Dear Josephus,

Whatever the culture of the past was it is an ugly story in the light of the world we have today. Much of the Bible is obsolete superstition.

I remember my reaction to that story as a child, and I don't think it is good to subject children to it as something they should believe. The Bible stories are myths which people at one time believed. We should tell children about it in the same manner that we tell them about the Greek myths.

You are trying to change the story. He accepted the command. He did not change his mind. He was given an alternative which he accepted. The evil man still should have refused in the first place. It remains an ugly story. Defiance was called for not obedience.

I see no reason to give anyone a break who is motivated by superstition to murder his child.

Paul wrote:

"The one thing that all religions have in common is the requirement that devotees must have a blind faith in a god(s)...."

Dear Paul,

Buddhism does not even postulate the existence of a God. Unitarians leave the question open. Humanistic Judaism denies the existence of a deity.

Unfortunately you applied to all religions something that is only true about some religions.

Josephus,

Of course there are differences between abortions and caesarians. You seem to have missed a more subtle point. That being that the main issue surrounding abortion is bodily autonomy, not the killing of an unborn child, a human baby who would otherwise grow up to one day enjoy the same dreams and aspirations that the rest of us enjoy.

You see what I did there? I’m happy to go along with the emotive language of anti-abortionists because it changes nothing.

If your infanticidal god doesn’t like abortions (as Christians assume he doesn’t), then he should have come up with a different design. It is not our fault that he cocked up. Perhaps humans could have laid eggs instead? That would have come with the added bonus of contradicting evolution too. As it stands, we have been forced to choose between the lesser of the two evils - allowing the slaughter of millions of unborn human children, so innocent and sweet, with their ten little fingers and their ten little toes, and their gorgeous little heart beats; over forcing women to continue with pregnancies they don’t want, or seek backyard abortions.

But some Christians and even some conservative atheists will never accept this because an anti-abortion stance has become the last bastion for controlling women in a world where doing so overtly is no longer socially acceptable.

Is Mise,

No I never said that.

<<However in your book the fetus is not a person therefore your contention does not apply.>>

In fact, I have gone to great pains to say that it doesn't matter what it is, so I don’t know where you get this from.

<<You don't think that the fetus is a child if the head is visible, what about a breech birth?>>

No, I never said anything like that either. You need to read my post again.

<<Would it be still abortion to stab upwards before the head emerged how about a cesarian; would it still be abortion to kill the fetus when it is visible but still within the mother's body?>>

In my opinion, that would depend on whether or not the unborn child was viable outside the mother’s body. But again, I already made this clear in my last post. I don't see the significance of this question.

Your response is a good example of just how deluding a dogmatic belief can be. I write one thing, and you somehow read what you want to see. Did the words on your screen alter like a hallucination, or is it a cognition thing, I wonder?

Speaking of the suitability of Bible stories for children, it never ceases to amaze me that, what would have been the most horrific case of genocide in all history had it actually happened, is made into children’s stories with pictures of cute giraffes poking their heads out the top of a cartoonish-looking ark. There’s a book for small children called My Very Little Noah’s Ark Story (http://www.booktopia.com.au/my-very-little-noah-s-ark-story-lois-rock/prod9780745963181.html). I wonder if publishers would be willing to touch it if I wrote and submitted a children’s story called, ‘My Very Little Auschwitz Story’?

This is an example of how desensitised we are to Biblical horror, and the privilege religion still enjoys. Another example can be found in the story of the Bible Adventure games made for the 1980s Nintendo Entertainment System. What some game makers were doing was creating game cartridges that zapped the licence validation chip in the console so that they could make unlicenced copies of their games. Nintendo went after the development companies doing this, however, they never went after the developers of the Bible Adventure games because they were afraid of the bad publicity that would come with taking legal action against a Christian group.

Is Mise,

One other point I forgot to make is if, in my book, a foetus is not a child/baby/person, then that only strengthens my argument. Because a thing would have even less of a right to use someone’s body for its survival.

Hi David, you are correct as usual, I did think of Buddhism and I should have said "the majority of religions", particularly the two largest on the planet, Christianity and Islam. I have visited a Buddhists Temple as an invitee and they come across as a rather gentle religious mob. I think if I was going to choose between them and the big two I would go for the blokes in the saffron robes.
Could you imagine how different the world would be if all religions were as the Buddhists.

As for that bloke Abraham, Josephus "Abraham was emerging from a culture of infant sacrifice, give him a break! The culture expected it of him, his peers were doing it,"
So just go along with the majority? Please explain then, are people wrong for opposing war, and refusing to fight, are pacifists wrong to refuse to engage in war when the vast majority support war, like during WWI, WWII and in my time some of the time during the Vietnam War, other wars as well had popular support.