Can a Christian be Pro-Choice?

I am no longer a Christian, but I used to be, and a fairly well-studied one. So I felt qualified to answer when Purified on Yahoo! Answers asked the following question:

Can you be a Christian and be pro-choice? Scripture please. I am a Christian and believe God’s word to be the guiding light to the Christian.

Here is how I responded:

Yes.

Although Christians who oppose abortion make reference to God knowing a person “before they were formed in the womb,” we really should keep the topic on abortion itself. The closest thing to an abortion in the Bible is actually a miscarriage, also medically known as a spontaneous abortion. Therefore, it makes sense to read how the Bible suggests handling miscarriages. Does the Bible treat miscarried fetuses the same way that it treats breathing human beings?

Passages from the Old Testament are the only ones that refer to miscarriages. There, the ancient Jews did not treat miscarried fetuses as human beings. They instead considered them simply the equivalent to a woman’s menstrual blood.

For example, Job 3:16 refers to “like a miscarriage which is discarded,” indicating that a miscarried fetus is not given a proper burial, as would have been necessary for any Jewish human being.

Miscarried fetuses were clearly meant to be forgotten. The passage in Ecclesiastes 6:3-4 refers to this: “If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, however many they be, but his soul is not satisfied with good things and he does not even have a proper burial, then I say, ‘Better the miscarriage than he, for it comes in futility and goes into obscurity; and its name is covered in obscurity.’”

Exodus 21:22-25 refers to a woman who miscarries as a result of a assault on her body. If she is relatively unscathed, the only payment is money. If, on the other hand, if she is hurt in the process, the penalty is an equal injury inflicted upon the assailant:

“Suppose a pregnant woman suffers a miscarriage as the result of an injury caused by someone who is fighting. If she isn’t badly hurt, the one who injured her must pay whatever fine her husband demands and the judges approve. But if she is seriously injured, the payment will be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, cut for cut, and bruise for bruise.”

Clearly here, the woman’s life is valued much more highly than the life of her fetus, which can be bought like a calf or a head of cabbage. The only true injury occurs when the woman herself is hurt.

These passages indicate that those who worshiped God in the Bible did not value fetuses as human beings. As such, it is entirely within the realm of Christian practice not to treat abortion as anything approaching murder. What’s more, the passage from Exodus, a book not generally known for its kindnesses toward women, indicates that the woman’s life is supremely more valued than that of an aborted fetus.

Given these passages, it is quite easy to show that allowing a woman a choice in her pregnancies falls entirely within the realm of Christian belief.

– {♂♂} – {♂♀} – {♀♀} -

Rational beyond belief

In our hyper-Christian society, religious doubts are not easily entertained. They are discouraged in the church and barely tolerated in our American society. Thus, when you have them, they can make you feel incredibly isolated.

But many people find religious doubts impossible to dismiss, and we have to think them through. So here are the ways I thought about the existence (and ultimately, non-existence) of God:

First, we must define the term “God.” The problem with most theists is that this term is a moving target.

In addition, because there is no absolute evidence either for or against the existence of God, you cannot use deductive logic (for example, deductive logic is used as follows: a+b=c, therefore c-b=a). You can only reach a conclusion by inductive reasoning, i.e., using the balance of evidence to reach a conclusion. (For example, 90% of A is also B; C is B, so there’s a 90% chance that C is also A).

So to begin with, I will assert (and others may shoot this down) that the only RELEVANT definition of God states that GOD INTERVENES TO CIRCUMVENT NATURAL LAWS.

But IF God circumvents natural laws, then it becomes impossible to understand natural laws. All scientific findings would have to include the stipulation, “It is also possible that these results are an act of God, a miracle, thereby making our research meaningless.”

However, as medical advances, molecular chemistry and microwave ovens indicate, we have been able to continuously expand our knowledge of natural laws. Therefore, because the scientific method leads to accurate predictions and applicable discoveries, the likely (inductively reasoned) conclusion is that God, at least the intervening kind, does not exist.

Next, if God is defined as all loving, all powerful, and all knowing, then it is impossible to explain suffering. Either God is not all loving (he acts sadistically), not all powerful (he cannot prevent suffering), or not all knowing (he created suffering by mistake because he didn’t know the consequences of his actions). A God who is not all-loving, all-powerful or all-knowing is also not sufficient for the definition of God, because any God that fails to meet these criteria becomes bound by rules that are greater than God.

