Graphic Via http://bound4life.com/houston
For newcomers, this blog has dealt extensively with Margaret Sanger, Founder of Planned Parenthood, and her eugenic war on Blacks and other minorities.
The newest of Planned Parenthood’s abortion mega centers, in Houston, Texas, is a 78,000 square foot beast pictured below. The map to the right shows the strategic placement of this monster where four minority districts intersect. Blacks and Hispanics comprise only 25% of the American population but procure an appalling 56% of the abortions.
Operating close to 80% of its abortion mills in inner city neighborhoods, how much longer can PP get away with the lie that they are not engaged in a eugenic war?
UPDATE: I’ve posted this trailer before, but this movie Maafa 21 is a stunning piece of work that really gets to the heart of Sanger’s eugenics. (Maafa is Swahili for ‘holocaust’) A commenter below periodically reminds us of the movie. Watch the trailer and do get a copy of this movie and share it with your family, friends and parishioners.
THIS IS THE EPILOGUE TO THE MOVIE, DELIVERED BY REVEREND JOHNNY M. HUNTER, NATIONAL DIRECTOR OF L.E.A.R.N.
Coming Home 
For the most historic information on Planned Parenthood and Margaret Sanger watch Maafa21 – here- http://www.maafa21.com
Erin Manning featured the same building, but had a more salient critique. I wouldn’t march all the way with her, comparing the facility to a Mayan temple (where human sacrifice was performed), but there is something obscene about mass production of abortions, particularly on this scale.
This line about genocide is just plain silly and opportunistic.
“Oh, we’re not getting enough traction to dominate national politics, let’s try the “racism” line and see if that gets some play…”
If more Hispanics and African Americans had bigger incomes, including substantially higher pay for doing jobs that we all want done but nobody really wants to do if they can help it — pay the janitors $20 an hour for God’s sake, most of us wouldn’t do that work for less — then the abortion rate would equalize, because marriage rates would rise modestly, and also, frankly, use of birth control would increase too. Education, prosperity, and time to think about it all increase the use of birth control. How about that district just south of the colored-in districts? I don’t see you labelling that as “57% white” or whatever it may be.
Anyway, I’m going to check off three different racial categories on my census form when it arrives, and if most Americans were honest, so would two thirds to three quarters of the rest of the population.
SJ,
Now we arrive at the core ethical issue between us. I personally fail to see the obscenity in 1.8 BILLION abortions worldwide since the year of my birth (1960), if you maintain that women ought to have the choice to kill the babies in their wombs.
If choice is a legitimate option, it must necessarily be because there is no human life being snuffed out. So where do you come up with the accumulated exercise of choice, snuffing out what you have repeatedly claimed to be nonhumans or prehumans as being an obscenity?
If one choice to kill a baby is a perfectly legitimate option, so it is 1.8 billion times over.
I don’t follow your logic.
I’ll pass on the genocide comments, as you obviously have blinded yourself to the many articles I have written quoting Sanger extensively and in context.
Check out http://www.klanparenthood.com So blacks don’t recognize racism? The opinion of one black female journalist in your local newspaper who doesn’t want to look at the statistics isn’t definitive, you know. How many “decent” Germans didn’t admit that their anti-Semitism had anything to do with the Holocaust?
Wouldn’t this same black woman argue that the fact that the majority of men in prison and on death row isn’t an example of racism? It’s probably a certain psychological self-preservation that prevents her from seeing Planned Parenthood’s genocide against her people. Being complicit is a tough thing to admit.
Here’s a charmer, the CDC is financing the Harlem Health Promotion Center (see http://www.123.com.org – very young black man with ID allowed to buy abortifacient Plan B for who knows? See any white faces?) promotion of the drug to 15 yr old girld via social networking: http://www.cdc.gov/PRC/stories-prevention-research/in/harlem.htm
The research behind the social netwoking campaign: There’s always Plan B: adolescent knowledge, attitudes and intention to use emergency contraception, appeared in this month’s Contraception. http://www.contraceptionjournal.org/article/S0010-7824(09)00383-7/abstract#GSy2 Goals: “…increasing
adolescent knowledge of and access to emergency contraception.”
Tell us, has Dr. Nadal manufactured the evidence against Margaret Sanger? Is there a massive conspiracy to alter her books and The Birth Control Review to libel Planned Parenthood? Facts are what they are. The truth isn’t a faddish or hysterical mania. Our emotions have nothing to do with it.
The truth will set you free!
If one choice to kill a baby is a perfectly legitimate option, so it is 1.8 billion times over.
Exactly! How can it be legitimate in one circumstance and simultaneously “obscene” in another? That doesn’t add up.
BHG, it would be easier to carry on a conversation with you if there were some connection between what you said and what I said. Where did I quote a black female journalist in my local newspaper? And don’t talk to me about what “blacks” do and don’t recognize, as if “all black people think alike.” Try thinking of people with dark skin color as unique individuals, albeit each one has been impacted by the tendency of our laws and culture to treat all such individuals AS IF they all think or act alike.
Gerard, let’s get to the obscenity issue. I don’t dispute much of what you’ve said about Margaret Sanger’s agenda, I just don’t think it is particularly relevant to my reasons for being pro-choice. All white people don’t think alike either, nor do all pro-choice people have the same reasons for being pro-choice, nor do all pro-life people have the same reasons for being pro-life. Some pro-life people have hideous motivations, which you are quite rightly embarrassed by and go to some lengths to disassociate yourself from — only you go overboard when you deny that they exist at all. I know your motives are not theirs, I know you do care about the baby after its born and as long as it lives, but not everyone who talks pro-life does.
Why do I find mass production of abortion as a revenue stream obscene, when I do not find individual decisions to abort equally obscene? First of all, abortion IS the interruption of a natural process, which more often than not we all celebrate and take great joy in. Further, it has risks, as any invasive surgery has risks. The decision to abort a pregnancy is an exception to a natural process, and there is no reason it should become “the natural process” or “the routine process.”
If anyone, non-profit or for-profit, sets up a facility of that size, counting on the revenue to sustain the facility, not to mention pay the staff, and maybe have something left over, that produces pressure to generate more abortions, not because there is some circumstance in an individual woman’s life or pregnancy which makes it seem the right choice to her, but because someone stands to make some money invading the woman’s womb. I just can’t wait for PP to start marketing their services like Marlboro advertising cigarettes.
Just because I want the police to stay out of an individual woman’s private decision, one that she is more often than not agonizing over, no matter what she decides, does not mean I want mass marketing trying to induce her to make the profitable choice for the merchandiser. When it happens, it should be safe and legal. If women naturally choose life, it should be rare. Just as I don’t favor PP taking over sex education for all ten year olds, I don’t favor any agency offering abortion as a positive good. It is not, it is a sometimes appropriate choice in difficult circumstances.
Although the moral considerations are not identical, I also oppose marketing heart surgery to people who don’t really need it, or wouldn’t get much benefit from it, merely because some specialized facility can generate revenue from performing more surgeries.
Siarlys, do you support abortion only when it is considered “medically necessary”, or whenever a woman chooses to have one, for whatever private reasons she might have? I thought it was about “choice”, not medical necessity.
As a matter of law, I believe that a woman should make the choice whether to abort anytime before what we can (with increasing accuracy) define as viability. We’ve discussed elsewhere what the definition of viability might be, so I won’t go into that at length again. A woman should be able to make that choice without fear of arrest, prosecution, trial, conviction, and imprisonment (or execution). Ditto for any doctor she authorizes to perform the abortion.
That said, there are plenty of considerations about whether having an abortion is a good choice, the right choice, or the best choice she could make.
Medical necessity would be top of the list of reasons which make abortion the best choice. After viability, the life or health of the mother would be the ONLY reason to abort, without in fact being criminally liable.
