Christianity in the United States appears to have some seemingly messed up stigmas concerning sex, left over from the Puritan nut cases who escaped to here from Europe.
From the abject horror of being exposed to women’s nipples, right down to the hellish fear of seeing anything below the belt, the American Christian should be an endangered species. After all, no child is born believing in God, they have to be taught to do so. Hence, aside from adult converts, Christianity depends on familial population increases. The Catholic and Mormon variants certainly strive for this goal.
So, perhaps their workshops and publications, preaching the sins and dangers of pornography, are simply steps to ensure that no sperm is wasted in the grand design of Christian population expansion. Their unwavering support for (Christian) adoption is certainly related. Even the advent of circumcision as the norm in the United States, is based more on Christian attempts to reduce the potential for masturbation, than any health benefits. Frankly, all the evidence seems to point that there are no health benefits to circumcision, in spite of the old school medical beliefs.
Whether it is admitted or not, the loss of potential flock is the main portion of the reason that many Christians get so upset over the subject of porn, taken hand-in-hand with masturbation. Sex is evil, unless it is used to make more Christians. (This is their hidden fear over same-sex marriage and a slew of other related topics. Christians like to spout off over the “sanctity of marriage,” as if they invented it. Hint: they didn’t.)
This is also the root of their fear of abortion. Articles like Zygotes and Embryos are People stress that such cells are fully a human being, because the human soul is present from the moment of conception. They hence equate an abortion with murder, and heap upon that zygote their unjustified fear for its immortal soul. Some go so far as to claim the same sin when using birth control. They base these ideas completely on their holy text, ignoring science. They have to ignore science, because science can’t find evidence for a soul, let alone God – and a clump of snot is more complex biologically than a zygote.
The debate ultimately boils down to those who would protect a fertilized cell due to unsupported conjecture, taken from ancient, anonymous writings; against those who attempt to understand the biological nature of the situation and make moral judgment based on actual capability of the organism to a given stage of development.
This deadlock leads to some rather pointless arguments. As an example, the famous argument of, “You could be preventing the next Einstein!” Usually countered with, “…or the next Hitler.” Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Either is completely unsupported speculation, with no method of determining likelihood. The argument is stupid and unproductive.
The real argument at hand, is a pointed question for the Christians; “What makes you think that your beliefs, utterly devoid of evidentness, are even worth contemplation?” The simple fact of the matter is, without objective, scientific merit; basing legality of abortion on the Christian argument is a violation of the First Amendment, as it embroils religion with the state. This is the crux of “Roe vs. Wade.”
Personally, I have a follow up question, in our over-populated world, “Why do you insist on breeding?” Once the selfish reasons for the process are exposed, the Christian breeding dogma becomes a bit ugly. “Breed to succeed,” is not an enlightened stance.
When the anti-abortionist’s argument boils down to, “the zygote has a soul!” the stance is without substance from the beginning. Prove that the soul exists, then we’ll talk. Christians don’t even have the tiniest shred of evidence for the existence of the human soul, but they have a whole dogma of beliefs surrounding it, beliefs that they are more than willing to force unto others. The abortion debate is more about Christians pushing their beliefs unto others, than any real concern over the people involved in these heart wrenching decisions.
So, the abortion debate will continue as long as intangible bullshit is allowed to have say in legal decisions.
Tags: abortion, christianity, history, Religion
Naughty O!
You should actually read the writings of responsible Christians. Prohibitions of porn and masturbation have no corellation with an alleged desire to raise more Christians.
In general terms, Catholics are encouraged to be generous in their family size, yes, but not beyond what is responsible for that particular family. The reason to encourage generosity is that a new person is a good, indeed an immortal good.
I can understand your cynicism, but it’s off base.
Everyone tries to spread their beliefs – you shouldn’t fault Christians or other religious believers for doing so, as long as their weapons of choice are persuasion and prayer, rather than, let’s say, the scimitar.
As for the article you linked, I think it was intended to convince Catholics that they are bound to believe that the human soul is infused at conception, and not as a general argument against abortion per se. I am not at all convinced that he is correct in his reasoning there. The Church has never attempted to fix the point at which a soul is infused.
However, the Church does make the biologically correct statement that at the moment of conception, an individual, unique human being comes into existence. This human being may not be intentionally killed, regardless of arguments about the timing of the human soul.
Even an atheist could agree (and some do) that the killing of a biological human being should not be allowed, never mind any arguments about the soul, which an agnostic may not need to concern themselves with.
