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the truth about abortion

livefree

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Jesus never talks about abortion, as it is recorded in the Bible. Yet most modern Christians, particularly Fundamentalists, seem to labor under the misapprehension that the Christian Church has always condemned abortion as murder. Did you know that until 1869, abortion in the first trimester was pretty much OK with the Catholics? They didn't officially think that the 'soul' entered the embryo until later in the pregnancy. A very strange idea arose fairly recently, historically speaking, that said that God throws newly made infant souls down into bodies at conception, when there are only two cells in the body, and if they are not born and don't get to hear about Jesus, then they have to hang out in Limbo for all eternity. This is a sort of comic book version of Christianity and totally perverts the merciful and loving God that Jesus talks about, into a sort of demonic god who arbitrarily condemns little babies for something someone else does. Comic book Christianity. The people who believe that particular superstition don't seem to have actually understood the 'good news' that Jesus taught - the truth that we are all deathless spirit, and that, in our essence, we are all children of that divine spirit, sometimes called God, that is the true being at the heart of everything,. No 'soul' is ever lost through the death of a body. Most cultures, including our own until just recently, have believed that the divine spark unites with the physical body at birth or late in the pregnancy. Most of the wisdom teachings of the world say that souls are old and wise, not newly created whenever a sperm cell happens to meet an egg, and that they don't have to associate with a body that isn't going to come to term. In any case, 'souls' don't die with the death of the body. A tissue cluster the size of your fingernail may be a potential vehicle for a human birth but no one is in the vehicle yet so when one of these zygotes is aborted, no one has been "murdered", as the comic book christians so hysterically claim. Did you know that a large percentage, perhaps more than half, of all fertilized human eggs, all potential human bodies, are spontaneously and naturally aborted and flushed from the womb? Does that make Mother Nature (or God) the biggest abortionist of all? This whole current controversy over abortion is based on bad, politically motivated theology and is being hyped by political power trippers who manipulate the credulous and ignorant among us by claiming that "babies are being murdered". The same people who seem so fierce to protect the "lives of the unborn" are also the ones supporting Bush's illegal war which has killed tens of thousands of innocent women and children in Iraq. Which shows just how much they really care about "right to life". Their whole position stinks of hypocrisy. They are against abortion but they are also against sex education and availability of birth control, two things that reduce the need for abortions. The truth is that, apart from their befuddled belief that a soul is "lost" whenever a fetus doesn't come to term, most abortion opponents are sucked into that position, not because of some great concern for life, but because they were subjected to enormous sexual repression when they were growing up. So now anything to do with sex produces a negative reaction and they are easily manipulated by those politicians who know how to push their hot buttons. Subconsciously they feel that if a woman gets pregnant, indicating that she had sex, then she is guilty and SHOULD be punished by forcing her to bear the child, even, for many of these misguided nutjobs, in the cases of rape and incest.

Here is a short, partial history of abortion.
"In ancient times, the "delayed ensoulment" belief of Aristotle (384-322 BCE) was widely accepted in Pagan Greece and Rome. He taught that a fetus originally has a vegetable soul. This evolves into an animal soul later in gestation. Finally the fetus is "animated" with a human soul. This latter event, called "ensoulment," was believed to occur at 40 days after conception for male fetuses, and 90 days after conception for female fetuses. The difference was of little consequence, because in those days, the gender of a fetus could not be determined visually until about 90 days from conception, and no genetic tests existed to determine gender. Ultrasound devices were millennia in the future. Thus contraception and abortion were not condemned if performed early in gestation. It is only if the abortion is done later in pregnancy that a human soul is destroyed. By coincidence, this 90 day limit happens to be approximately equal to the end of the first trimester, the point at which the US Supreme Court decided that states could begin to restrict a woman's access to abortion.

There were three main movements within early Christianity. Two did not succeed: Jewish Christianity and Gnostic Christianity. The third, Pauline Christianity, flourished and evolved into the Christian Church. It was surrounded by a mosaic of other competing religions within the Roman Empire, including Judaism, the Greek state religion, Mithraism, the Roman state religion, and various Mystery religions. With the exception of Judaism, most or all of the competing religions allowed women to have abortions and allowed parents to strangle or expose (abandon) new-born babies as methods of population control. There are many writings, letters and petitions of early Christian philosophers and Church Fathers which equated abortion with infanticide and condemned both as murder.

St. Augustine (354-430 CE) reversed centuries of Christian teaching in Western Europe, and returned to the Aristotelian concept of "delayed ensoulment." He wrote that a human soul cannot live in an unformed body. Thus, early in pregnancy, an abortion is not murder because no soul is destroyed (or, more accurately, only a vegetable or animal soul is terminated). He wrote extensively on sexual matters, teaching that the original sin of Adam and Eve are passed to each successive generation through the pleasure generated during sexual intercourse. This passed into the church's canon law. Only abortion of a more fully developed "fetus animatus" (animated fetus) was punished as murder.

