Preventing conception is vastly different than destroying life once conception takes place.
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Preventing pregnancy is not the same as ending one.
Abortion stops life. Birth control prevents life.
Contraception, by definition, is merely the opposite of conception. It is not the use of contraception that is wrong or right. Abortion is taking a life already conceived.
Taking a life is not what God values.
Birth control "prevents" pregnancy, it doesn't end it.
It's too early for this Pious...yawn-
We can now use any cells - like a nose cell - to extract it's DNA and use it to fertilize a human egg cell. If you scratch your nose - you're aborting potential life - depending on how far back you go to define human life. Women often lose fertilized human egg cells without even their knowledge - during menses. Are they guilty of abortion? Speaking of guilt - is a blastocyst -about 120 undifferentiated cells - a human being. - or is it - a blastocyst? Religions have historically had no problem accusing women of being witches and burning the alive, right in front if their children. No problem instigating genocides - they're even in the Bible. No problem with genital mutilation of children. No problem with murderous conquest for land acquisition by the Church. No problem dictating to women what they can and can't do with their own bodies. But when it comes to those 120 undifferentiated cells - all hell breaks lose. It's amazing that those cells are so valueable to a large portion of the sane people that are pro-war and pro-death penalty. They see no contradiction in these deeply held convictions. But then again - they advocate un-researched historicity of their holy books and spend an enormous effort lying to their children about things they can't possibly know.
I do not think your position is anything but a vanishingly small minority, powerless due to hostility and intolerance.
I wish you a good day, and you are free from my criticism, as I save that for serious argument.
The first general command from God was to fill the earth and multiply, and to subdue the earth. (Bereshith or Genesis 1:28 and 9:1). The command is given to Adam, and again to Noah after the flood. It has never been revoked. This is one source of the objection to artificial methods of avoiding birth.
Others have commented that the moral implications of murder take abortion to a new level of ethical concern, but you are right that both abortion and birth control as well as homosexuality interfere with the normal filling of the earth as required by God. If practiced to an extreme, it results in population crisis.
God also gives Government as a method for promoting the good of man as well as helping him keep the commands of God. The necessity of Government is because of the sin nature of man, because we can exceed our limits and murder, as with Cain and Abel. When government murders it's citizens (as is happening in Syria) it is a great evil and against the reason for Government. When It sanctions the murder of the unborn, the ones among us most vulnerable and with the least protections, it is also doing an evil. The argument for abortion on the other side is that government has no right to invade private decisions; this says effecively we have the right to decide to murder people privately. The question then becomes "at what age do fertilized cells become a person with civil rights?" The Supreme Court is tending toward a viability standard, making this approx 20 weeks.
The problem with atheism is the lack of a standard. I have yet to find an atheist that says there are moral standards that are universal-- they all seem to say it's relative. So it's ok to murder in some circumstances and not in others. Ok to steal from some and not from others. This is no morality, it is self-justification.
Sin is derived from not keeping to the standards. It's in the genes because man is a moral being, the only ethical actor known. Whatever makes us ethical, makes us potentially unethical.
Jihad against the west is not shared by the vast majority of islam-- it is an odd self-justifying of a desire to wage cultural war. Some even within Islam call it an unethical war. A reaction to western culture, to America as a sole superpower? Perhaps. But Islam is challenged by the current worldview of atheism much more than by Christianity or Judaism. We are people of the Book and share much in common.
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Thus, to an atheist, a nazi standard of morals makes sense in a nazi tribe, a headhunter may be perfectly moral within his tribe when shrinking heads, and so on. Most people reject this. By atheists not having a universal morality, any laws based on a nonexistent universal morality are also forbidden. Taken reductio ad absurdum, international law is an aberration, anomaly, and uninforcable.
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It just doesn't hold water logically, and i think it reverses cause-effect. We have universal morality because man is a moral being: everywhere, always, and perhaps genetically. If it were not so, we would have at least some examples of societies without laws. But all societies have laws, reflecting the fact we are a moral being. Atheists make a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument: we get morals from society. But I argue that all men are moral, therefore societies are moral; we don't develop morals from society, but the reverse: society is woven from man's individual moral laws, possibly a genetic artifact.Certainly it's within all men, with the possible exception of sociopaths (who know the laws well enough to fake them when being watched, but who will break them when convenient).
Its a good question, with evidence on both sides, and you can find lots to help you become familiar with it. Here is a good discussion for background from the atheist viewpoint: http://atheism.about.com/od/atheismmyths/p/AtheistsMorals.htm
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Austin Cline says these are myths, and perhaps they are, but he apparently cannot decide where the basis for morality comes from, nor does he explain why an atheists morals often look exactly like 6-7 of the 10 commandments. If they are myths, they are widely held.
1) I believe in universal morality that killing, lying, stealing, rape, etc are wrong. But my understanding of morality doesn't necessarily affect a rain forest tribe. You will remember that our society once accepted eye for an eye, which we don't now. Why? Because we came to know through countless centuries that an eye for an eye would only leave the whole world blind. It's the same for people of all times, sage and tribes. The more people gets civilized, the more his moral standards improves upon.