Even if the mother’s life is in danger, abortion is not mandatory. That is still her choice. I remember reading about a woman who had been treated for cancer, it was in remission, she became pregnant, then the cancer started growing again. Her doctors said, we can put you back on chemotherapy, but you’ll have to have an abortion. It is indeed true that chemotherapy would destroy or badly deform the resulting baby, but she said, no, she would not have an abortion, and therefore would not resume chemo. Eighteen months after the baby was born, she died, because the cancer had progressed too far for the chemo after delivery to stop it.
I don’t know if that was a good choice or a bad choice, it certainly leaves the child without a mother at less than two years, but it was her choice, and I don’t know any way that anyone else could be authorized to make it for her.
But if a woman’s reason is she just isn’t ready to have a baby, up to the point where there is a viable human baby, I would say, yes, it is her choice. She might want to consider all the women who recount lifetimes of remorse over making that choice. Perhaps its not the right choice. But in the end, nobody else can make it for her.
In my opinion, a trisomy-21 test could qualify as medical necessity, but, not all pregnant women agree. That is her choice.
“As a matter of law, I believe that a woman should make the choice whether to abort anytime before what we can (with increasing accuracy) define as viability.”
Viability is a moving target. Eventually, we will be able to support an unborn child outside the womb at any stage of its development. What will your argument be then?
After viability, the life or health of the mother would be the ONLY reason to abort, without in fact being criminally liable.
You keep saying this, but I don’t believe you because you constantly contradict yourself by supporting abortions in the third trimester for fetal abnormalities and disease.
I don’t think that I’ve ever seen evidence that shows that carrying a baby with Down’s syndrome was life or health threatening to the mother. Have you?
Yet you advocate killing a baby with Down’s syndrome in the third trimester of pregnancy. Don’t you?
So how do you rationalize this to yourself, when you say that after viability, the life or health of he mother would be the ONLY reason to abort without being held criminally liable?
Even if the mother’s life is in danger, abortion is not mandatory. That is still her choice. I remember reading about a woman who had been treated for cancer, it was in remission, she became pregnant, then the cancer started growing again. Her doctors said, we can put you back on chemotherapy, but you’ll have to have an abortion. It is indeed true that chemotherapy would destroy or badly deform the resulting baby, but she said, no, she would not have an abortion, and therefore would not resume chemo. Eighteen months after the baby was born, she died, because the cancer had progressed too far for the chemo after delivery to stop it.
She could have gone ahead with the chemo while pregnant and the baby probably would have been perfectly fine.
Such was the case with my friend Sandi who found out she was pregnant, then found out she had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. The specialist told her that they would advise she abort if she continued with chemotherapy, because of the risks to the unborn baby (small things, such as cleft lip which is repairable- however there are not any conclusive studies showing that such things even happen if you take chemo while pregnant).
She refused to abort her baby, and she continued with the chemo, and ended up cancer free and having a healthy baby girl with NO problems.
Her story is not unique. Hundreds of women have gone through a similar experience, with cancers ranging from breast cancer, to leukemia, to lung cancer. They have gone through the pregnancy, along with chemo, and have delivered perfectly healthy and happy babies.
Check out http://www.pregnantwithcancer.org/
That is wonderful for Sandy, but she took a risk. Chemotherapy is poison, and so far we haven’t been able to send it directly to the cancer cells. If it can take your hair out, think what it could do to the fragile cells that haven’t even become eyes yet. Of course it depends on the cancer, the particular chemo used, the stage of development of the pregnancy… It is great it worked out, and lucky. But my point was, the woman who chose her baby had the right to make that choice. Not even her husband had the right to over-ride it.
Generally it is possible to diagnose Down’s syndrome in the second trimester. As the tests improve, it should be possible earlier and earlier. If current state laws were consistently enforced, abortion for Down’s syndrome would generally be illegal during the third trimester, precisely because it does not threaten the life or health of the mother.
Ideally, we would find a way to identify which sperm and ova carry the defect that produces the extra chromosome, and make sure they aren’t the ones that unite into a zygote in the first place. Next best, we will find a way to identify a zygote or blastocyst, before it even becomes an embryo, and cutting off the progesterone will be enough to make sure it never implants successfully. Not too much worse, we will find a way to sample those three layers of divergent tissue before they diversify into a rudimentary human-shaped body, without damaging the perfectly healthy baby women are mostly hoping for. But for now, we have to work with what is available.
SJ,
Comments such as your last are simply brutal. Have you ever spent time with anyone who has Down Syndrome?
Good God man you can’t be serious!
That is wonderful for Sandy, but she took a risk.
What is your point? Of course she took a risk! People who are NOT pregnant and choose to use chemotherapy are taking a risk too. And?
And the woman you chose for your story also took a risk.
Thankfully, both of these women chose the right path in not killing their babies.
That 18 month old that you disregard as being unimportant to the story is going to be very grateful for what his/her mother did for him/her one day.
It’s sad, Gerard, it really is.
I actualy feel sorry for Siarlys when I think of what he is missing in his life by wanting to rid the world of such beautiful and precious people.
If it can take your hair out, think what it could do to the fragile cells that haven’t even become eyes yet.
Hmmm…and I wonder what ABORTION does to those fragile eyes?
Bethany is expressing that she sees things very differently than I do. There is no answer to that except, that we disagree.
Gerard, your imputation of brutality comes down to a distinction which Bethany and I have sparred over before.
Down’s syndrome does not define a kind of person. It is not a race, or skin color, or geographically defined culture or a religion, nor is it an occupation (such as tanning leather) which made the practitioners “unclean” in ancient Israel, medieval Japan, and Aryan India.
Down’s syndrome is a disease. It is genes gone wrong. It imposes all kinds of hazards and suffering on those who have it. Rod Dreher recently ran a post asking, if there were a cure for Down’s syndrome, would you give it to your child. He and I, possibly with different philosophical underpinnings, both thought, as did many others, that this is a no-brainer. Of course you would.
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to “cure” a genetic disease. If a cure for Down’s syndrome, a complete cure which would adjust the chromosomes, remove the extra pair, restore normal gestation resulting in a human being with full normal function to be expected from 23 healthy genetic pairs, if that were possible, that would of course be the number one choice.
If you respond further on this point, I must ask you to specifically address, do you object (on principle) to sorting out the sperm and egg in advance, so that when conception occurs it is free from Down’s syndrome? If you don’t, if you could accept such a procedure, then our difference is simply that you consider any stage from zygote on to be a human being. If you do object to even trying to make sure no zygote has Down’s syndrome in the first place, if you have fallen into the hideous rationalization that Down’s syndrome identifies a type of person which must continue to be expressed in the human population, under some twisted distortion of “diversity,” then we have a huge gulf between us.
The latter viewpoint should, logically, extend to a quota system requiring that in every generation, a certain number of families MUST bear children with ALS, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, because these genes have a right to be expressed in the population, or because “this kind of people have a right to exist too.” Nonsense. Insofar as we can do so without killing a live individual, anything we can humanely do to insure that these genes are not inflicted on future generations is on the same moral level as eradicating smallpox. The difference is that smallpox is induced from outside, while genetic diseases are inculcated into the very fiber of our being.
Have I ever met people with Down’s Syndrome? Many. Those I have met were long since born, and abortion is not an issue for them. It never will be. Would I inflict what they suffer from on another baby if I could help it? Absolutely not. I would prevent it if I possibly could.
Of course we differ on whether second trimester abortion is an appropriate remedy. To me, it is removing diseased tissue and starting over. You view it in the same manner I view killing a five year old who has a genetic disease — we both agree that is wrong — because you view any stage of gestation from zygote on as a human being entitled to protection, while I see a small window, 4-6 months, where there is still time to start over, we don’t have a baby yet.
