that led us to civil war to resolve the issue.

I think the answers to your questions are self-evident.
Murder is defined as, “killing a person especially with malice aforethought”. I would say that regardless of the current state of the “law” that, yes, abortion IS murder. Just as regardless of the state of the law in antebellum America, slavery was just as wrong.

Should abortion be criminalized? Put simply… Yes. Ironically, (here comes another point I’ve made countless times before) killing a pregnant woman would result in two counts of murder, that same woman aborting that same baby is legal! Where is the logic in that? No logic, no morality.

And here’s a great tie-in, (made this point before too) the founder of Planned-Parenthood, Margaret Sanger’s main goal in establishing that organization was eugenics. She wanted to reduce or eliminate black populations. She referred to blacks as, “…human weeds,’ ‘reckless breeders,’ 'spawning… human beings who never should have been born.” Hmmmmmmmm…

And now is should be a “right” to kill our own children?

Non-Believing Atheist
I agree that the laws of the land don’t necessarily reflect the highest moral order, nor necessarily intend to. There is a difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. This relativity can be seen in your own scriptures. Yahweh, for example, used incest to populate the human race, only to deem it a crime by divine fiat later. More on topic, Yahweh murdered many “innocent children” as an exercise in power. If killing children is wrong as a moral absolute, then Yahweh has committed an absolute, moral wrong. The biblical scriptures also placed more moral injustice against homosexuality than it did slavery, which of course we now know to be the complete opposite.

I’m not sure killing a pregnant woman would always count as a double murder, although I agree that this does seem to be contradictory to the pro-choice cause. My guess is that there are many details and legal nuances that would lead to such a conviction (and vary state to state). If a pregnant woman got murdered on her way to the abortion clinic, do you think the murderer would be charged with two counts or one?

You say abortion should be criminalized, but you don’t say how. The logical conclusion of your position is that any abortion should result in a murder trial. This of course would open up the doors to all kinds of legal complications, such as charging people with “accessory to murder” if they assisted a person getting an abortion in any way. Furthermore, to accept your position introduces new legal considerations on the other end. Should a pregnant woman be able to ride in the HOV lane by herself (but carrying child) and not get a ticket (there’s two persons in the car)?.. See More

My guess is that to avoid these moral/legal conflicts there will have to be an amendment of the language being used. In fact, it is the hermeneutic of this discussion that seems to be the crux. “Murdering an innocent child” and “terminating a pregnancy” in the minds of millions of people does NOT mean the same thing. The question is: why? Do you really believe it’s because people are evil or immoral or malicious or spiritually dead?
 
I know, but his point that I’m trying to refute is that there is no moral consistency in the Bible so why do I care if a woman aborts her baby.

Thanks for the link. I will check it out.
 
God kills people every day, every instant, probably. But God is God, with the ability to see what is truly best for each person. The reason we cannot kill is because it is not our purview to decide people’s fates; we cannot see beyond a few moments, let alone into eternity, as we believe God can. Let’s think of this another way–God can bring people back to life. Maybe God brought every child He “killed” in the Old Testament back to life. Or, more likely, He gave them something much more valuable than living. We have none of these abilities. It would not change my beliefs if I watched God kill, in cold blood, a saint. For no apparent reason. Because He is God, and by definition, His ways are not my ways.
 
BTW, the reason that more people don’t see abortion as murder is that they don’t see the fetus as a child. That’s pretty simple. Are they spiritually bankrupt or evil for believing that? No, but they are mistaken. Was everyone who backed eugenics or slavery or segregation morally wrong or evil? Of course not–some were, but most were just mistaken.

Also, his supposed “legal” arguments are nonstarters. Rest assured that if everyone agreed a fetus was a person, all of these issues would be nearly instantly resolved. And, of course, even if there were extreme difficulties in enforcing abortion laws and delineating between legal person and baby-in-womb, if it really is a person, it is all obviously worth the effort. The legal system deals with infinitely more difficult issues every day.
 
