“Abortion Supporter
The essence of Utilitarianism was the celebrated remark of Bentham that poetry, push-pen, the same thing–what Bentham described as the “moral calculus” was that the greatest good of the greatest number should be the ultimate measure of the morality of alternative public policy choices.
This is the anti-thesis of the basic principles of contemporary mainline Protestantism–not just in the Presbyterians & other Calvinist denominations but among Lutherans, Methodists, and the National Council of Churches, the governing body of the mainstream Protestant churches.”
First, let us understand that mainline Protestants are Protestant the way that Metrosexual Males are Male. To speak of mainline Protestants as being uniquely Protestant is bunkum. Further to speak of any mainline Protestants as having any theological flavor to them (e.g– Presbyterian & other Calvinist denominations,Lutheran, and Methodist)is completely fatuous. A mainline Protestant Presbyterian is ideologically, theologically, philosophically and culturally the same as a mainline Methodist. They are all children born of the same Mother.
AS
“The very core, most necessary belief underlying Protestantism is the basic claim of Luther in beginning the Protestant Reformation–“every man (woman) is his (her) own priest: our relationship to God is direct, it does not detour through the intercession of clergy or saints or any other third parties. We answer directly to God for our choices: this is both the freedom God has given to us, and it is an “awful” responsibility, one that we can undertake only, in Kierkegaard’s words, with “fear and trembling”. God has given us reason and conscience, AND both the freedom AND responsibility (opposite sides of the same coin) to make the right, moral choices. The Bible provides us with a powerful guide. But in the end, we–men, women alike–have the great, awesome reponsibility to use our freedom of choice consistent with the teachings of the Nazarene.”
First, this statement is just factually wrong. The Reformation doctrine was not the priest of each believer but rather the priesthood of all believers. The doctrine has about it a certain covenantal and corporate ring. God’s people together are a Kingdom of Priests. The doctrine was never intended to nourish and foster some kind of anarchistic libertarianism, but rather was advanced to disassemble the mediatorial work of Christ from being exactly identified with the Church. It is a long long distance between giving people assurance that Christ’s mediatorial work is uniquely his and his alone for them and suggesting that the doctrine also include that they are now autonomous agents that are not answerable to any governing authority.
Second, while it may be true that have a great and awesome responsibility to use our freedom of choice consistent with the teachings of the Nazarene, it is also true that God has put governing structures in place that result in punishment if those choices run contrary to inscribed laws.
AS
“A woman confronting an awkward, dangerous, destructive pregnancy CANNOT avoid her direct responsibility by consulting the clergy or other human advocates of one morality or another. She cannot rationalize a choice based on pragmatic, practical reasons. She has an absolute moral obligation to listen to her own heart, weigh the alternative consequences, make her choice with full awareness of how her decision can/will affect her children, her family, her health, her future well being, the potential child.”
The above blockquote is a “Captain Obvious” statement. It is true that a woman in the situation described above has to make a choice but we should be clear here that the choice she has to make is only a choice between disobedience and obedience. It is the same choice that every person makes every day on whether or not they are going to go to the nearest government school and go on a mad frenzy shooting up every living being they can find at that school. Now, people may be counseled by Clergy not to do that but they CANNOT avoid her direct responsibility by consulting the clergy or other human advocates of one morality or another. They cannot rationalize a choice based on pragmatic, practical reasons. They have an absolute moral obligation to listen to their own heart, weigh the alternative consequences, make their choice with full awareness of of all the attendant consequences. In short, like the hypothetical woman in the blockquote above, people can decide to be murderers or they can decide not to be but the decision is theirs.
AS
“The basic doctrine of the churches in the mainstream Protestant National & World Councils of Churches is that it it the duty and obligation of fellow, Christians to support her in the choice she determines is the moral course of action for her, and to respect that she is following her faith and her conscience in meeting the responsibility that God has placed on HER ALONE to use the freedom God has given her to make the choice that is right for her.”
And this is one reason why we refer to mainstream Protestant National & World Councils of Churches as Apostate, Sons of Belial, Heretics, and all round bad guys, for in this counsel they urge upon their people to become supporters of torture, murder, and violence against the weakest among us and the judicially innocent.
AS
“Mainstream Protestantism understands that the question of when life begins is a matter of legal definition determined by the courts and political processes. There is NO scientific or medical answer to the question: medical authorities and scientists can determine the presence of absence of attributes that we associate with “life”–brain activity, etc etc, but their expertise is not and ought not to be construed as providing the moral proficiency to decide arbitrarily when enough of the those attributes are present or are not.”