Difference is an Artist’s game
What a shockingly immoral thing to say — how hideous, how cruel. How dare anyone suggest that God would deliberately inflict defective genes on a child as a work of art! This notion is indeed worthy of the gods the Aztecs imagined and built their pyramids for, whimsical gods who would inflict intense suffering on human lives for their own amusement. (False gods, just as the god who would “play Picasso” with a developing embryo is a false god.)
God established a chromosome pattern for healthy human life, for the special animal bodies meant to be one component of the hybrid made in God’s own image. That is 23 healthy chromosome pairs. Like most things in the material universe, which operates with free will on all kinds of levels. sometimes the physical connections go wrong. Sometimes the result is defective. Don’t blame that on God. It is well known that nothing in life is perfect, and sometimes the genes don’t replicate properly. Sad, but true.
Wow, you advocate killing these people, and you’re accusing me of being “cruel”?
“And the LORD said to him, Who has made man’s mouth? or who makes the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the LORD?”
Exodus 4:11
Again, siarlys, why do you believe God allows suffering? Why do you believe that God allows people to be born with disabilities?
I don’t think that people with disabilities are inferior, as you do. I think that God has a special purpose for them.
I don’t believe people with disabilities are inferior, in a moral sense, nor do I believe that God has a special purpose for them. (There is an obvious physical DISability, and/or a severely limited ability to think independently — I’m sure you know group home staff could be fired for letting some of their charges walk out the door unsupervised). I don’t classify all disabilities or people with disabilities together into one demographic category either. There are fifty-eleven different kinds of disability, some physical, some cognitive, some both, some traumatic, some genetic, and all kinds of sub-sets within each. I have seen how rules written with the most debilitating cognitive disability in mind really, and rightly, irk, people with physical disabilities who have every capacity to make independent decisions for themselves.
In specific, I believe that genetic disabilities, including Trisomy-21, ALS, muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis, are as much part of God’s plan, or deliberate acts of God, as polio, smallpox, and malaria. Not the people, the disease.
Yes, I call what you presented cruel, and blasphemous. That is a fundamental difference between us. Deliberately and knowingly bringing into the world a baby suffering from Trisomy-21, when I have the power to prevent it, is cruel. Weaving a tale that God deliberately inflicted this afflication upon a baby as a WORK OF ART is worthy of Moloch, not of the Creator of the Universe.
On the other hand, I know that you, and many others, view it quite differently. Since the fetus is in no condition to be consulted, I believe the best we can do is to leave it up to each set of parents to make their own considered judgement. I’ve said a couple of times already, those who choose to bring pregnancies to term knowing how badly ravaged the child will be often are quite responsible abd loving about caring for the child. I think its cruel, but I wouldn’t try to make it mandatory for you to do as I would.
I’ve already answered, at length, the question why I believe God allows suffering. The world isn’t a perfect place. We have free will, and the entire creation has some capacity for self-realization. Why does God sometimes intervene? Because it suits him to do so. Why doesn’t God intervene every time something goes wrong? Because then there would be no point to assigning us to exercise stewardship. We’re supposed to work at making it better.
I don’t believe people with disabilities are inferior, in a moral sense
I didn’t say that you believe they are inferior in a MORAL sense. I know that you believe that their PHYSICAL state makes them inferior in your eyes.
nor do I believe that God has a special purpose for them.
Of course you don’t. In believing they are inferior, you believe they have less purpose on this earth than a “normal” person would.
If you tell yourself that there is no purpose for these people, it’s easier to kill them off without worrying about the moral ramifications of such action. Real convenient.
(There is an obvious physical DISability, and/or a severely limited ability to think independently
And?
— I’m sure you know group home staff could be fired for letting some of their charges walk out the door unsupervised).
And? I wouldn’t let a perfectly healthy newborn baby be outside unsupervised either…what does this have to do with humanity or purpose?
I don’t classify all disabilities or people with disabilities together into one demographic category either. There are fifty-eleven different kinds of disability, some physical, some cognitive, some both, some traumatic, some genetic, and all kinds of sub-sets within each. I have seen how rules written with the most debilitating cognitive disability in mind really, and rightly, irk, people with physical disabilities who have every capacity to make independent decisions for themselves.
As I said, you believe they are inferior to you. No big surprise there.
In specific, I believe that genetic disabilities, including Trisomy-21, ALS, muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis, are as much part of God’s plan, or deliberate acts of God, as polio, smallpox, and malaria. Not the people, the disease.
No, you confuse the people with the disease all of the time. If you didn’t, you would never consider aborting a third trimester child for having Down’s Syndrome. You would instead, work on finding a cure for Down’s Syndrome, while allowing people with Downs’ Syndrome to live their lives as happily as possible, and you would consider them all to be part of God’s creation, with a purpose just like you.
Yes, I call what you presented cruel, and blasphemous. That is a fundamental difference between us.
Blasphemous? Against a god that you constructed from your mind, or the God of the Bible? How are you going to prove to me that I am blasphemous, when it is only against YOUR IDEA of who God is?
You obviously do not believe in the God of the Bible, or you would believe what God said about people with disabilities.
You choose to conveniently ignore the parts of the Bible that demonstrate a God you do not like, and instead imagine God to be something other than what He is as according to the Bible.
The God I believe in uses our weaknesses and turns them into strengths for His glory.
Many times, a disabled person is more instrumental in serving God’s purposes than is a perfectly healthy able bodied person would ever be willing to.
Deliberately and knowingly bringing into the world a baby suffering from Trisomy-21, when I have the power to prevent it, is cruel.
Again, conflating two separate issues. This has nothing to do with the topic of abortion. I’d appreciate it if you would stick with one subject, as it gets annoying going back and forth between the two when you feel it is convenient for your argument.
Weaving a tale that God deliberately inflicted this afflication upon a baby as a WORK OF ART is worthy of Moloch, not of the Creator of the Universe.
According to whom, Siarlys? What do you base your beliefs about God on? Feelings? I base my beliefs about God on the Bible, and what it has recorded about Him.
“1As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
3″Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”
On the other hand, I know that you, and many others, view it quite differently. Since the fetus is in no condition to be consulted,
Um, and a healthy newborn baby IS in a condition to be consulted?
I believe the best we can do is to leave it up to each set of parents to make their own considered judgement.
That’s ridiculous. So because you can’t consult the unborn baby about whether he’d like to live or die, let his parents decide. So why doesn’t this apply to newborn healthy babies, since they also cannot be consulted about whether they would like to live or die? Why not leave that decision up to the parents? (Note: I am asking a moral question, not a legal question).
I’ve already answered, at length, the question why I believe God allows suffering. The world isn’t a perfect place. We have free will, and the entire creation has some capacity for self-realization. Why does God sometimes intervene? Because it suits him to do so. Why doesn’t God intervene every time something goes wrong? Because then there would be no point to assigning us to exercise stewardship. We’re supposed to work at making it better.
Siarlys, so do you believe in a God who creates an imperfect world?
Or do you believe in sin nature which was brought to us by Adam, which caused our suffering and disease?
You still have not sufficiently answered my question about suffering. You keep talking about free will, which was not my question.
You have not sufficiently explained why in your opinion our free will has anything to do with physical suffering or disease.
Where do you get the idea that eliminating PEOPLE who have a disease or disability makes the world a better place? On what do you base your idea that this is exercising “good stewardship”? Your feelings? or something else?
Of course God created an imperfect world. God knew it would be imperfect. In a sense, God emptied himself out to create it, or a part of himself, and he has been calling this imperfect creation back to himself, and to perfection, ever since. That was his purpose in creating an imperfect, material, universe, in the first place.
