This morning, a taxi driver took out his towel, set it up in a corner, took his shoes off, and I assume he started praying to his god. He is lucky he is living in a country were he can do that with out being attacked. Mrs. Sarah Palin lives in this country too.
As is the case most of the times, when I write I am ussually inspired by some injustice I have witnessed. Last, night I saw Mr. Charlie Gibson, of ABC news attack Mrs. Palin for her faith. I was reviewing the web news pages for some notes on my video blog when I ran across a link to an ABC ineterview between Gibson and Palin. Mr. Gibson actually had the nerve to demand Mrs. Palin justify her statements that she had previously made in her church. I say demand because even the question is offensive.
The two issues that are bugging me here are "freedom of speech" and "right of religious epxpression". These are rights protected under the American Constitution. No one should be requirred by liberal news people, with no god, or any one else to justify their faith.
Now, the news people want to imply that because Mrs. Palin said that the mission in Iraq is a call from God that she is a religious radical who wants to govern according to her theology. When these wars began, I too sensed some divinity in the American soldier's actions. Any time you stand up to evil in defense of the good you are working for God whether you are a willing participant or not. Saying that life has a plan and everything that happens is a detail of this plan is just expressing your opinion according to your faith. Last, time I checked every one in America has the right to their opinion and their religion.
Futhermore, if the American liberal news wants to paint Mrs. Palin as a religious radical let them present the evidence. I challenge any one to present credible proof that Mrs. Palin has governed according to her theology. Now, I know people have accused Mr.s palin of a lot, but where is real proof, not inuendo and/or suposition.
I can very easily speparate the statements made to a congregation by one of its members as that person expressing her religious beliefs. After all she was at her church. She was not a political event, talking about politics.
The reality is tha people who have never had a personal encounter with Jesus Christ will never undersand people who have had this encounter. However, just because of a lot of knee- jerk- reactionaries cannot stand to hear the name of God does not mean that in America people do not have the right of free speech and religious expression. Furhtermore, a person of the Christain faith is not automatically a religious finatic.
God is a loving God who educated his people on how to be humble and serve with dignity and grace. Outsiders cannot take a person's religious speech and use it as a blanket generalization about a person's personality. Palin is a Christian. She is also a politician. Neither of these two facts interfer with the other. Only in the perverse minds of people who value nothing and believe in less does a person's religious speech equate for a person's complete value system. Again, I challenge any one to show real proof that Mrs. Palin has tried to legislate in a religiously intolerant manner.
Have to agree with Kurtin on this one. The egg and sperm compined aren't a human being. A new human being doesn't exist until the first two nucleotides combine into the individual's DNA, even then it isn't alive unless the cells continue to divide.
All life begins with a the cells dividing, it can only happen in living organisms, so the zygote can't be defined as "not really alive". The zygote also can't be any other species but Homo Sapien (Human Being), since no species has DNA consistant with any other species.
Therefore, we can opine, rationalize and justify all we want about killing zygotes and fetuses, but whether they are living human beings is not a matter of opinion at all.
Like it or not, believe it or not, Science has revealed human life begins at fecundation...the moment the sperm and the egg unite God breathes life into that little soul. At conception, a woman is 100% pregnant, a new human life begins. Period. Even a child when told a woman is pregnant knows from common sense and reason, there is a live human baby in there. There is no stage of pregnancy when a human life isn't there or involved. As individuals, as a society, as a culture, as a nation, we either respect the dignity of life from the moment of conception or we don't.
The devil is in the details when we quabble about the stage at which the embryo deserves protection. That's why artificial birth control and Plan B morning after pills are rationalized and justified and promoted in sex ed classrooms. It's life or death and our Lord God told us to choose life. Right now as long as 4,000 baby's lives are snuffed out by the evil of abortion, and untold numbers killed by birth control devices, Satan is having his way, the Culture of Death is reigning all over this land that claims to be the home of the free and land of the brave.
We forget that each human life at conception has intrinsic dignity that is we are made in the image and likeness of God. We prefer to define the dignity of man by his genes of his DNA. We discriminate on the basis of physical and genetic factors and abort babies with any presence of physical diversity or genetic defects.
We must guard against science and technology that seeks complete autonomy from the moral norms written into human nature.
