Dear platypus1900,

One of the good things about humanist morality is that is not eternal and unchanging. It deals with the world as it is.

Actually religious morality is the same. Although it claims to be eternal it changes with the times. It just takes a while longer to change. It is also not absolute. You support capital punishment. Other Christians are against it. If Christian morality were absolute all Christians would be like-minded.

In nineteenth century US before the Civil War the Southern Baptists split off from the other Baptists. They supported slavery and justified it from the Bible. Other Christians such as William Wilberforce and John Brown were very opposed to slavery. During the Civil Rights era when black people in the US were struggling to get equal treatment and eliminate segregation most Southern Baptists supported segregation. Now that most of the racist laws in the US have been eliminated Southern Baptists mainly accept that. Their eternal morality has been changed to accept the current situation.

Humanist morality is more straightforward in claiming to be neither absolute nor eternal. Some humanists claim there can be an objective morality. I don’t.

Dear Banjo,

I think a woman should not be forced to carry on an unwanted pregnancy at any stage. A 24 week old fetus may be kept alive. However, most will be defective children due to early termination of pregnancy.

Dear George,

As a child I was given the Bible unvarnished without cutesy pix of animals going into the ark 2X2. You are right. A lot of the Bible is not fit for children. I don’t think the nauseous Abraham/Isaac story is fit for adults either.

Religion operates on different levels. A friend was a pastor at a Lutheran church. He told me of the sophisticated discussions at St. Olaf’s Seminary where they questioned the origin of the Bible, the historical reality of Jesus and many other contentious subjects. I asked him if he discussed these matters with his parishioners. He said he didn’t want to disturb their simple faith. That kind of religion exalts ignorance and stupidity.

@banjo
hi...life begins at conception
any abortion at any time is murder
let us not go down that slippery path

@poirot
when a life is taken in cold murder, the murderer deserves to die
isnt that simple?
i would have thought you can figure that out yourself... of course you need not subscribe to my convictions

now, you are not responding to me on abortion
you fought tooth and nail for the preservation of the life of a convicted murderer but will not stand up for the innocent life of an unborn

@onthebeach
i do not see a single sentence in your entire post about the life of the unborn
to you, it is a convenient mass of cells
how convenient to a young woman's lifestyle...economic situation etc etc
if she is not married, she has no business having unprotected sex in the first place
if she is married, one child is not one child too much...not in australia where the society will help you support the child
if you are married and have enough children, go for more permanent protection

i believe God will hold us all accountable as a country on the way we kill our unborn

@david
i missed the portion on the Olaff's
to a comment like that, i can cite you just as many serious theologians who continues to ask, to search in humility
if they are what your friends portrayed to you, or you portrayed his words to your convenience, they are not a humble lot then

ignorant and stupid?
that is your view of believers in God
how sad
i assure you Christians take their faith seriously
they do study the Word themselves and do not swallow everything the pastor teaches
they are good Bereans

God's ways are not our ways
How in the world can a 4D creature like us fathom the ways and the mind of the dimensionless eternal God?

David, if you are serious about such matters, go youtube some of the teachings and explanations by the finest theologians of our day.

a. John Macarthur
b. John Piper
c. Ravi Zacharias just to name a few

Let us stay on the topic under discussion... the murder of the unborn child by its mother.
yes murder (not a colored word..it is the right word)
killing with premeditated intention is MURDER
it is legal but that does not make it morally right, not in the eyes of God.

George,

Your post to david f reminds me of the hypnotic bait and switch tactic.

In your first paragraph, you mention the Abraham and Isaac story’s unsuitability for children by rightly referring to it as “shocking”:

<<He said something like these things should not be told children. I later found out that there were many shocking passages in the Bible… but this one is particularly unsuitable for a child’s mind.>>

But then you go straight on to talk about a child’s ability or inability to understand the meaning of the story - without the slightest hint of a transition statement - as if it had anything to do with the shockingness of it:

<<…we had an old physics teacher who argued strongly against Einstein’s relativity theory. When I asked my father his opinion, he reacted similarly: Einstein’s relativity theory is not something that can be grasped - including the arguments for and against - by a twelve years old.>>

Furthermore, this is a false analogy fallacy on two levels: firstly, the shockingness (or immorality, as david f was actually referring to) of the Abraham and Isaac story isn’t negated by an adult understanding of it, as misunderstandings Einstein’s theory of relativity would be when one becomes educated in the relevant fields; secondly, shockingness is a reason why one must not tell the story of Abraham and Isaac to a child, whereas there is no reason why one must not try to explain the theory of relativity to a child.

Anyway, whether or not the story of Abraham and Isaac should be told to children is irrelevant. The problem is that it is a story of astonishing immorality. It doesn’t matter that God knew he would stop Abraham (especially when one also considers the story of Jephthah, but I digress). The bottom line is that Abraham was willing to obey and felt that it was his moral obligation to do so just because God asked it of him. In Abraham’s mind, it was within the moral character of God to ask of such a thing.

platypus1900,

What you missed in my reply is concern that, through some foolhardy, short-sighted, politically convenient government policies:

- young women are delaying pregnancy past their intended time, the best years for them to have and raise their children;

- delays that disadvantage and harm them in various ways including not having the children they wanted, having a higher likelihood (age of mother) of birth and foetus problems and adding to costs of health care; and

- fragmented government policy contributes to much higher than expected (or reasonable) number of terminations because young couples are continually beset by unanticipated changes that de-stabilise and challenge their employment status and financial viability.

That is a bit garbled, nonetheless it should underline the urgent need to research the reasons for terminations and age groups affected.

I do not oppose abortion, but I am concerned that government policy and lack of planning are increasing the number and seriously so. While the war between the pros and antis dominates the debate, social changes are being wrought that are disadvantaging young couple now and will continue to do so in the future.

To be blunt, government is continually putting young couples in the sad situation where they must abort, even where the pregnancy was planned.

Dear platypus1900,

You wrote: i believe God will hold us all accountable as a country on the way we kill our unborn,

Can you cite any verifiable evidence of God holding anybody accountable for anything?

The above is group guilt. By that standard you are also guilty because you live in this country. That is an obnoxious idea – guilt not for what you have done, but because you belong to a group.

During WW2 my cousin farewelled her boy friend who was going overseas. Shortly after she found she was pregnant. Her boy friend was killed in action shortly after he left. She committed suicide and was a beautiful corpse.

If she had had access to abortion there would have been one life lost rather than two. I am glad that women in her situation now have that access.

I am against capital punishment for murder. It is merely the state killing a human being. The Nazis committed mass murder. After the war the victors brought the vanquished to trial and hung some of them. It brought none of the victims back to life. The victors had also committed crimes. The Katyn massacre had been carried out by the Soviet. The bombing of Nagasaki (One might find justification for Hiroshima.) and Dresden had been carried out by the Americans and English. Victors don’t get tried for war crimes. That points out one thing that is wrong with the death penalty. I don’t think it can be applied fairly. If one is a victor in war, rich, belong to a favoured group etc. the chance of receiving the death penalty is less than one who doesn’t belong to such a group. My sense of morality tells me the death penalty is immoral. I was a juror in a murder trial. I voted to find the man guilty since the evidence showed it. The death penalty was not at issue. I feel if I had been subjected to the same pressures that he had I would have done the same thing.