This is all smoke, blown in order to aid and assist in the work of people who sear their conscience. This is all smoke, blown in order to hide the work that is being done by the guilty in the suppressing of the truth in unrighteousness. Scripture clearly tells us when life begins.
13 For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Marvelous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.
Note in vs. 13 the inspired Psalmist is acknowledging that before he was, by our standards, viable, God was forming a life that had begun. Note in vs. 16 the Psalmist refers to himself as being a self conscious being whom God saw while yet unformed.
All of this is indicative that life begins at conception. At the very least it is all indicative that since man does not know when exactly life begins caution should be on the side of the baby in the womb and laws against murder should be applied to life in the womb should apply both to Women as accomplices to murder and to Doctors who are murders.
AS
What the “law” should dictate in arbitrarily deciding that life begins at some point between ovulation and delivery of a live fetus is an extremely delicate matter for a religiously pluralistic nation like the United State, with some major faiths on each side of the political debate”.
This statement is itself arbitrary. The “law” everyday decides upon matters that are extremely delicate for a religiously pluralistic people. Our “law” decides that Hindu widows in America are not to be burnt on the funeral pyre with their dead husbands. Our “law” decides that, quite contrary to Islamic law, that people don’t lose hands for theft. Our “law” decided that Mormons couldn’t have more then one wife. The fact that major faiths are on each side of a political debate is clearly irrelevant. What is relevant is that the decision to allow abortion is the result of the pursuit of a religious elite to foist upon the nation as a whole the convictions of their religion. One of the conviction of “religious secularism” is that abortion shall be encouraged and allowed.
“AS
“Our secular Supreme Court tip-toed its way to middle ground using the concept of “viability”: constitutional guarantees of personal liberties cannot be twisted to impose upon a woman a ban on terminating the fetus on the basis of religious beliefs she does not share and may in fact vigorously oppose–but once the fetus has reached “viability” (the capacity to survive on its own outside the womb then another “person” has come into existence, and the courts and the political process may make judgments, enact legislation and enforce it in judicious balancing of the competing rights of the woman and the new person to whom she has given birth.”
This is more smoke.
Viability is a completely arbitrary ‘middle ground,’ reached in keeping with the faith of SCOTUS called religious secularism. If constitutional guarantees of personal liberties can be “twisted” to impose upon people a ban on randomly murdering people on the basis of religious beliefs (after all, all beliefs are, by definition, religious) they do not share and may in fact vigorously oppose then constitutional guarantees of personal liberties likewise can be twisted to impose upon a woman a ban on terminating the fetus on the basis of religious beliefs she does not share and may in fact vigorously oppose. AS, you are being irrational.
Constitutional personal liberties can not be twisted to become a license to sanction “each man doing what is right in their own eyes.” This whole notion of Constitutional personal liberties as it applies to abortion is just more smoke manufactured in order to hide murder.
AS
This is NOT a theocracy. This is NOT a nation that has ordained one religious viewpoint or church to oversee the religious beliefs and practices of those who do not belong to that church or share that viewpoint.This is NOT a nation whose constitution and democratic form of government allow adherents of one religious belief system to force their beliefs on the others to the extent of forcing a woman who does not believe having a child is the correct moral choice for her to make.”
I want to briefly make the case that every nation is a nation that belongs to some god and as such is organized as a theocracy. Nations are constructed culturally and as cultures are theologies incarnated it is inevitable that a nation will belong to the God behind the incarnated theology, even when the god of the culture isn’t explicitly named. Even in a so called “secular” nation, that disavows any god is operating on the basis that the god of the culture is the people autonomously considered. They disavow all gods as the god of their nation because they are the god of the nation.
America is a people of many gods and no gods. This is an admission that we are a people and a Nation who are polytheistic in our cultural orientation.
The problem with this is that no culture can cohesively function that is genuinely polytheistic. This is due to the fact that in a genuinely polytheistic culture there would be unremitting conflict since the various demands of the competing gods would forever put the followers of those gods at each others throats. In a truly polytheistic culture, there would be continuous culture wars.
As such wherever polytheistic cultures exist they can only function if there is some entity that is in charge of the competing gods setting limits as to how far the claims of the competing gods can be taken. For example, when the will of Allah teaches that women must cover themselves in public comes into conflict with the will of the feminist god who says that women can be topless in the public square some god has to step in to adjudicate the public square conflict between the gods.