I have two Bibles, one KJV and one NIV. I prefer the KJV, because people who rely on the NIV tend to assume that everything has been made perfectly clear. When I’m reading the KJV, the text reminds me all the time that I don’t have a perfect, or even close to perfect, understanding of EXACTLY what God is trying to say, I have to work with it and pray I’ll get a little bit of it right.
I am mildly amused when people of any faith refer to “the God of the Bible.” I know it’s not what you mean to say, but it sounds like the Bible generated God, rather than, that the Bible contains communications from God to the people on earth who were made in his image. There is only one God: omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, transcendent. False gods are not in competition with The God, they are nothing, the work of men’s hands, or figments of men’s imagination. They are not the true God because they do not exist.
Each person who reads the Bible comes to a somewhat different understanding of God. We are most likely all partly right and partly wrong. That is in the nature of being mere humans, trying to understand a God who openly told us “My ways are not your ways.” We are like blind men feeling an elephant, and our worst mistake is when we assume (arrogantly) that what little part of the elephant we feel, is the entire being. Its not.
So, let’s talk about disabilities. I believe our nation and our culture has made a number of terrible mistakes in dealing with disabilities. The number one error is that we tend to have laws and social policies which assume that “one size fits all,” and that is unambiguously false. We talk about “the disabled” or “people with disabilities” as if they are a bloc of people with identical needs and interests. They aren’t.
The first error is to conflate physical and congenital disabilities. No matter how serious a physical disability may be, the person who suffers from it is perfectly capable of making their own independent decisions, providing they have sufficient physical aide to act upon them. A cognitive disability, on the other hand, goes to the heart of a person’s ability to make independent decisions for themselves.
In my state, up until forty years ago, there were medical institutions for people with cognitive disabilities. Some of those consigned by some process to these institutions were not happy there. They had mild difficulties, probably couldn’t be entrusted with their own checkbook, because they would be easy targets for scam artists, but they could wash, dress, feed themselves, go out for a walk and find their way back, and they were sick and tired of helpful institutional staff trying to program their day. “Its time for bingo now dear.” “I don’t want to play bingo, I want to go work on my garden.”
They filed a law suit. Unfortunately, it turned into a class action lawsuit that disposed of the entire population of these institutions. Bad mistake. SOME people were perfectly capable of living alone. Some others could live in their own home, with someone to stop by a few times a week to help with a few things. Some could live in a home-like setting, but with modest round-the-clock supervision. Some really were people who needed a predictable routine, couldn’t decide much of anything for themselves, and should have remained the responsibility of three eight-hour shifts of trained staff.
Instead, everyone got dumped into group homes staffed on the cheap by people who never have enough time and aren’t medically licensed. Its a mess. I’ve seen a wide range; I used to pick people up and drop them off at those homes.
There are fifty-eleven kinds of cognitive disability, each with a different level of capability and incapacity, and to the extent that programs are provided, they need to be calibrated to each of these differences. Generally, they are not. It’s very sad. One reason they are not is that the stilted language of “equality” has swamped recognition of a very real diversity of needs.
Now if we were going to get into a tit for tat, I would say that YOU are the one who confuses the people with the disease, because you insist that there is some special “purpose” to people having the disease. Is there a special purpose to malaria? Did God create smallpox and polio for his glory? Is that why one of my high school classmates is now in a motorized wheel chair, barely able to move the controls, after (1) surviving initial infection with only a limp in one leg, (2) succumbing to the decades later muscle fatigue that often follows, and (3) overcoming that initial bout of debilitation, long enough to care for a sick husband, move to another city after he died, work several years in a child care center, and then, finally succumb a second time… all very admirable, but did God deliberately inflict that on her “for his glory”? I don’t think so. God may have given her some extra courage to last longer than most, but God didn’t inflict it on her.
A disability is not a blessing. It is a DISability. It robs the person suffering it of abilities most of us possess. In some cases, it renders the person incapable, for life, no matter how long they live, of independent existence, even, in the case of severe cognitive disability of ever making significant life choices for themselves.
But it seems you do agree that if we could surgically reach into the zygote, cure the Trisomy-21, so that the resulting baby would have all the capacities that 23 normal pairs of chromosomes normally endow each of us with, that WOULD be a good thing?
I’ve realized that one of your tactics appears to be taking one of my questions, and writing long winded speeches about what you assume I’m saying, going back and forth from topic to topic that comes to your mind, then completely ignoring all of my other points and questions.
I’ll give you credit- you answered THIS one:
“Siarlys, so do you believe in a God who creates an imperfect world? ”
But…you ignored the rest.. So I’ll just ask again.
(your response to each one does not have to be 5 pages long. I’m hoping for succinct answers, not a novel.)
Do you believe in sin nature which was brought to us by Adam, which caused our suffering and disease?
You still have not sufficiently answered my question about suffering. You keep talking about free will, which was not my question. You have not sufficiently explained why in your opinion our free will has anything to do with physical suffering or disease.
Where do you get the idea that eliminating PEOPLE who have a disease or disability makes the world a better place?
On what do you base your idea that this is exercising “good stewardship”? Your feelings? or something else?
I’d love if you backed up some of your spiritual opinions with some KJV scripture as well.
Bethany, when we are talking about the meaning of Scripture and the nature of God, there are no short, simple easy answers. I don’t know how you could read my response to whether God created a perfect world and not understand my response to “Do you believe in sin nature which was brought to us by Adam?” And there is no short answer to that either. My first and second grade teacher taught us not to give simple answers to questions, which repeat most of the words in the question, but to think about the question, and give answers that are thorough. So that’s what I do. It won’t stay within neat little boundaries, but its not evasive, its expansive.
It takes a good deal of speculative imagination to read into even an English translation of Genesis that somehow Adam’s sin cast imperfection on the entire world, and was inherited by all his descendants. Nor is this viewpoint evident anywhere in the Gospels. It appears to have been an original thought by that sometimes useful apostle, Paul. I’ve gotten some help the last few years understanding the original Hebrew meaning of Genesis, and some other books, from an Orthodox rabbi who has studied the original for forty years, based on the way they have been understood and taught for over 2000 years. He tells me that the “fruit of the tree of knowledge” was indeed allegorical. It was not an apple (Genesis doesn’t say apple), nor was it physically eating a fruit of a living tree. And the serpent was a serpent — Satan is another entity entirely.
Every human being has an animal component and a nefesh chayyim, loosely translated “living soul.” (You will find a similar concept in C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. Originally, they were loosely attached, with divine intention that eventually they would be fully integrated. The difference? Most of us know what it is like to drive a car — we have sensors and lights and needles and we look out windows and into mirrors and we turn the steering wheel… What if we could feel, with our own nervous systems, the engine, the wheels turning, if the car was a part of us? They wanted to integrate too soon, and were overwhelmed by the animal instincts. Yes, that had a lot of negative consequences, but it wasn’t inherited “sin,” nor did it “bring death into the world.” Humans were always going to die, eventually — why else would the command in Genesis have been to keep them away from the tree of life, lest they also become immortal?
Incidentally, the same rabbi explained that while abortion is not murder, because the nefesh chayyim is not attached, it is bloodshed, and prohibited, to Jews and gentiles alike. Obviously I look at it a little differently.
It has really been eye-opening how much meaning has been lost in translation, even from Hebrew to Greek, much less Latin, English, etc. For example, I asked why Jeptha had been allowed to burn his daughter on the altar, and the man was shocked that such an abomination had gained credence in Christian teaching. It seems a Hebrew word meaning “elevated to the service of God” was translated into a Greek word meaning “offered as a burnt sacrifice.” It seems Handel wrote an opera for nothing. No, it would absolutely not have been acceptable to God. Nothing was more firmly prohibited than human sacrifice.
I did answer your question about why God permits suffering. Apparently it doesn’t compute for you, but it is my answer. God hasn’t programmed everything that happens. Part of God’s purpose is answered by letting things happen, and letting us learn to deal with them. I have my doubts that God designed the mosquito, but it was within the realm of possible outcomes when God said “Let the waters bring forth the living thing that hath life” (most likely the first cell).