Our Lord God? You seem to think Catholics have the way for everybody. Again, this comes down to my statement that you need to recognize the reality of the situation with abortion. Try as you might, you cannot control what people can or cannot do just because your God says it so. Like I said, I'm all for the protection of that newly conceived child and I want it to grow and live a healthy, happy life. However, we should not ban abortion completely because of those exceptions that I mentioned. Also, you can yelp all you want about science saying this and that, and you are right that the stages of "human development" begin at exactly that point. All I'm saying is that there is a point when people should realize that a pile of developing cells is not a "human being" even though everything is there and present in its host to make it one in the future.
On a separate note, I would just like to have a conversation with you sometime, Lula, about the idea of a human soul as found within the constructs of the cellular development point in human creation. I'm curious as to your thoughts on the entrance of the soul into a human, because I've been forming assumptions in my mind based on your strong religious beliefs seen here, and I don't want to have the wrong perception.
Lula posts:
Kurtin, My use of the term "our" is not meant as only a Catholic thing.....there is but one God and the use of the pronoun "our" denotes any one who acknowledges God as his Lord. God told us to choose life in the Book of Deuteronomy 30:19. "I call heaven and earth to witness this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Choose therefore life, that both thou and thy seed may live."
Yes.....you are perceptive....this is exactly what I think!
Well, I think I understand the reality of abortion which is part and parcel of the culture of death. Regarding abortion, it's not me attempting to control people....I'd like to see the culture turned around to one that respects the dignity of life in all its stages, from conception to natural death. I do this by simply telling it like I see it and hopefully leave people with perhaps a little more to chew on than they had before.
And I disagree...no excpetions except the life of the mother....(at which point we can deliver the baby and try to keep it alive via medical services outside the womb).
Can you justify why the innocent baby in the womb should pay the death penalty for the crime of his father?
In saying this, you've bought into the lingo of the pro-abortion camp. They know it's phychologically easier to kill something that does not resemble the human beings we see in everyday life. It's just "a blob of tissue" they say when in truth, the so called pile of developing cells IS A HUMAN BEING. Size, development or consciousness doesn't determine humaness. That would be saying that small people are less human than larger ones..or underdeveloped children are less human than mature ones.
Do not be so quick to stretch that issue in such a way. What I mentioned does not saying anything about consideration of the human characteristics of those born into this world. Let us also be clear that I am not buying into any ideas of the "pro-abortion" camp (once again, I'll mention that I hate that term) because those just happen to be my own perceptions of the qualities of a human being. Maybe instead of buying into to their ideas, I just happen to see things in a similar light. If you can believe that your religion is the only true faith, then I can believe that a fertilized egg that can develop isn't necessarily a human being yet.
On a side note about your religion being the truth, I wonder if the ancient Aztecs went to hell because they didn't follow what God made word for everybody in the world in Deuteronomy when they had to make sacrifices to appease their God. I guess ignorance isn't always bliss... It's all about perceptions, and just because you believe you're right, that doesn't mean others should have to suffer through an unwanted pregnancy in those specific cases just because your belief structure says they should.
i musta missed that revelation. which scientists have demonstrated anything of the sort?
Can you justify why the innocent mother should be forced to be tortured as a result of a crime inflicted by the father? Neither action has a happy outcome, and both are inflicting pain or death on an innocent party, hence it is for people to decide which right outweighs the other. In the case of contraceptive abortion it's a much simpler decision - here it's about deciding between the innocent baby's right to life against the guilty mothers right to avoid the consequences of her actions. Meanwhile in the case where the mothers life is at risk it is about weighing up the baby's life against that of the mother. Even if you don't agree with people who think abortion is justified in cases of rape+where the mothers life is at risk I'd have thought you could still see how they could justify it.
KURTIN POSTS: #78
In terms of human creation, I think of life as each one of us having a physical life (a very limited earthly journey) and spritual life everlasting in heaven or hell.
While science teaches when human life begins, Genesis 1& 2 teaches why we are made. 2:7 has it the Lord God formed man...and breathed into his face the breath of life and man became a living soul. The soul is the breath of life from God. The soul is the cause of life and without it the body cannot live. ...at the moment the soul separates from the human body, it dies. It tells us that God made man the highest of creatures composed of a body and a soul which is made in the image and likeness of God...in 4 things our soul is like to God. It's a spirit, it will never die, it has the gift of reason and free will.
lula posts:
KURTIN POSTS:
The pro-death camp is the one stretching the issue...I'm describing what it is in terms of the reality that it is. Sure, you can believe that a fertilized egg isn't a human being yet, but that doesn't change what molecular and genetic science has discovered and revealed one iota.