So if God is bound by external rules and/or does not intervene in our existence, then God is either non-existent or irrelevant. This is not absolutely certain, but the amount of evidence supporting this conclusion is so great that it makes any other conclusion outlandish. The classic Bertrand Russell argument is as follows: I cannot prove that a china teapot is or is not orbiting the sun between the earth’s orbit and Mars. But while I cannot prove this it either way, the evidence against it is compelling.

The evidence against God is equally compelling, and thus it makes enormously more sense to live your life as if there were no God.

Although it is admittedly speculation, it is more compelling to me that humans have invented God (a) to help people deal with the pain and fear associated with death and loss, and (b) to reflect the thoughts of the ruling powers in a particular time. Humans have evolved to search for explanations. When early civilizations found none, it was their natural inclination to declare that the cause of the unexplained was a superpower they called a god (or gods). (This process continues to be used by theists in their “god-of-the-gaps” arguments.)

As the faith grew, coincidences were defined as (and exaggerated into) miracles. Laws and moral authority were attributed to this divinity in order to give the powers-that-be more clout, and an orthodoxy grew up around the entire structure of “faith.”

Now it seems unhelpful to believe in such superstition. Most people, even believers, live as if the only matters that aid in our ongoing well-being are work, location, health, sustenance, and pure, blind luck. And no one ever went wrong in under exactly that assumption.

So those are my doubts, and they summarize why I have ceased to believe that any relevant God exists. And oddly enough, I went through a similar process to accept the fact I am gay and that society’s homophobia was ill-informed and prejudicial.

So who said that rational thinking was cold and unfeeling?

– {♂♂} – {♂♀} – {♀♀} -

© 2008. All rights reserved. Edited from my Sept. 2006 posting in my Yahoo! 360 blog.

From out of the (toothless) jaws of Pauljub –

Alas, I have been on a rescue mission, all to save my own verbiage.

I found an unbelievably sophomoric presentation of atheism tonight on Pauljub’s blog. (Click on the link to read it. The following will then make more sense.) When I pointed out that in his writing he had set up a straw man argument, his response indicated he had a poor understanding of the concept, so I wrote him back, as follows:

A “straw man” is a statement that is said to represent an argument of or position held by the opposition, but in fact is a phony presentation, set up simply for taking pot shots, but not truly addressing the genuine arguments. Yours is as phony as they come, and thus fallacious.

Simply put, I don’t believe you when you say that you’ve summarized “all the wisdom and statements” you’ve heard atheists make. Since you are willing to unrepentantly engage in logical fallacies, then I must be wary of your other statements, too. Until you supply the evidence, I must presume that it does not exist.

And as further evidence of your lack of trustworthiness, the flow of your conversation goes exactly as you would like it to, without even an acknowledgment that you and atheists might have actual points of disagreement. Entire libraries are filled with the arguments and counterarguments regarding the existence of God. This wimpy summary is an insult to both atheists and Christians alike. It indicates that you have, in spite of all your conversations with “thousands of atheists,” utterly failed to understand their position. It may even indicate a dismal of understanding of the Christian position.

I note that you don’t discuss the arguments that you have had the most difficulty with, but instead present things like “I have proof, but I cannot give it to you.” This doesn’t even rise to the level of entertaining conversation, much less edifying theological discourse.

But as I said, this has been a rescue mission. It’s necessary that I post this here because, in what I can only surmise was a fit of either panic or rage, he deleted it.

– {♂♂} – {♂♀} – {♀♀} -

An Atheist looks at the Bible

It is Easter weekend.

What better time to examine the source of the stories that define Christianity, the Bible? Read on:

Consider the possibility that you were born somewhere without any religion, but were given the opportunity to read about them as a cultural education. You were also taught language, science, math, philosophy, and critical thinking skills.

Then one day, you were introduced to a Christian who, following the evangelizing call, said to you that he had a story about God and humanity that was wonderful and would change your life. The story was in his Bible, and he proceeded to lead you through it:

The first thing you heard was that you were condemned by God because of some actions taken by a pair of naive progenitors. Nothing you did caused it; you could not have prevented it. But God condemns you and everyone you know.

Then God decides to choose a particular group of people to rule over called the Jews; the story continues with the history of their bloody, unmerciful battles and their leaders of highly questionable ethics. The Jewish people are carted off to various slaveries from their homeland, which, by the way, they have violently stripped away from earlier residents.