Finally, you are putting words in my mouth about eliminating people who have a disease. This is what you would like to believe. And, based on the premise that the zygote is a person, it is how you would describe what I do believe. I believe that a zygote is not a person, and until all the basic organs necessary for a metabolically independent, self-aware person have been formed, it is not too late to start over. You of course disagree.
Bethany, when we are talking about the meaning of Scripture and the nature of God, there are no short, simple easy answers. I don’t know how you could read my response to whether God created a perfect world and not understand my response to “Do you believe in sin nature which was brought to us by Adam?” And there is no short answer to that either.
I didn’t “understand” the answer because you didn’t answe that question, Siarlys. Maybe you think you answered it, but you didn’t. Yes or no is pretty short and easy. Either you do or you don’t agree that sin nature was brought to us by Adam’s fall.
My first and second grade teacher taught us not to give simple answers to questions, which repeat most of the words in the question, but to think about the question, and give answers that are thorough.
You definitely make sure that your answers are long, but what you don’t seem to understand is that it is not the length of them that makes them thorough. In order for your answer to be thorough it has to actually address what I said, and each paragraph should follow a particular thought and not go from random thought to thought that comes to your mind. It is hard to keep track of what your point is because you are making, because you seldom stick to one point at a time.
It takes a good deal of speculative imagination to read into even an English translation of Genesis that somehow Adam’s sin cast imperfection on the entire world, and was inherited by all his descendants.
Okay you are addressing the question now. Thank you.
I disagree that it takes any imagination at all to find that Adam’s sin cast imperfection onto the world and was inherited by his descendants, as it is repeated throughout the old and new testaments time and time again, but I’m glad to finally know where you stand on this question. Your anwer was “no, you disagree with that premise.” Thank you for providing me with an answer to that question so that I can move on.
Every human being has an animal component and a nefesh chayyim, loosely translated “living soul.” (You will find a similar concept in C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. Originally, they were loosely attached, with divine intention that eventually they would be fully integrated. The difference? Most of us know what it is like to drive a car — we have sensors and lights and needles and we look out windows and into mirrors and we turn the steering wheel… What if we could feel, with our own nervous systems, the engine, the wheels turning, if the car was a part of us? They wanted to integrate too soon, and were overwhelmed by the animal instincts. Yes, that had a lot of negative consequences, but it wasn’t inherited “sin,” nor did it “bring death into the world.” Humans were always going to die, eventually — why else would the command in Genesis have been to keep them away from the tree of life, lest they also become immortal?
Actually ,that’s not why they were commanded not to touch the tree, Siarlys. Not at all. Read the chapters in Genesis again. They were already immortal. God said that they were not to touch of the tree, because if they did, they would die.
Satan tempted Eve to eat of the fruit by appealing to the idea that she would be like God, knowing both good and evil. Immortality never came up as a reason…I don’t know where you got that idea.
It has really been eye-opening how much meaning has been lost in translation, even from Hebrew to Greek, much less Latin, English, etc. For example, I asked why Jeptha had been allowed to burn his daughter on the altar, and the man was shocked that such an abomination had gained credence in Christian teaching. It seems a Hebrew word meaning “elevated to the service of God” was translated into a Greek word meaning “offered as a burnt sacrifice.” It seems Handel wrote an opera for nothing. No, it would absolutely not have been acceptable to God. Nothing was more firmly prohibited than human sacrifice.
God never commanded Jeptha to sacrifice his daughter, Siarlys. Jeptha sacrificed her, not by a command of God, but because he had promised to sacrifice whatever first greeted him. He erroneously believed that he had to kill his daughter because of his vow, although God has always condemned human sacrifice.
Finally, you are putting words in my mouth about eliminating people who have a disease.
Siarlys, I wish you would not be dishonest. You have described different scenarios in which you would be perfectly fine with aborting a disabled baby in the third trimester for disability or disease, and even have advocated killing a newborn anencephalic baby because you don’t “think of it as a baby” (if it had no brain). That is called “eliminating people with disease”, like it or not.
This is what you would like to believe.
No, actually what I would like to believe is that you actually cared about people and didn’t want to kill people off for something they can’t do anything about.
It’s a shame that your own words have led me to believe otherwise.
And, based on the premise that the zygote is a person, it is how you would describe what I do believe. I believe that a zygote is not a person, and until all the basic organs necessary for a metabolically independent, self-aware person have been formed, it is not too late to start over. You of course disagree.
I don’t think human beings have to have a certain degree of “self awareness” to be persons. You do…that is where we differ.
Your last paragraph is pretty close to the truth. That is a good part of where we differ. Its not enough by itself, but self-awareness is very significant. I don’t much care about what a woman decides to do with a zygote within her, because the zygote will never know what happened to itself. Zygotes naturally miss the uterine wall and are flushed out in the menstrual cycle all the time. Of course if the woman WANTS a baby, it makes all the difference in the world, at that stage, although there is not a lot she can do to make sure it DOES attach successfully.
I’ve answered elsewhere your continued misunderstanding about the third trimester; I won’t repeat it here.
You misunderstand about Jeptha, or, as he is properly known in the original Hebrew, Yiftach ha-Gil’adi. First, under no circumstances would he have been allowed to carry out a vow to burn his daughter upon the altar. Human sacrifice was and is abomination, period. You should see the first email I got back when I had a chance to ask a rabbi the question that had always bothered me. “G-d forbid that so horrible a thing should ever have happened! The apparent source of your confusion is a fundamental misunderstanding by your translator of a technical term in Hebrew which no one with a living sense of the Hebrew language would be guilty of.” A literal translation of the Hebrew of his vow is ‘that which will exit form my house toward me on my return in peace from the sons of Ammon, will be ha-Shem’s and I shall elevate him/it an elevation.”
If you look at even the KJV, it is quite clear that what happened was that she asked for two months to mourn her virginity, not her imminent death, and that the result of the father keeping his vow was that “she knew no man.” This is an example of a subject on which I know next to nothing, so I have willingly accepted the word of a genuine and unmistakable expert, who, not coincidentally, settled in a manner most respectful of God a question which had long troubled me.
It is true that IF what came forth was a lamb, it would have been offered on the altar (if unblemished). That may have contributed to the confusion in translation. The rabbi noted that there is no tradition of monks or nuns in Judaism, they take seriously the command to be fruitful and multiply, and the tragedy for the father was that his only daughter would have no children, so his line would come to and end. That was what he did according to his vow — dedicate her to a life of service to God that was quite uncharacteristic of Jewish custom. It was indeed a rash vow.
Likewise, Satan is not mentioned in the first five chapters of Genesis, although later non-Jewish commentators suggested a connection. Revelations was written by a Greek anti-Semite, not by Jesus’s disciple John.
And as for the trees, there were two trees in the Garden. Look at Genesis 3:22. God was quite determined that the man and the woman and their descendants should not taste of the tree of life (different from the tree of knowledge of good and evil), should not acquire the ability to live forever, which they did not have and were not intended ever to have.
Incidentally, the woman was not made from a man’s rib. The original Adam was androgenous, made in the image of God. The Hebrew word which has been mistranslated rib actually means side. God took one side of the Adam, and from it made a woman, what remained being the man. Adam means humanity. Ish is man and isha is woman. That contains a clue to why God is not pleased with homosexual unions — they simply do not reunite the Adam, the image of God.
Your last paragraph is pretty close to the truth. That is a good part of where we differ. Its not enough by itself, but self-awareness is very significant. I don’t much care about what a woman decides to do with a zygote within her, because the zygote will never know what happened to itself.