NewCatholic1207 said:
I know, but his point that I’m trying to refute is that there is no moral consistency in the Bible so why do I care if a woman aborts her baby.

Thanks for the link. I will check it out.
Click to expand...
Can you give us some examples of where God kills innocent children in the Old Testament?
 
I realize your question is about the moral consitancy of the bible, and it is morally consitant (the athiest is subltly changing the subject on you, probalby trying to plant athiestic seeds in your mind). What you need to answer this question is solid scripture study, for more immidate help, I would check out apologetics resources (catholic) on Salvation. For a good primer, I’d point you to www.biblechristiansociety.com, run by John Martinoni a great Catholic apologist. Another great site is www.catholic-convert.com, run by Steve Ray a former Evangelical and also google up Dr. Scott Hahn.

Moving on, my best advice for debating “pro-death” proponents is to leave religion out of the conversation. You don’t know who you’re debating, chances are fairly decent (as you’ve discovered) you’re debating an Athiest and they’ll try their best to attack your faith. You don’t need faith to argue the pro-life issue, the merets of the argument are strong enough that it’s easly proven with out turning to the bible.

If you get real good, you can do exactly what this guy is doing and subtly plant pro-God messages into your arguments. Get them to start questioning their Athiesim.
 
I agree with what everyone has said. I would just like to add that you might want to point out that as he/she doesn’t believe in God, his/her argument is really theoretical to a huge degree.

I mean, if a God who doesn’t exist murdered a bunch of children in a book of mythology, what does that have to do with real mothers murdering their own babies before they are born? The atheist is trying to argue about Scripture, which he/she doesn’t believe in. Why? Because arguments from “reality” really go the pro-life way?

Why should it be OK to kill a person (genetically!) because of where they are located (in the womb) or what size they are (pretty small) or what age they are (pretty young)? Would it be OK to kill all 30-year-olds in say, Kentucky, who are less than 5 feet tall? (I like reductio ad absurdum. 😃 )

It’s not that the argument about Scripture is unanswerable (there are some good answers in this thread), it’s just that it’s inappropriate to have the argument as part of a pro-life discussion with an atheist. Come back to this question when you are debating abortion with a Methodist or something. 🙂 Or when you are debating the existence of God with an atheist.

I would advise against mixing them up, because even if you prove the moral consistency of the Bible, you haven’t gotten anywhere in the pro-life argument because the atheist can just scoop up all your hard work and throw it away by saying, “Well that doesn’t matter anyway since all religion is superstition,” or something.

Best of luck!

–Jen
 
kage_ar said:
One does not have to believe in God in order to know it is wrong to kill another person.
Click to expand...
Perhaps, but if one DENIES the existence of God or any higher power outright, he or she has little basis from which to establish that anything is right or wrong. As Kant said, all morality presupposes the existence of a higher power. Without the higher power, there is no morality, and killing is only wrong insofar as it feels wrong, is bad for society, is unpleasant, etc.

Not to get too far off topic, however…
 
estesbob said:
Can you give us some examples of where God kills innocent children in the Old Testament?
Click to expand...
Flooding the world, the first Passover, the destruction of the Canaanites… but again, see my post above. It is simply a contradiction in terms to say that our God was wrong in whatever He does, even killing children. At whatever point the OP argued that killing children is an absolute wrong, he or she was incorrect.
 
Have you found any answers?

I would just point out that according to the OT, God occasionally killed/smote adults, as well. Does this mean that we should advocate the killing of adults?

Also - and this is just my personal possible explanation of all the killing/smiting - I believe it could have been a cultural matter of that time. Did God seek out to kill those with the flood, or did God just allow it to happen, and it was interpreted as punishment for sin by the people? Just a thought - and I hope not a disrespectful one! 😊

I definitely agree with the previous posters that he is trying to plant atheistic seeds in your mind. For him, this is less about abortion and more about trying to prove your faith wrong.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top