Various messages from this God are transmitted through prophets, whose words are mystical, incomprehensible and frequently full of condemnation (unless the people are suffering, and then they promise some later relief to be brought about by God at some distant time). There are also songs that describe how great this Jewish God is, there are suggestions of how to live, there is a sexually charged poem, and eventually the first part of the book ends, not with a bang but a whimper.

Then, in the second part, suddenly there’s a story that says that God has somehow changed his mind. He’s going to give a loophole in his condemnation. He’s going to send himself/his son to teach things to this nation he has chosen. But from the beginning, The Bible notes that this God-man will be killed and raised from the dead, and he promised to raise others, too. (Not a bad outcome. Death is pretty frightening.)

However, the stories of this man, Jesus, do not make him sound overly attractive. He’s a little pissy sometimes (killing a fig tree because it happened to be barren, chastising his disciples when they don’t understand his strange way of speaking, manipulatively refusing to answer questions directly). He continues passing out judgment and condemning people to hell, and although he teaches some elements of love, you know people in your own life who act more loving than he does. He supposedly performs miracles, but you know from your studies that miracles were ascribed to almost any hero in the ancient world.

Anyway, as you were told, the story of his death and resurrection are told 4 times. There are some contradictions before the death, but the story holds together pretty well. But after the reputed resurrection, the story flies apart. Suddenly there are loads of contradictory accounts. The man appears in locked rooms, which doesn’t sound like life on this planet. The man is not recognized by close friends who walk with him on a road. He’s no longer flesh and blood, but you can touch his wounds. Suddenly things take on a fairy tale quality. And then, rather than hang around, this once-dead-now-raised person skips town, leaving a few people who believe he’s alive.

The rest of the book is a bit of history, but mostly letters between early believers, trying to keep the flock in line, and always promising an end to death. One prominent member of the group named Paul decides that God no longer just means to claim the Jews for his special friends, but opens the deal up to the entire human race. The last book then once again goes back to describe horrors perpetrated by God and others. It sounds like things are as they were, with God back to his condemning ways. (Except for those who believe in the resurrection of his son.)

So now you know the story. The deal, in summary, is this. You’re still condemned. You can get away from being condemned if you believe in this miracle of resurrection. If you don’t, no dice.

Your mouth is agape. The story sounds grizzly and intensely pessimistic, except for that never ending life part. But you’ve studied history, religions, language, science, math, etc. You know that we are flesh and blood, just like the animals that we kill and eat. You love justice and cannot see the sense in condemning someone because some distant forefather happened to nibble on fruit or learned to think for themselves. You do not believe that you, your family, and your world are condemned. (You know we all suffer on occasion, but pain and suffering effect everyone, regardless of whether or not they believe in any one religion.)

Studies have taught you that there are lots of religions, each offering their special access to the benefits of belief if you turn off your rational mind and replace it with faith. Most of these religions have faded, but enough remain. And in truth, there is nothing special in the story you have heard about God, the Jews, Jesus, Paul, and the rest. They are just stories, a way that a primitive people tried to make sense of the ambiguous and the incomprehensible.

When you shared these thoughts with your evangelizing visitor he accused you of being arrogant and closed minded. But having looked at the world through a wider lens, you cannot see this story as any less mythological than any other told to justify religion. The tale is designed to keep people in line ethically and to relieve their anxiety about dying. You are willing to listen to suggestions, but you already do well in making thoughtful, ethical decisions. And because you have already considered death, you readily acknowledge that it will come. Its stark reality makes life’s moments all the more precious.

That is why I don’t “believe the Bible.” I respect parts of it: It contains some good literature that has effected Western culture (for good and ill) for millennia, but in quality it is really no better than has been produced by authors before or since. It has some great advice, but it has no monopoly on valuable wisdom, and indeed some suggestions are truly immoral. By and large, it is a cultural history and religion rule book, similar to other ancient texts. If Christians find it useful in other ways, I will not protest when they grasp it tightly, except when they seek to hold me to its standards. For to me, taking it more seriously than I described neither fits my experience nor benefits my life.

– {♂♂} – {♂♀} – {♀♀} -

(© 2006. All rights reserved. Originally published on my Yahoo 360 blog on July 31, 2006.)