A newborn baby or a third trimester baby who is killed will never know what happened to him/herself either. That doesn’t make killing a baby or third trimester unborn baby acceptable.
Zygotes naturally miss the uterine wall and are flushed out in the menstrual cycle all the time.
Newborns die of SIDS all of the time. Third trimester babies are stillborn all of the time. This is irrelevant to their humanity.
Of course if the woman WANTS a baby, it makes all the difference in the world, at that stage, although there is not a lot she can do to make sure it DOES attach successfully.
Thinking of it as a baby doesn’t change what it actually is.
You can’t look at an object in your house, and think “That’s a baby”, and then magically it will transform into a baby. Either it is a baby or it’s not.
You misunderstand about Jeptha, or, as he is properly known in the original Hebrew, Yiftach ha-Gil’adi. First, under no circumstances would he have been allowed to carry out a vow to burn his daughter upon the altar. Human sacrifice was and is abomination, period…
If you look at even the KJV, it is quite clear that what happened was that she asked for two months to mourn her virginity, not her imminent death, and that the result of the father keeping his vow was that “she knew no man.” This is an example of a subject on which I know next to nothing, so I have willingly accepted the word of a genuine and unmistakable expert, who, not coincidentally, settled in a manner most respectful of God a question which had long troubled me.
You could be right on that one. I haven’t studied the Hebrew or Greek as it pertains to that chapter. Either way, God never commanded a human sacrifice.
Likewise, Satan is not mentioned in the first five chapters of Genesis, although later non-Jewish commentators suggested a connection. Revelations was written by a Greek anti-Semite, not by Jesus’s disciple John.
I’m not sure where you got this information.
And as for the trees, there were two trees in the Garden. Look at Genesis 3:22. God was quite determined that the man and the woman and their descendants should not taste of the tree of life (different from the tree of knowledge of good and evil), should not acquire the ability to live forever, which they did not have and were not intended ever to have.
Where do you get the idea that Adam and Eve did not freely eat from the tree of life before the fall?
God told them they were free toeat of ANY of the trees in the garden, except for the tree of knowledge of good and evil. I think I can safely assume that they ate from that tree before their immortality was taken away from them as a result of their sin. There is no indication that they were prevented from the tree before the fall.
Incidentally, the woman was not made from a man’s rib. The original Adam was androgenous, made in the image of God.
The Bible never says this. The Bible says “Male and female created He them”.
But I do agree about homosexual unions, that they are displeasing to God. But my reasoning for why this is is different than yours.
And regarding Genesis 3:22 (just to clarify), this was a statement made AFTER the sin had already been committed.
Their sin had the penalty of death, and they had no right anymore to partake from the tree of life and live forever. But before the fall, they were free to eat from the tree of life.
Pure speculation Bethany. Yes, the command about keeping them away from the tree of life was indeed after the incident about the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. However, it is pure speculation that they were previously immortal. There is nothing Biblical which says they were.
A newborn baby is quite aware of what is happening to itself. It may not be capable of putting it into words, or describing it in speech, it may not remember two years later, but it is quite aware. I’ve held enough babies under a year, some within days of birth, to know that.
Anyway, we agree that God has never commanded human sacrifice.
What are your views on why God is not pleased by homosexual union? We also agree on “male and female created he them,” which is of course what Genesis 1:27 says, at least in English. But Genesis 2:21-22 talks about creating woman later, by taking a rib out of the man. The apparent inconsistency is one of the great conundrums of Greek, Latin, German, French, Spanish, English and other translations. The explanation I was given of the original Hebrew wraps up all the inconsistency. Two sexes was not an afterthought, it was intended from the very beginning.
Pure speculation Bethany. Yes, the command about keeping them away from the tree of life was indeed after the incident about the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. However, it is pure speculation that they were previously immortal. There is nothing Biblical which says they were.
And it’s not speculation to say that they were mortal or that Adam was created androgynous? My goodness, Siarlys. You began with speculation!
And I did say was that I can safely ASSUME that they were immortal, based on the fact that they were freely allowed to eat of that tree before being cast out of the garden.
A newborn baby is quite aware of what is happening to itself. It may not be capable of putting it into words, or describing it in speech, it may not remember two years later, but it is quite aware. I’ve held enough babies under a year, some within days of birth, to know that.
Have you ever held a 2nd trimester baby in your arms? They are quite aware of their surroundings too. I’ve seen preemie babies born at weeks that you think abortion is acceptable, and while they can’t put their feelings in words, they are quite aware. Who are you to say they don’t, just because you haven’t experienced it?
First trimester babies also may not remember two years later, but if they are pricked with a pin, they flinch and jerk away. They can also suck their thumbs. How do you know that they are not aware?
And don’t you realize how arbitrary and unscientific your story about feeling that you were connecting with that baby is, when trying to prove it’s humanity? There is biological evidence that is much more convincing.
What are your views on why God is not pleased by homosexual union? We also agree on “male and female created he them,” which is of course what Genesis 1:27 says, at least in English. But Genesis 2:21-22 talks about creating woman later, by taking a rib out of the man. The apparent inconsistency is one of the great conundrums of Greek, Latin, German, French, Spanish, English and other translations. The explanation I was given of the original Hebrew wraps up all the inconsistency. Two sexes was not an afterthought, it was intended from the very beginning.
What I don’t understand is why you expect me to accept pure speculation that Adam was created androgynous, but you scoff at me for assuming that Adam and Eve ate from a tree that God told them to eat from?
You yourself say only that we can “safely assume” that the man and the woman ate from “the tree of life.” (The woman wasn’t named Eve until after they were evicted from the Garden). I haven’t speculated that Adam was androgynous. I have presented, for whatever it may be worth, a summary of what I grasped from an explanation by a man who has spent 40 adult years studying the original Hebrew, and exegesis in Hebrew by masters of the original Hebrew. I’ve come to the conclusion that in matter of the Old Testament, this is the best source for the intended meaning. I do not, of course, take the same man as an authority on the New Testament, since the foundation of his faith is that Jesus was NOT the Messiah, who has yet to come.
Comparing what he tells me of the Old Testament, then looking at what I have available in English, it begins to make sense even of the English. For example, the ambiguity of Genesis 1:29… So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them. Well, was it man, or man and woman, and was it him, or them? If the King James translators, and various translators into Latin and Greek, failed to understand the Hebrew, which was not unlikely, and if the rabbi is correct in explaining that Adam was androgynous, then it makes a little more sense. But I’m not an expert. I find this explanation helpful and credible.
You yourself say only that we can “safely assume” that the man and the woman ate from “the tree of life.”
Yes, I worded it that way because it is an assumption based on what we know in the Bible. You however have made many assumptions without calling it such.
Just because a Biblical scholar said it doesn’t make it so. If the Bible doesn’t say Adam was created androgynous, then no matter how much you know, to say he was is still ASSUMING.
Genesis 1:29… So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them. Well, was it man, or man and woman, and was it him, or them?
That’s not ambigious.
Genesis 1:29…
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him (Adam),
…male and female created he them (Adam and Eve).
Why did you ignore this?
“Have you ever held a 2nd trimester baby in your arms? They are quite aware of their surroundings too. I’ve seen preemie babies born at weeks that you think abortion is acceptable, and while they can’t put their feelings in words, they are quite aware. Who are you to say they don’t, just because you haven’t experienced it?
First trimester babies also may not remember two years later, but if they are pricked with a pin, they flinch and jerk away. They can also suck their thumbs. How do you know that they are not aware?
And don’t you realize how arbitrary and unscientific your story about feeling that you were connecting with that baby is, when trying to prove it’s humanity? There is biological evidence that is much more convincing.”
In fact, let me add to that.
I have known many people to look into their dogs eyes, and feel a “connection” with them. Does that mean their dog is a human being?