It's interesting that you even bring this up...Aztecs and human sacrifice.....abortion today is just as uncivilized...have you ever seen a video or photos of what abortionists actually do to babies in the womb?
In 1523, the Catholic Francisicans, Dominicans, and the Augustinians arrived and progressed evangelizing the Aztecs.
Perhaps you can see the seriousness from it all better from this angle.....Unborn eagles are protected by law...how come unborn babies aren't as important?????
A corporation is a "person" protected by the 14th Amendment, but an unborn child is not?????
Doctors in one room can operate to save a life of an five month old baby in the womb, while in the room down the hall, they deliver a full term baby feet first, drill a hole in the back of its skull and suck out his brains and then throw his little body in a garbage disposer or sell it for body parts to labs for research.
How come we are so careful to regulate how animals can be killed, yet there aren't any laws regulating the suffering of the aborted baby???
Maudlin27 posts:
As a Catholic, and following what the CC teaches, and will ever teach, no one, has any right before God and in conscience to perform or have an abortion. The deliberate and direct destruction of innocent human life is forbidden by the Commandment, thou shalt not kill. This commandment forbids the direct killing of an innocent life before birth as well as after birth.
Another principle that the CC addresses is that the end do not justify any morally evil means.
actually this is a good point. The sacrifice of the babies in the OT times is really no diff than abortion of today. The only diff is it's done in nice sterile white rooms instead of around campfires and volcanoes. It's just packaging.
Lula said:
Kurtin said:
You know Lula as a Christian I agree with much you have to say when it comes to abortion and the sexualization of our kids. I can't think of anyone on JU who has as much knowledge as you along these lines. Where I'd draw the line tho is in your speaking with others who do not feel the same about God. You can't throw out "Our Lord God" to people who think of him in no such terms.
Only those who truly believe in God with their uttermost being can make Him their Lord. We can't make others conform or believe in Him anymore than we can tell a dog not to bark but to talk instead. It's got to be natural; internal, not external.
I see you trying to conform others by externals and it's just not going to happen. Throwing God and the CC out there is not going to make a difference. If they don't believe in your religion or your God deep in their heart to begin with, what difference is it going to make?
Unborn babies aren't an endangered species . Humans are aplenty...
You should look at some of the literature and videos from PETA more often. There isn't that much regulation on suffering of those in the animal kingdom . However, in terms of environmental regulation, I guess that is not as difficult to question when we are dealing with endangered or threatened wildlife as it is to question the interpretations of our Constitutional Rights in these times.
Is it uncivilized to follow your religious beliefs admantly? Were they not so valid as yours? Just because they worshipped a God whose methods you feel are uncivilized doesn't mean they were wrong to follow their beliefs. People interpret the Bible differently. How are we supposed to act civilized according to God at this day and age? The CC has been known to send mixed signals throughout history because it evolves over time and becomes open to new interpretations too.
With your response to my reply, I don't feel like you accepted what I was offering. I merely stated my opinion on the matter of how you took my beliefs on development in the womb to be stretched all the way to those outside of the womb. That idea seemed a little far-fetched to take my opinion that a couple of developing cells are not a human being and direct it to say that I think those with dwarfism or those developmentally deficient children are also not human beings. I didn't mean to refute your position, I was simply offering my stance with a minor comparison.
...and finally, I dislike these back and forths picking apart each individual statement, so I'm just providing food for thought in all of my above comments. I like to make one response including all replies directed at me, so I haven't been getting too in-depth with these latest replies. One thing I would like to do is possibly continue that "soul" idea elsewhere, because I think you pose some good points for discussion. Perhaps I will open a thread/write an article for that purpose in the near future.
Lula posts #77
KFC POSTS:
Why not?
Please re-read my initial comment (above this post) and you should see that I was simply acknowledging who God is in context of quoting Deut. In my last sentence was a feeble attempt at tieing choosing life with the moral law (written on our heart) Surely you know that even those, who may not think of God in such terms as believers do, have nonetheless His moral law written on their heart.