This god of the gods in polytheistic cultures becomes the state. The state becomes the policeman of the gods. The state determines how far the gods can and can’t go in the public square. The state tells the adherents of the various gods how seriously they are allowed to take the commands and will of their respective gods.
The ironic consequence of this is that polytheism creates a monotheistic culture. Because polytheism has so many gods, some god must be badged to police the gods. The state then is the monotheistic entity that creates the common bonds that creates a common culture and all gods are welcome as long as all gods are willing to serve the god of the state.
AS
“The basic principles of American religious liberty dictate that people of different values and beliefs should be left to follow the dictates of their conscience AS THEY SHOULD. It is perfectly proper for Americans who find abortion ALWAYS WRONG to follow their belief in conducting their own lives–and there should be no interference with the exercise of basic American personal liberty.
It is ALSO perfectly proper for Americans to believe that a woman should make the decision herself and that she can make a correct moral choice to have an abortion, and those who do should follow their belief in conducting their lives as well–and they to should be able to use their basic American personal liberty according to the dictates of their conscience.”
The basic principles of American religious liberty dictate that people of different values and beliefs should be left to follow the dictates of their conscience AS THEY SHOULD. It is perfectly proper for Americans who find killing five year olds ALWAYS WRONG to follow their belief in conducting their own lives–and there should be no interference with the exercise of basic American personal liberty.
It is ALSO perfectly proper for Americans to believe that a woman should make the decision herself and that she can make a correct moral choice to kill a five year old, and those who do should follow their belief in conducting their lives as well–and they to should be able to use their basic American personal liberty according to the dictates of their conscience.
AS,
What causes the contentiousness is that we have political activists trying to force one code of behavior (with criminal sanctions against those who follow different dictates of conscience)–and in a religiously pluralistic nation of Protestants, Catholics, Mormons, Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, secularists, etc etc they know very well that there is no national consensus about the morality of abortion–but they also know very well how difficult it would be to try first to convince a consensus of Americans to oppose legal abortion to they are frantically trying to impose their beliefs on the rest of us.”
The crafting of law is always the imposing of some people’s beliefs on some who share those beliefs and upon others who don’t share those beliefs. Women have imposed upon them the belief of lawmakers that they will be potentially prosecuted and imprisoned for prostitution. They do not have a choice in selling their bodies w/o the potential of being criminally charged. (A bit ironic that society accepts the legislative belief imposition on a woman’s ability to choose to sell her body but society does not accept the legislative belief imposition on a woman’s ability to choose to torture and murder her unborn child.)
All the above blockquote proves is that whenever any people attempt to be religiously pluralistic the guaranteed result is a contentiousness that then eventually yields a monolithic religiously informed culture that works to sooth the previous contentiousness. It is literally not possible to build a cohesive culture consisting of peoples who take their gods seriously.
AS
“And don’t kid yourself for a moment. While I have absolute certainty in my own mind that sf’s comments were not meant to deny the validity of the Beliefs of American Christians who do NOT believe secular governmental power should be used to force a woman to either violate her own convictions or go to jail–the undeniable fact is that many of the American Catholic Bishops and many of the most prominent fundamentalist clergy are clearly aware that they are directing a political movement intended to do just that—and to do it in a direct assault upon our basic American creed of religious liberty for everyone, not just those of our denomination.”
AS, the problem here is that you are trying to cover murder under the notion of religious liberty for everyone. I hope w/ all my being that Bishops and clergy alike are directing a political movement to uphold the Constitutions enshrinement of the inalienable right to life.
What you need to realize is that you are part of a political movement intended to use religious governmental power to force a legislative climate where unborn babies can be tortured and murdered without consequence. You do this as a direct assault upon our basic American creed of physical liberty for the unborn. People who hold your positions are aiding and abetting mass murder on a monstrous scale unknown to civilized man.
AS
“It is a crucial necessity for them to pull off this monstrous hoax, that advocates of choice are only secular feminists & materialistic hedonists, and hoodwink the public into thinking that there are not serious religious people on both sides of the question.”
Oh, I quite agree that there are serious religious people on both sides of abortion. The serious religious people who support abortion are religiously pagan and are one with the worshipers of Molech in the Old Testament who offered up their children in the sacrificial fires.