Do you see how flawed your logic is? If you personally feel a connection with a baby, that is what makes it human in your eyes? That’s silly and arbitrary logic. Lots of people look at their newborn babies and don’t feel a connection. Does that mean their babies are hollow flasks, without yet having obtained a soul?
Once again Bethany, I marvel at how far pro-life people will go to advocate killing ten year olds, equating dogs and babies, or denying that the human emotion of holding and loving a baby is of any significance, just to try to concoct an argument that a zygote is the same as a baby. Logic doesn’t even enter into this, its grasping at straws without any logical progression.
As far as biological basis, I’ve said many times, once all the basic organs required for a human body to function are present, it is a baby, and entitled to protection. I don’t recognize that a hollow tube with three little bumps and no nervous system fits that definition. Is that biological enough for you?
I’m really not trying to respond, point for point and tit for tat, to every little thing you might have said, nor do I suggest that you have a duty to respond to me on such a basis. For example, I was genuinely interested in what your reasons are for thinking God is not pleased by homosexual unions, since you hint that your reasons are different from what I’ve stated here, but if you don’t find it a priority to answer my question, so be it. My life will not be unduly infringed because I don’t have an answer.
Your shallow response to what I’ve posted on precisely what Roe v. Wade does and does not say, your continued wilful ignorance and refusal to come to terms with how law works, your continued reference to “Doe v. Bolton” when no ruling at all was issued under that case name, further convinces me that examining each statement you make can become a waste of time. If you took the time to STUDY the legal cases you refer to, as Gerard does when he expounds on biology, (or to study the context in a chapter of Biblical verses you mention), we would have something to talk about. We might still reach different conclusions, but at least our conversation would mean something.
One reason I passed over the question about holding a second trimester fetus in my arms is that you’ve raised that on other posts, and I’ve answered it. I’m not going to duplicate. I have other things to work on.
Once again Bethany, I marvel at how far pro-life people will go to advocate killing ten year olds, equating dogs and babies, or denying that the human emotion of holding and loving a baby is of any significance, just to try to concoct an argument that a zygote is the same as a baby. Logic doesn’t even enter into this, its grasping at straws without any logical progression.
I’m sorry, but this paragraph doesn’t even really make sense.
Where in the world did any pro-life person advocate killing 10 year olds? Where did I equate a dog and a baby?
I often wonder if you are comprehending the things I write, or just reading what you want to hear into it.
I’m drawing on a number of posts by a number of people. The reference to killing ten year olds is not from an immediate comment by you. It refers to people who have rhetorically asked, if I’m willing to remove and destroy a 2 month old fetus, why not slit the throat of a ten year old child? It is a foolish syllogism for anyone who claims to be “pro-life” to pose.
You were not so homicidal in your analogy. I observed that I know from personal experience that a baby only a day or two after birth is self-aware, and you tried to compare that to staring into the eyes of a dog. Don’t you understand that dogs and human beings are two different things?
I’m probably not comprehending what you mean to say, but you are not expressing yourself in a very persuasive manner. I think it is because you jump on little details, rapidly, instead of taking time to think about it, and then offering a reasoned response.
I’m drawing on a number of posts by a number of people. The reference to killing ten year olds is not from an immediate comment by you. It refers to people who have rhetorically asked, if I’m willing to remove and destroy a 2 month old fetus, why not slit the throat of a ten year old child? It is a foolish syllogism for anyone who claims to be “pro-life” to pose.
It’s not a foolish analogy. Would it be foolish to ask someone who thinks newborns can be killed, whether they would be willing to also slit the throat of a 10 year old as well?
The ONLY difference between a newborn and a 10 year old is age of development.
The ONLY difference between a newly conceived embryo and a 10 year old is age of development.
You were not so homicidal in your analogy. I observed that I know from personal experience that a baby only a day or two after birth is self-aware, and you tried to compare that to staring into the eyes of a dog. Don’t you understand that dogs and human beings are two different things?
siarlys, that was the point. Sheesh. I am getting tired of explaining even the simplest of points to you when you pretend that you can’t even comprehend them.
I’ll try to explain it to you in simpler terms though.
You say:
1.) If I can look into it’s eyes and feel a connection, it’s a person
2.) Therefore, a newborn baby is a person
Is it not just as logical to conclude that
1.) If I can look into it’s eyes and feel a connection, it’s a person
2.) therefore, a dog is a person?
No, of course not! It makes no sense, and that was my point. Your story proves NOTHING.
And by the way, who are you to ask me whether I can’t tell the difference between a dog and a newborn?
You can’t even figure out what species a human zygote is! You refuse to call it a human being, even though it clearly is!
Your anecdotal story does NOTHING to scientifically prove the humanity of a newborn baby. THAT was my point.
Next time, try using something better than your FEELINGS…something like, you know, biology, for instance.)
And by the way, here is a good question for you to answer:
Some people DO think there is no difference between a dog and a newborn baby. So how exactly would you explain to them that a dog is not a human being, but a newborn baby is? What arguments would you use?
Surely you would not use the emotional connection argument, which they could also use as well.
Think bigger. Then maybe you’ll get the point I’m trying to make.
Analogies, as I’ve said before, are poor ways to establish proof of anything. Naturally, the more we dwell on analogies, the more we talk past each other. So let’s avoid the analogies, unless we can offer them purely for illustrative purposes, not as convincing proof.
I’ll take a stab at the difference between a dog and a human being. What immediately comes to mind are:
a) The woman active in PETA, who responded to a question about lack of broad public support by saying that it took a while for the civil rights movement to gain broad public support too, and,
b) The two ladies I saw leafletting outside RFK Stadium in D.C., when a circus was performing, with animal rights leaflets saying “Slavery is Alive and Kicking.”
My thought was, at the time I was a child, although I wasn’t hanging out in bars, there were bars where a black man would be served, but charged an extra dollar, because the glass would be smashed in the bottom of the garbage can, so no “white” person would ever have to drink out of the same glass. That is, sort of the way I feel about eating out of a bowl that some careless, inconsiderate person has used to provide a dog with water.
So, what these people are really saying is, it wasn’t a problem that we used to treat Negroes like dogs, the real problem is that we still treat dogs like we used to treat Negroes?
That doesn’t fully answer your question, its just the beginning of a foundation. Now I am open to the possibility that we are truly wronging the dolphins, because they may indeed be as intelligent as we are, although lacking in opposable thumbs and therefore in technology. But that doesn’t mean I want one sitting in my living room. We are two different species. And dogs are nowhere close.
Dogs cannot build their own house, create a can of perfectly nutritionally balanced dog food, write a symphony, play an instrument, bake a loaf of bread, plant a garden… all of which are mere empirics, but they add up to a picture bigger than the sum of its parts. If they could do all those things, independently of people, I would accept them as a species equal to our own, and deserving respect as such, but of course I would not marry one — we are two distinct species. I wouldn’t marry a baby either, but that is because there are age-appropriate functions in human beings, and a baby is neither attractive nor appropriate for marriage.
I know there are people who think dogs are cute, who love them, who find them inseparable companions. But dogs depend on us, or perform functions we have trained them for, they are never going to be capable of being the masters of our environment on whom we depend for care and sustenance and provision.
Most people who equate dogs and babies would not care much that humanity is made in the image of God. To use the Hebrew concepts, every living organism has a nefesh, but only human beings have a nefesh chayyim, as in “then man became a living soul.” But I would make that distinction.
I’ll stop there for now. There may be some response you’ve been waiting to make once I commit myself to an answer to this question. Your response may be worth trying to follow up on. I’ll check back tomorrow.
I’m truly not trying to insult you, Siarlys, but every time I ask you a question, you seem to miss the point entirely. You answer things that you want me to be saying, rather than what I am actually saying.