And when Kurtin remarked, "Our Lord God?", I explained by saying,
Thanks for the lecture, KFC. ...but be assured "Informing others" would be more correct. Do I inform according to Catholic teaching especially when it comes applying Scripture (as I have using Deuteronomy here) to morals, you bet...and I already admitted that.
and I replied: Yes.....you are perceptive....this is exactly what I think!
Kurtin,
Ever since abortion on demand became law of the land the womb is a dangerous place to be. More dangerous than the eaglet's nest.
Humans aren't aplenty....have you checked out the latest demographics all across the globe? We are experiencing population decline. Most of Europe is below replacement fertility level....their numbers are up due to the Muslims who don't abort their progeny and here in the US, we'd be in trouble too, if it wasn't for the immigration influx.
all I'm saying Lula.....is as Christians....we are not called to clean up the fishbowl. We are called to go fishing.
Sure thing, I'll be looking for it.
KFC WRITES:
Is this your way of "conforming others", cleaning up the fishbowl or going fishing?
I love ya KFC!
6 billion isn't a very low level to be concerned about population decline if you're talking on a global scale. In just dealing with the population levels here at home, being in the hundred millions is still quite a bit in my view. At least I wouldn't think it should be a big concern to hold off on abortions, not at our current consumptive rates anyhow. I think we can both agree that the population argument is completely unimportant while we are raising the ethical questions and human rights issues surrounding the practice.
By the way...I don't think scientists have come up with evidence for a 'soul' yet.
Yeah, they are...it's estimated that we'll have like 9.5 billion people in 2050...of course that's globally. Locally, population growth can vary greatly...but as a species, we're doing pretty good...until we all kill each other anyway.
Oh and thanks to the people that responded to my sperm/egg query earlier...satisfying my curiosity and all.
~Zoo
You've got that right. Scientists are busy trying to understand the physical nature of things not the metaphysical nature. They aren't in the soul searching business... Although a while ago I heard a story about scientists supposedly weighing people at the moment of death and .....they reported they weighed an eensy-weensy tiny bit less at the moment of death! Was it the spiritual soul leaving the physical body? Got any ideas?
Ah, no...I can't agree. World populations do have a direct bearing on the ethical questions and human right issues for us and here's why.
Populations of underdeveloped, poor Third World countries are being decimated by population controllers working through the UNited Nations specifically the USAID agency.
Population stabilization is the official purpose of USAID and efforts to achieve their goal are called "reproductive rights family planning programs....(basically it's the same program taught our kids through classroom sex ed). Get em' on birth control and abort if that doesn't work. In 2006, $400 million US taxpayer dollars went to reduce the populations of 50 countries. This is beyond maddening; it's insanity.
Granted there has probably been much more population control than necessary, but I do feel that it is necessary when looking at the available resources for the region. In order to help those third-world civilizations, we need to make sure they can start sustaining themselves. Population control is of gigantic assistance to help stop the spreading of HIV/AIDS and to reduce the number of individuals suffering from malnutrition in Africa. I do not see population control as a problem at all for the likes of Americans because of the way we live our lives by consuming the planet's energy and resources at alarming rates. We can't afford increasing those figures much more, especially with China and India on the rise with similar lifestyles. If society was different, and I'm not saying that I would personally change my current lifestyle (I like it, and maybe I'm selfish ), then I might question the need for such a call to keep our numbers in check. However, with the current state of things, I firmly believe in the preservation of our global resources and, of course, survival of the fittest. I'm sure my views on this topic will be scrutinized, but I just thought I'd let people chew on 'em a little bit.
Interesting how we've come from "Palin's Religious Rights" to this. Maybe it's a sign of deep discussion and discovery, or maybe we just get off track and all like to ramble a lot here on JU .
I'm actually not sure if that's a real story or a myth...I should check that out in my spare time. Wonder if it's on Snopes.
a soul is what makes you...you! The flesh is just a covering or a tent so to speak. The flesh decays but the soul does not. Death means separation. At death our physical body separates us from the soul.
I've heard this as well. Not sure if there's truth to this. Seems hard to believe that a soul would weigh anything, but I do know in the not so distance past it was common after death to open a window to let the soul fly out.
no Lula. I said it's NOT our job to do any cleaning at all. All we are called to do is go fishing (make you fishers of men) but we're not to kill or clean the fish or the fishbowl.
You or I can't conform anyone. It's not our job.
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