2) Morality needs not to come from a magical being. I tend to believe that human are moral beings by default. Only if they choose to be. Again, society dictates it mostly.
3) Honest man is he, who is honest despite being seen or observed. Those who are good, only because they were watched or commanded from the high, are neither good, nor moral.
4) The ten commandments y not be myth, but the way of receiving them is certainly an imposition. Again, if I may remind you, ten commandments became ten commandments long after they existed. The Egyptian code of law or the Hindu scriptures contained those laws thousands of years before Moses gave it. It is very well founded to conclude that Moses forged them from his experience as a captive in Egypt. So, if man practiced those laws thousands of years before ten commandments came to exist, that proves that these are not the foundation of morality.
I'd like to recommend you to read this article: "Do Atheists Need a Moral Theory to be Moral Realists"? (2012) by Jason Thibodeau to get a more clear picture of atheist view of morality. You can also read David Hume on this subject.
Secondly, you are describing moral development, a truth within all religions. Even atheists show moral development.
The prohibitions (thou shalt not) are actually derived from the sole moral: "love your neighbor as yourself." if one loves his neighbor he will not lie, cheat, steal, murder.
The Jews developed a complex code and dietary restrictions to keep them distinct from other tribes and nations. This is because the Messiah is to come from the Jews, and for the Jews, and they are to not blend in with other tribes. The morals behind this are obscure, but are distinct to them. Christians are to be distinct too, but not by dietary rules. They are to be distinct by the love they have for God and Jesus.
Thanks for the suggested reading. I will google and review.
The author posits rightness based on a command by God either a priori or a posteriori. No appeal to natural morality (a la Locke) is made. This is not as most Theists explain rightness, so a bit of a straw dog-- he is saying things we don't say, and says its what we say then argues against it.
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Theists say moral standards are set by God, but exist independent of the commands. In other words, we know something is wrong not based on commands, but by the "internal law." It's confirmed by law, made visible, etc. But it's a law written in our hearts.
The commands codify and put to word what we already know within our hearts. Therefore, the law written is a reflection of the law of the conscience, which is a product of creation or possibly genetics.
2. Rightness is defined by being in agreement with what God says about something. It is admittedly arbitrary, and we make no apologies about it. Thibedeux dislikes arbitrary morals, and i do also; however, i admit there may be a certain measure of apparent arbitrary nature to theological morals. The author argues against arbitrary laws, but it is patently obvious that our parents are/were arbitrary at times, and made rules that may have made little sense but which we were bound to obey. It did not necessarily make them right, it meant we were required to be obedient. Parents are sometimes arbitrary as they adapt to changing, challenging, maturing children.
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Natural law seeks a common ground for morality between atheists and theists. Thomas Merton, in New Seeds of Contemplation provides a very straightforward definition of the natural law:
"? the natural law is simply that we should recognize in every other human being the same nature, the same needs, the same rightsAt the heart of the world?s problems is a break from natural law. Abortion is such a scourge because an entire class of human beings?those in the womb?are treated as something other than human by people who seem to have forgotten their own origins in the womb. And how often do people in our society treat others as objects from which to derive sexual pleasures. Every kind of abuse, crime, exploitation, persecution, and enslavement derive from disregard for the natural law.
Preventing pregnancy is certainly preferable to killing already forming children. If there werent so many unwanted pregnancies thered be a lot fewer abortions and a lot less child abuse.
They can't. The ones you refer to are hypocrites.
But we must make a slight distinction between cognitive dissonance and hypocrisy. If I believe smoking is bad for me, yet smoke, that is cognitive dissonance. If I believe smoking is bad, and forbid YOU to smoke while smoking myself, that's hypocrisy.
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The Catholic Church's stance on contraception is principled but impractical. Most Catholics practice some form of birth control, and even Catholics allow for the Rhythm method, so birth control (of a natural kind) is permitted in Catholicism. If one allows for one method, then other methods that accomplish the same net effect without harm to a fetus are ethically identical. The argument then becomes one of titration: which method is least evil or is best, without going overboard.
Preventing creating a life that you aren't ready for is not remotely the same as taking a life away. Prevention doesn't end a life. something has to start to be ending.
Aren't most churches against using birth control, I know they are against abortion. To me it should be the same.
Abortion/prevention is a choice made by the 2 people involved.
Contraception (the preventing of a life not preventing a birth) is practiced even by Catholics; almost all churches allow to some form of it.
The Catholics are stuck in a spot: one form of contraception (rhythm method) is allowable, and more artificial methods are not; it's because they find any method that does not allow for the possibility of pregnancy to be unethical, a position that clunks when it walks. I understand it, but it is unconvincing.
One is murder, the other prevention of conception and not murder.
We believe that men and women today deserve rights based on religion, race, etc. that goes for unborn men and women too. Give them life.
There is increasing awareness among pharmacists, physicians, and other health care providers, that chemical "contraceptives" are really abortifacients, that is, instead of preventing conception, they end (kill) a life that has already begun. Jenn Giroux, a former R.N., has written much on the subject; and www.prolifepharmacy.com, or .org, not sure which, has links to different articles, etc., about it. I hope this helps. Good question!
Frank