Abortion Arguments You Shouldn't Make

It seems Ray has recently started to shift from evolution denialism to posts regarding abortion. I will spend several posts discussing abortion this month, probably from a perspective few are familiar with. As I wrote in an earlier post, I have only recently become both pro-abortion rights (legal) and pro-abortion (moral). I'll also offer a history of abortion and Christianity. As many are familiar, the Bible is silent on the matter of abortion -- as it is on many moral questions.

In this first post, though, I will just address a few of the arguments/statements I have seen posted in several blogs and comments to those blogs.

Arguments/statements that abortion rights advocates shouldn't use.
To preface this, a person is not the same as a human being. A person, in a legal and philosophical sense, is someone or something with rights. When we discuss at what point personhood is attached, we are discussing at which point the human has rights, philosophically speaking. The philosophical demarcation should, arguably, be the same as the legal demarcation. Just remember that a person is someone or something with rights -- just like a corporation or a church is, legally, a person.

"Anti-Choice"
Calling anti-abortionists "anti-choice" is as ridiculous as calling pro-abortionists "anti-life." Anti-abortionists aren't against choice; they just see the preborn as a person whereas you don't. To relate it to slavery, you could separate the sides as Pro-Liberty (anti-slavery) and Pro-Choice (pro-slavery) where the fundamental difference focused on whether blacks were persons. Calling abolitionists anti-choice is as ridiculous as calling anti-abortionists anti-choice.

Pro-Life versus Pro-Choice
To go in line with the above, we do our discourse a great disservice when getting behind the banners of the sloganized terms "Pro-Life" and "Pro-Choice." We are all in favor of both. Addressing these labels reminds me very much of the clash of the Federalists and the Republicans in 1800. Thomas Jefferson, as he so often did, addressed these labels eloquently in his inaugural address:

But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

It may be more cumbersome, but the appropriate labels of pro-abortion rights and anti-abortion rights should be used. If you insist on using the less-than-correct labels, then at least capitalize them properly and stray from falling into the above trap.

Caricaturing the Opposition
Don't caricature the anti-abortionist position as masturbation being a Holocaust of sperm or scratching your nose to being a Holocaust of skin cells. It would be as fair as a caricature taking the birth-demarcation beyond there to any arbitrary point, including past infancy or even past death.

If this is a response to the specific argument of "potential life," then this is something fair to bring up as a discussion topic on the difference. Too often, though, this is a general response issued to anti-abortion rights advocates.

The Contradication of Anti-Abortion Rights and Pro-Death Penalty
Don't say that it doesn't make sense for someone to be anti-abortion rights and pro-death penalty -- that statement just makes no sense. If the preborn is a person, then its right to life remains intact as it is guilty of no crime. A convicted murderer, on the other hand, has lost his right to life the moment he violated another's rights.

Misrepresenting their position like this would be just like saying "it doesn't make sense that you're for abortion rights but also for imprisonment... you say a mother has liberty while a convicted felon does not? Can someone say 'contradiction'?"

Those who march under the banner of "Pro-Life" advocate life for those who have the right to it, just the same as those who march under the banner of "Pro-Choice" advocate choice for those who have the right to it. Those who are against abortion but for the death penalty no more advocate life for a convicted felon than those who are for abortion advocate choice for a convicted felon to choose not to be imprisoned.


Arguments/statements that abortion rights opponents shouldn't use.
Let's not forget the cringeworthy things that those on the other side make. When I was an anti-abortionist and in fact participated in a debate on it, nothing irked me more than sharing the proverbial stage with those who voice these arguments.

Slippery Slope to Infanticide
Accepting abortion is no more of a slippery slope to allowing infanticide than opposing abortion is a slippery slope to prohibiting contraception or prohibiting abstinence. The boundary is firmly fixed at conception as the opposite boundary is fixed at birth.

The Pro-Life Label
What I noted on these labels above applies equally here. In fact, anti-abortionists should want to shed the label of Pro-Life. Those on the pro-abortion side have misconstrued it horribly so as to make a mockery of the stance in terms of the death penalty and "potential life."


I could continue on for each, but I think that this covers the major points (with the notable omissions of gender and religion related arguments). As mentioned, the next abortion post will be on Christianity and abortion.

Religions Don't Make Sense, Part II

This is a series of posts of unorganized thoughts on why religions, specifically Christianity, don't make sense to me. Go to: Part I.

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Here's another thing that doesn't make sense about the Christian religion specifically: why didn't God make Adam so he wouldn't sin? There's two characteristics about God that you cannot get around: omnipotence and omniscience. Let's go with omniscience first. If God created Adam the way he did, he created him to sin as, before he even started creating, he knew Adam would sin. The answers I have seen to this don't make sense either. This is yet another place where they throw out free will. "God couldn't know because he created man with free will." I think this is abandoning the omniscience claim, but we will go ahead and run with it. This answer doesn't make sense either. Again, if you accept the Bible (and as a Christian you must), then you know that it is laden with prophecies. Are you telling me that the men who were pretending to be prophets could see the future whereas a god could not? This just does not make sense. Furthermore, Jesus purportedly foretold the future as well, so for those who think that Jesus was God in a man-costume, this eliminates that whole argument. For those who think that Jesus was simply in fellowship with the Almighty, then you get back to the problem of man knowing and god not.

