Abortion

[Bob Butler]

No problem. As I said, I don’t take the insults seriously.

Generational Dynamics proclaims an instinct to hate, oppress and kill those that are different. The tendency to fall into insults when one has lost an argument is apt to involve this instinct, A liberal is different, therefor you wallow in negative attributes which have no basis in reality. It would be generally better to say that liberals want to change the culture to remove flaws than to say they are sexual deviants. Lots more evidence of the former.

The religious tradition of abortion as a sin did occur in medieval times and did involve elements of superstition. The description is accurate, if not the most flattering one possible. You might want to get used to it.

A semi relevant incident.

In my late college days, I was with the Society of Creative Anachronism, smashing my fellows with full weight swords and armor. One of the largest events the society put on involved the East Kingdom (basically, the East Coast of the US) waging the annual Pensic War against the Mid Kingdom (the Mississippi valley). The looser had to keep Pittsburg. One year a battle was fought within sight of an interstate highway. They managed to bring the highway to a full stop just gawking.

But one of our members fashioned himself a soothsayer. Before the major battles started one year, he made his prophecy. “There will be an apparent injury. It will at first seem serious, but it will turn out not to be.” It, of course, turned out to be true. An idiot jumped out of a tree and hurt himself. A pretty predictable minor prophecy. Not evidence of much. But…

In the Christian Fellowship we used to call such incidents “Christian coincidence.” Prayers were common. They may have come true a bit more than expected. None were so out there that you could raise a flag and say “Look at this!” Similar events happened with the Neo pagans. I just noted them and moved on. Minor miracles happened regularly, seemingly without regard to which tradition was followed, Catholic, Born Again, Neo Pagan, Witchcraft or eventually Parapsychology.

The difference with Parapsychology was that lots of incidents were carefully recorded. You had to flip a coin a whole bunch of times, count on an average 50% hit rate, before you could make a statistically significant claim that the hit rate was significant.

Were these people gullible and therefore different? Should one start building up hate, oppression and murder? Let them be. They believed in their magic, and some of them tried to prove it. Those immersed in the European traditions often do not accept the probability shifts, or respect magic cast in other traditions. They would invoke unsupported suspicions of demons involved, or some other such rubbish.

But if religion is about the laws of nature being influence by the mind, you have to go beyond faith. You have to deal with real probability shifts. I chased them. I may have a little less patience than usual with the off the wall assumptions of those who have not.

[Higgenbotham]

Medieval superstition dealt with concepts like gods, souls, sin and sacrifice.

Before going back to the Dark Age Hovel, though, I want to elaborate on my objection to your use of the phrase you have coined to describe how Christians think about abortion - "medieval superstitions", which was my real reason for starting this back and forth we have been having these past few days. I can now do so because you have sort of defined what you mean by that. When you use the word "medieval" a reasonable assumption would be that it refers to things that were primarily of the medieval world and are not of the present world. So let's look at the 4 items you listed - gods, souls, sin and sacrifice. If the plurality of Americans still believe in gods, souls, and sin, and those concepts it would stand to reason that this plurality would believe that there is a hell. Astonishingly, to me at least, they do as a majority, and they do across race, age, and every other affiliation besides religious or lack thereof. So to call beliefs in gods, souls, and sin medieval superstitions when these beliefs are very much present in this world I don't think is accurate.



There are some aspects of sacrifice such as animal sacrifice to appease or gain favor from the gods that could be considered medieval superstitions since they are no longer practiced in the present world. I discussed that in a previous post.

One interesting thing in recent posts. You have a poll showing most Americans believe in or favor a lot of traditional religious aspects.

Is this your best attempt to respond to this? Do you have anything more to say about it besides burying it in your usual attempts to create irrelevant diversions?

If you answer, yes, this was my best attempt and, no, I don't have anything more to say about it directly, then I'm ready to return (on foot) to the Dark Age Hovel.

Or I suppose a non-response is equivalent to saying you have nothing more.

[Bob Butler]

One interesting thing in recent posts. You have a poll showing most Americans believe in or favor a lot of traditional religious aspects. And yet, most are willing to vote for abortions. Do people believe they can go to heaven after they had an abortion? The logic of it would of course vary, but would be interesting.

The interesting thing is the combination of opposing polls. One says most Americans believe in many aspects of the supernatural, including God and Heaven. The other says most Americans believe abortions should be safe and available. In a lot of examples they add rare.

Before addressing this contradiction, let me say that I’m not the right person to say how a religious person thinks. My relationship with God ended up being decided through quantum physics and parapsychology. These might be more determined by Principia Mathematica than the Bible. This is not how most people would resolve it, not how most people think.

Among religious people, some believe in a loving forgiving God. Others believe in harsh judgement, that He will torture people through eternity for disobeying His laws. This difference in how one believes God acts would be part of it. Those that believe in a loving forgiving God might be more apt to have an abortion. Those who believe in a wrathful commanding God might choose otherwise. As a single male agnostic, there is not much more I can say about it.

I can’t also forget the two contradictory instincts. One is to love one’s neighbor, to help a friend out. The other is to hate, oppress and kill one who is different. This might tie in with the above paragraph. Religious believers, especially Christians, tend to love thy neighbor. Others might hate, oppress and kill the different. If one follows God’s example, how you perceive God is important.

In my youth, the Catholic nuns occasionally preached that judgement is God’s. It is not man’s place to stand in judgement over his fellow man. Let God handle judgement. It would seem not all follow that principle.

For me, there are two aspects of thought, embodied in Principia Mathematica and the Bible. As an engineer, Principia has primacy of place. One who doesn’t follow the principles outlined there can find himself in big trouble. Yet, moral questions often cannot be answered through experiment and observation. I grew up with preaching of the nuns. I have kept the most basic moral principles from my youth. Most important is ‘love thy neighbor’. I suspect the others could be derived from that one statement.

What is not called for is controlling, harassing, hating and killing one’s neighbor.

My balancing thought is that one should emphasize love, and minimize judgement and control. I should add, don’t plan a near future vacation in Gaza. A lesser variation would be avoiding the slum sections of cities. Love may have something going for it, but you can’t forget prudence.

Is that what you are looking for?

[Higgenbotham]

Is that what you are looking for?

With regard to abortion or religion, there is not too much that I am looking for.

You had mentioned that you watched the Billy Graham sermon. That surprised me, as I didn't think you would want to stomach it, which is why I linked directly to his use of the phrase "gods of materialism," figuring you might note the use of the phrase and shut it off. I only watched maybe 10 minutes of it, but it seemed more relevant than when I last watched Billy Graham previous to that, at least 40 years ago. However, there wasn't anything in it that substantially changed my opinion, so it mostly amounted to entertainment and nostalgia.

Your response was about what I expected, though. So I will put on my knee high rubber boots and trudge back to the Dark Age Hovel.

[Bob Butler]

You had mentioned that you watched the Billy Graham sermon. That surprised me, as I didn't think you would want to stomach it, which is why I linked directly to his use of the phrase "gods of materialism," figuring you might note the use of the phrase and shut it off. I only watched maybe 10 minutes of it, but it seemed more relevant than when I last watched Billy Graham previous to that, at least 40 years ago. However, there wasn't anything in it that substantially changed my opinion, so it mostly amounted to entertainment and nostalgia.

I must confess I got only about 10 minutes in too. To me, the sermon was more about the church, less about love. His priorities seemed off.