The alternative is some variant of the “stage of mental development” criteria, which is all very subjective and which no two people really seem to agree upon. After all, if a 1 month old or even 1 year old baby is not allowed to be killed, then based on this criteria, surely there are many animals whose rights should be protected by law.
The fact is, from conception to birth to our shriveled up final doom, they are all various stages in human development. If my mother aborted me in 1964, she would have killed “me” as surely as if someone shot me in a psycho rampage today.
So, no intangible bullshit from me today, O. I do agree that Christians should not construct arguments against abortion based on the human soul. It is not necessary and indeed counterproductive.
This is not a biologically correct statement. At the moment of conception, a zygote comes into existence. It’s not even close to being a fetus yet. A zygote can do many things, including splitting in two or more and making twins, triplets, etc. So, making the claim that the moment of conception an unique human being comes into existence is disingenuous even at face value. It has the potential to be a handful of people.
A zygote is a single cell with mixed DNA from two individuals. That’s it. A fetus is much more. This is where the debate falls: when is this biological mass a human? Biologically speaking, I don’t know that we’re ever going to decide on a clear cut line when fetal development is involved, but a single cell, or a cluster of cells with no human attributes other than a chemical strand of genes? That’s just a mass of cells. There isn’t even any defined differential cell structure for some time. I can scrape skin cells off of my arm which are just as genetically human as any zygote, but we don’t call that a human being.
This is unfortunately a straw-man argument. If a 2,000 lbs. meteorite struck your great grandfather before he met your great grandmother, you would have been “killed” in the same argumentative manner.
Killing a potential is not the same as killing an existent sentient life. A small clump of cells is not a human – it is a potential to be a human. A fetus, with a central nervous system…I’d say that’s human, but others are going to debate that point.
From zygote, up to but not including fetal development, in order to view this tiny, unformed mass of cells as anything more than just a mass of cells; you have to attribute some non-empirical properties to that mass.
So, since you currently represent the only Catholic viewpoint here (and probably the only Christian one), what is the property of a small cluster of cells that makes it a human? If it is not the spiritual concept of the soul, what is it?
OK, a zygote is biologically and genetically a unique being compared to its mother and father. Sperm and eggs on their own, not to mention skin cells, etc. cannot grow into anything other than what they already are. A zygote can, and does, naturally. This is what separates it from your standard “mass of cells.” What type of being is it biologically? Human. Conception is the time when this being comes into existence – it simply grows into progressively more complex stages after that.
I grant the point that sometimes a zygote can split and it may end up being MORE than one human being. I’m not sure that helps your argument any. At any rate, at minimum, we can say that the zygote MAY be or is LIKELY to be a unique human being, and that alone would protect it from harm – for the same reason that we can’t shoot at some rustling bush in the woods if there is any doubt that it might be a human being behind that bush.
As for your exciting example of a meteorite hitting great gramps, that would not have killed me. It would have had the effect of preventing me from ever existing, yes, but that’s a different thing entirely.
The zygote (or successive stages before “fetushood” is reached) are not yet sentient, no doubt. But as I argued in my original post, sentience is a rather subjective and ethereal concept in itself. The zygote, blastocyst, etc. are, however, stages in the development of a human being.
Your final question – what is the property of a small cluster of cells that makes it a human? If it is not the spiritual concept of the soul, what is it?
Basically the same as what I said above. Simply that it is genetically human in an early stage of development, which simply needs shelter and nutrition to grow into progressive stages. This would separate it from, say, a chicken which is in an early stage of development but which is not genetically human. It would also separate it from some scraped skin cells which are genetically human cells, but not, as an entity, a stage of development of some human being.
You can delete the previous two posts, which expose me as an XHTML idiot and a poor typist respectively.
I would argue that there is no ethereal concept of sentience when there is no central nervous system. For me, that’s good enough to differentiate between a cluster of cells with a potential of being human and a human.
Differences in viewpoint like this are going to be the major stumbling block that will keep this debate heated for the next 100 years. Once we can clone people from a single cell – any cell – the waters are going to be further muddied. I recommend Blade Runner as a layman’s introduction for that mess to come. (Personally, I think Deckard was a Replicant as well…)
A clump of boogers, when placed in a vagina and rigged up to a placenta, cannot grow a brain.
That’s not what I’m saying, Er. I stated that it is more biologically complex, not that it was designed to develop into a human being – establishing that mere biological complexity does not an organism make. In essence, your point is pointless and certainly hasn’t address the primary issue at hand, that is the question of when in the fetal development is a human a human.