On to the omnipotence characteristic that doesn't make sense. No matter how he created man (with or without free will), he could have made man better. He could have made a super version of Jesus, if you will. He could have made a near clone of himself. Instead, he created man very inferior hardware and with deficient software. This doesn't make sense to me.

Then to the omnibenevolence characteristic, I find answers to the problem of evil to be lacking sense. What kind of sick god would create evil in man and in nature? The free will canard is often tossed out here as well. "God is perfectly good, he doesn't create evil. God created man with free will and man sinned and creates sin." I've always been perplexed by this sort of answer. God can't create evil, but he can create evil-creating beings?


Religions don't make sense to me... to be continued.

The Racist, Sexist, Adulterous Bigot

As a major fan, I was excited to see that Real Time With Bill Maher had returned with a new episode. Sadly, it ended on an ignorant note that has happened several times before on his show. He discussed Edwards's extramarital affair and how it shouldn't disqualify him from office or even a place in politics. That, I am in full agreement with. He then proceeded to list a few well known Presidents who had had affairs -- and I knew where he would be heading.

"Jefferson" passes his lips, and I cringed.

There is no greater figure in American History, I think, around whom more ignorance is centered. This is particularly discomforting as Jefferson wrote voluminously and went to painstaking lengths to preserve his writings and correspondences. I, myself, have about half a dozen collections of his writings on various subjects.

Despite the excellent records we have, people, on a large scale, have many false beliefs concerning Jefferson: that he was a Christian, that he advocated slavery, that he committed adultery, that he only favored equal rights for whites, etc.

I remember one particular lecture in my senior English class wherein my instructor said something along the lines of: "When Jefferson wrote that 'all men are created equal' he of course meant only white, land-owning men." No, he of course meant all persons are created equal, regardless of gender, race, or status.


Maher has made several incorrect comments over the years concerning Jefferson, including concerning his views on slavery and his relationships with slaves.

A little known fact -- which is rather shocking to me -- is that this year, 2008, we are celebrating two hundred years of having the slave trade banned. Who was the President who banned this abominable trade January 1, 2008 -- the earliest date allowed by the Constitution? The same person who had wrote a scathing indictment against the English King for the practice in the Declaration of Independence:

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidels powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. He has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

It was Jefferson, one of our earliest, greatest abolitionists. But people are largely ignorant of his long career fighting for the abolition of slavery, so it is no surprise that they are ignorant of this 200th year milestone.


Their education of Jefferson in school is comprised of three pieces of information: 1) He wrote the Declaration. 2) He was the third President. 3) He owned slaves. Why shouldn't we also, then, be surprised at their shocking ignorance of his relationships with slaves, then, too, when their education on that subject is acquired through idle, uninformed cultural references -- like the skit in one Family Guy episode where Jefferson beckons for all his slave children to join him in the family photo? They are like the blind man receiving the description of an awesome sight from the testimony of another blind man.

Even if Jefferson fathered one or more of Sally Hemings children, it was confined to this one particular slave -- it is commonly accepted that she was the half-sister of Martha Jefferson. And even if he had fathered one or more of Sally Hemings children, it occurred years after Martha's death, thereby making it by definition not an adulterous affair.

I find it ironic that this was discussed in reference to a politician being attacked by his political opposition on the exposure of this affair. The Sally Hemings controversy has its roots in Jefferson's first term when the scandalmongerer Callendar published relentless attacks on Jefferson, after Jefferson had refused him a Postmaster appointment he had requested.


Jefferson is just one subject that particularly gets under my skin as it is such a source of misunderstanding and misinformation. False claims about Jefferson are as frequently made as the widely-held false belief that America was founded on Christianity -- and usually Jefferson plays a component in this false belief when he is claimed as a Christian. There are literally hundreds, even thousands, of biographies on Jefferson. There's no reason for such astounding ignorance.

Analogous Absurdity

Last night I spent about an hour typing up some of my thoughts on why religions, starting with Christianity, don't make sense to me in a stream-of-consciousness style, and then spacing them out over several posts. By coincidence, Ray has chosen to write this morning on just one of the many absurdities of Christianity. A reader poses a question:

I would like to ask you a couple of relevant questions pertaining to the 'sacrifice' of Jesus and it's purpose. Please logically explain why an omnipotent, omniscient, and omni benevolent God would need to sacrifice Himself (as Jesus) to Himself (God) in order to forgive man of sins against Him (God)? The entire premise seems totally absurd.

I think Ray's explanation was quite inadequate. He threw out a number of analogies, but they missed the centerpiece of the question: God sacrificing himself to himself in order to forgive man's sins (as defined by him) against him.