When I say “how do you prove that a dog is not a human being”, I am NOT asking, “How do you prove that a dog should not be valued in the same way as a human being is valued”
It is very simple, using basic biology, to explain the differences between a newborn human baby, and a dog. They are obviously not of the same species, and science can prove that.
In the same way, science can prove that a human zygote is a member of homo sapiens- a living human being.
Dogs cannot build their own house, create a can of perfectly nutritionally balanced dog food, write a symphony, play an instrument, bake a loaf of bread, plant a garden… all of which are mere empirics, but they add up to a picture bigger than the sum of its parts. If they could do all those things, independently of people, I would accept them as a species equal to our own, and deserving respect as such, but of course I would not marry one — we are two distinct species. I wouldn’t marry a baby either, but that is because there are age-appropriate functions in human beings, and a baby is neither attractive nor appropriate for marriage.
See, the problem with this argument is that a baby cannot build their own house, play an instrument, write a symphony, bake a loaf of bread, or plant a garden.
They have the POTENTIAL to do this later on, but they cannot do it when they are newborn.
(just as a human zygote cannot do these things yet either, but have the potential to do so in the future).
If you use the argument that it is the baby’s potential to do these things that makes it human, then you also have to concede that a zygote is a human being based on the same criteria.
And dogs have no potential to do any of the above, ever.
Doggie parents cannot do so, for themselves, or for their litter of pupplies. Doggie parents can raise up their puppies to do so when they are full grown.
Whereas, human babies are born to, and cared for by, human parents capable of all of the above, who can teach their children to do the same.
Stop looking for ways to equate dogs with human beings. It is a really back-handed way to make a very sad point.
I happened upon this blog and your discussion caught my interest. I happen to have a beautiful three year old daughter with Down syndrome. I’d like to clarify some misconceptions here, within the post made by SJ. Let’s start with the proper name. It’s Down syndrome, not Down’s syndrome (Dr. Down did not have an extra chromosome). I will plug in a few pointers in the text below …(** begins my response)
Bethany is expressing that she sees things very differently than I do. There is no answer to that except, that we disagree.
Gerard, your imputation of brutality comes down to a distinction which Bethany and I have sparred over before.
Down’s syndrome does not define a kind of person. It is not a race, or skin color, or geographically defined culture or a religion, nor is it an occupation (such as tanning leather) which made the practitioners “unclean” in ancient Israel, medieval Japan, and Aryan India.
Down’s syndrome is a disease. It is genes gone wrong. It imposes all kinds of hazards and suffering on those who have it. Rod Dreher recently ran a post asking, if there were a cure for Down’s syndrome, would you give it to your child. He and I, possibly with different philosophical underpinnings, both thought, as did many others, that this is a no-brainer. Of course you would.
***No, Down syndrome is not a disease. It is a set of characteristics that result from an extra 21st choromosome, the smallest choromosome in the human body. While it is possible for those who have Ds to have a higher risk for certain medical conditions (such as a heart defect), many are perfectly healthy. There is no increase in suffering. All humans have the potential for suffering; it is not any higher for an individual with Ds. I saw a recent survey come out of Canada. When parents of children with Ds were asked if they would “cure” their child, the response was this: 60% said they would either NOT cure their child (if given the chance) or were not sure. Here is the article : http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2009/11/down-syndrome-treatment.html While it may be hard for you to understand, I would be one of those parents who would not “cure” my child of Ds. There is no need, in my opinion, because there is nothing wrong with my daughter.***
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to “cure” a genetic disease. If a cure for Down’s syndrome, a complete cure which would adjust the chromosomes, remove the extra pair, restore normal gestation resulting in a human being with full normal function to be expected from 23 healthy genetic pairs, if that were possible, that would of course be the number one choice.
***As I explained above, it is a misconception to assume that parents would want to take away an extra chromosome in their child. Also, all of the chromosomes in an individual with Ds work perfectly fine, just as a typical person’s would. They simply have an extra one.***
If you respond further on this point, I must ask you to specifically address, do you object (on principle) to sorting out the sperm and egg in advance, so that when conception occurs it is free from Down’s syndrome? If you don’t, if you could accept such a procedure, then our difference is simply that you consider any stage from zygote on to be a human being. If you do object to even trying to make sure no zygote has Down’s syndrome in the first place, if you have fallen into the hideous rationalization that Down’s syndrome identifies a type of person which must continue to be expressed in the human population, under some twisted distortion of “diversity,” then we have a huge gulf between us.
***”Sorting out” the egg and sperm that may produce a child with Ds is impossible. For the sperm, it is impossible for obvious reasons….there are millions and how could you predict which would be carrying the extra 21st? For the egg is is also impossible because the extra 21st is added in during the last division process, just hours before conception. Also, in the case of about 10% of individuals who have what is called Mosaic Ds, the extra 21st comes later in the development, perhaps after the first eight rounds of cell division. Many people on this planet who have loved someone with Ds would tell you that the world is a BETTER place because of individuals with Ds, not the other way around. I guess this is a matter of opinion, and grace.***
The latter viewpoint should, logically, extend to a quota system requiring that in every generation, a certain number of families MUST bear children with ALS, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, because these genes have a right to be expressed in the population, or because “this kind of people have a right to exist too.” Nonsense. Insofar as we can do so without killing a live individual, anything we can humanely do to insure that these genes are not inflicted on future generations is on the same moral level as eradicating smallpox. The difference is that smallpox is induced from outside, while genetic diseases are inculcated into the very fiber of our being.
***If you are arguing to do away with those born with disabilities, than you must, logically, also argue to do away with those who become disabled later in life, through accident or stroke or disease. The undesirable are the undesirable. Why would it matter if they have experienced the birth process or not?***
Have I ever met people with Down’s Syndrome? Many. Those I have met were long since born, and abortion is not an issue for them. It never will be. Would I inflict what they suffer from on another baby if I could help it? Absolutely not. I would prevent it if I possibly could.
***Again, those with Ds do not suffer any more than those without Ds. It is a myth to say they do. If you’d like to take a peak at my darling, here is my blog. I promise you, she is NOT suffering http://partyofnine9.blogspot.com/ ***
Of course we differ on whether second trimester abortion is an appropriate remedy. To me, it is removing diseased tissue and starting over. You view it in the same manner I view killing a five year old who has a genetic disease — we both agree that is wrong — because you view any stage of gestation from zygote on as a human being entitled to protection, while I see a small window, 4-6 months, where there is still time to start over, we don’t have a baby yet.
***Start over? Once you are a mother or father, you will always be a mother or father. Death does not change that. The only differece between me and a mother who chose abortion is this: I get to enjoy the incredible blessings my daughter brings to my life while the mother who aborts quite often has a life-time of suffering over the loss of her dead child.
If you have any questions, please let me know. I’d be glad to continue to educate others on anything to do with Ds. If I do not know the answer, I will find out! Peace. Kris ***
Kris, thank you so much for your post!
(We had gotten a little off topic by the time you got here, so I’m glad you got us back on track.)
Your little girl is absolutely precious, and I know God has a special purpose for her – and she is perfect the way she is!
(P.s. I just noticed that I have also used the term Down’s syndrome instead of Down Syndrome- I wasn’t aware that it was incorrect. Sorry about that. I will be sure to fix that in any of my future posts! )
Stop looking for ways to equate dogs with human beings. It is a really back-handed way to make a very sad point.
I never equated a dog with a human being.
I’m interested in seeing your response to Kris’s post.
SJ,
I pulled your post.
Down Syndrome is not a disease. You may not say that here. It is a genetic condition, but not a disease state.
Down babies are not diseased. Period.
I will not allow posts to stand which deny or distort scientific and medical truth in order to set the stage for slaughter.
Alexandria may be a blog more suitable to truth denial and distortion.
Here we deal with medical facts.
Gerard, thank you!