Ray begins with an analogy that the atheist in his stupor has been going 80mph while drunk in a 15mph zone and Ray has sold everything he has (including his quarter of a million dollar home) to pay the fine to the police to get the atheist released. I think he could have made a better analogy to address Chuck's question with his later comment about the dog. Observe:

My dog, vastly inferior to me, has just been born as a puppy. I lay down some laws for him. A few of these commandments is that he cannot poop in the house, he can't chew my sneakers, and he can't get in the trash. Furthermore, he cannot even think about it, or else he has committed the crimes "in his heart." Breaking any of these commandments will result in me torture, maim, and beat him for all of his life (this isn't a true comparison, as the punishment should be torture for all eternity). Since the transgression is visited upon the offspring, all of his offspring will be tortured as well.

One day, I decide to cook a steak and throw it into the trash and then set the trash can right in front of him. Then, he thinks about getting into the trash, thus breaking the commandment. I love my dog, though, and I don't want to have to torture him for all eternity. So, I sacrifice myself by having me tortured and then killed, so as to forgive the dog his sins against me for me.

While the analogy is not perfect, as it cannot be, it is much closer than anything Ray offered. One of the big problems about it is that I'm not a god, so I can die. God killed himself to "pay the fine" even though God cannot die. Death as a punishment on God would be like clipping my nails is a punishment of torture on me. Perhaps that would make the analogy truer: to redeem the dog of his thoughtcrime, I have punished myself by clipping the nail off the end of my pinky.


The major problem with all of Ray's analogies concerning Jesus -- not only in this blog post, but in his ministry in general -- is he always uses an example of paying a monetary fine. This is a false analogy as it doesn't resolve the absurdity of vicarious redemption. A truer analogy would be that I have run a red light and have been imposed a fine of continual, unending torture. My sister doesn't want to see me endure that, so she kills herself, thereby redeeming me. It is absurd.


The first commenter to the post writes:

So: an omnipotent omniscient God creates flawed beings that offend him so much, he sacrifices his own son in lieu of payment from the failure of his flawed creation.

Still doesn't make sense, Ray.

To which Ray tells him to go back and reread the concluding line of his post:

"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."

Hey, the emperor has nothing on!

Religions Don't Make Sense, Part I

Last night my atheist group put on a free cookout for the campus and it went off quite well. I spent the evening working the room, speaking to almost everyone. I had many interesting conversations with those who showed up. Contrary to how Ray and most Christian leaders portray atheists, we are not this intolerant group of people with their minds made up that there are no gods and that our big gripe is others' beliefs in the existence of some particular god. One of my favorite conversations of the evening was with a deist who wants to join the group.

I have no problem at all with some sort of deistic belief as it is rational in all other regards. Why, though, show up at an atheist group if one believes in the existence of a supreme being? When I send out an email to our mailing list (now swelling at the number of 200), I address it to those "skeptical of religions and religious superstition." This was very much the individual in question. We had a nice conversation on the history of Christianity.

I posted a couple days ago about the history of the name Jesus. Most of the Christians I have met do not know that history. It is not surprising, though, as there's much in the history of their religion that they do not know and is part of the reason this particular religion doesn't make sense to me. Here is just a general, unorganized list of why religions don't make sense to me. They are not religion specific, or rather they are not denomination specific.

I will post this in a series over several posts. Remember, these will be unorganized and general in particular.

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One of my favorite posts from Pvblivs's blog is one where he asks an ethical question. A summary of it is that he is a highly advanced alien who has high expectations of his arrival. He's fully able to communicate his existence and expectations to Earth directly, but instead he has simply provided a sketch of his craft in crayon and some residents of insane asylums are providing instructions to everyone on how to meet his expectations. I agree with Pvblivs that I see this as highly analogous to the Christian Bible...

Why, if the Christian God exists, doesn't he reveal himself to us? If he wants us to believe in him, why not just reveal himself? Why play games? I've heard several answers for it and none of them make sense to me. If you accept the Bible (which you have to if you're Christian), God was revealing himself all throughout the Old Testament. He didn't make a stranger of himself -- although, his presence must have not been all that convincing if every time he turned his back his favorite tribe were off worshiping some other god. Or better yet, he revealed himself through Jesus. Jesus did not make a secret his magic powers. Obviously, he had no problem revealing himself then. He knew godly things, he performed godly magic tricks, he flew around in the air... why not do that now? He obviously didn't have a problem before.

But wait. He has done it again since then. He did it again to Muhammad, yet another example of him playing favorites. For some reason, though, Muhammad's tale is unconvincing to Christians, even though they have even more reason to believe in the Qur'an than the Bible. And let's not forget, he did it again since then with Joseph Smith. Here's a man who lived less than 200 years ago and we have solid proof that he existed. Why do Christians make such ado about the sketchy evidence for the existence of Jesus when there is such solid evidence for the existence of Joseph Smith?

But, let's get back to the question of why he won't reveal himself. Here's a popular response: it would violate our free will. Again, this question makes no sense as he already made a habit of violating our free wills before when he spent centuries supposedly revealing himself. I suspect that this canard is just supposed to be a steak thrown in front of the atheists to get us distracted and off guard. I suspect this doesn't make sense to those who propose it as they pray nonstop and claim that God answers their prayers and interferes in their little lives, thus violating free will. I'll revisit free will later.


Religion makes no sense to me... to be continued.