Early in the 13th century, Pope Innocent III stated that the soul enters the body of the fetus at the time of "quickening" - when the woman first feels movement of the fetus. After ensoulment, abortion was equated with murder; before that time, it was a less serious sin, because it terminated only potential human life, not human life.

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) also considered only the abortion of an "animated" fetus as murder.

Pope Sixtus V issued a Papal bull "Effraenatam" in 1588 which threatened those who carried out abortions at any stage of gestation with excommunication and the death penalty. Pope Gregory XIV revoked the Papal bull shortly after taking office in 1591. He reinstated the "quickening" test, which he said happened 116 days into pregnancy (16½ weeks).

In the 17th century, the concept of "simultaneous animation" gained acceptance within the medical and church communities in Western Europe. 9 This is the belief that an embryo acquires a soul at conception, not at 40 or 80 days into gestation as the church was teaching. In 1658 Hieronymus Florentinius, a Franciscan, asserted that all embryos or fetuses, regardless of its gestational age, which were in danger of death must be baptized. However, his opinion did not change the status of abortion as seen by the church.

Pope Pius IX reversed the stance of the Roman Catholic church once more. He dropped the distinction between the "fetus animatus" and "fetus inanimatus" in 1869. Canon law was revised in 1917 and 1983 and to refer simply to "the fetus." The tolerant approach to abortion which had prevailed in the Roman Catholic Church for centuries ended. The church requires excommunication for abortions at any stage of pregnancy."

http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_hist.htm

Copyright © 1997 to 2004 incl. by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance

Author: B.A. Robinson

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
 
To the preceding excellent post, I'd like to add this:
The preachers might CLAIM that souls come into existence when an ovum is fertilized, but there are logical problems. For example, fertilization is a purely physical process involving lots of molecular biochemstry -- and ANYTHING that can be created by purely physical means can also be destroyed by purely physical means. It is logically impossible for an immortal soul to be created by the fertilization process. Well, then, some preachers know this, and claim that God creates the souls when fertilization happens. Really??? What about the significant percentage of fertilized eggs that just happen not to implant in a womb? What about the eggs that divide for a time, and then split into separate cell-clusters that eventually become identical twins? What about separate clusters of cells (including fraternal twins!) that actually merge together, forming a "chimeric" human (a relatively recent discovery in human biology)? What about the ones that contain genetic flaws so severe that the fetus dies after a couple of months, and then gets miscarried? Is God so mechanical as to mindlessly create souls for ALL fertilized human eggs, just because fertilization happens to have occurred? Is human biology/biochemistry so unlike that of all those soulless insects out there that a zygote/embryo/fetus cannot live without a soul for a while, say until long after fertilization (and any twinning/subtwinning/chimerism)? And have you ever heard about "sensory deprivation chambers"? A full-fledged soul jammed into an embryo is going to spend months without a sense of touch, smell, hearing, taste, sight, or even proprioception. No nevous system will exist for months, that is! It is well documented that humans spending more than a week in a sensory deprivation chamber can go stark staring mad. What kind of God would do that to an innocent soul, anyway? Finally, does God love a mindless soulless fetus so much more than a mindful ensoulled adult pregnant Free-Willed woman that, even while omnisciently knowing the woman is likely to seek an abortion, God will create a soul for that fetus anyway, JUST so the woman can then be condemned if the abortion is done?
 
Excellent post, now where are the "pro-lifer" responses to this one?
 
The Real McCoy said:
Excellent post, now where are the "pro-lifer" responses to this one?

I'm pro-life, but I'm not a Christian. I don't believe in organized religion.
 
The Real McCoy said:
Excellent post, now where are the "pro-lifer" responses to this one?


I don't think there will be many, it explains quite intelligantly their own rationale except it makes sense and there isn't really any hate or hatefull insults, which in my opinion is what they really respond to.

The self proclaimed rightious usually start speaking in tounges when one riles their demons.
 
Saboteur said:
I don't think there will be many, it explains quite intelligantly their own rationale except it makes sense and there isn't really any hate or hatefull insults, which in my opinion is what they really respond to.

The self proclaimed rightious usually start speaking in tounges when one riles their demons.

Which side is doing the flaming in this thread?
 
mpg said:
I'm pro-life, but I'm not a Christian. I don't believe in organized religion.
We're ALL pro-life, miles. Life is good. That doesn't make death bad. On Earth, everything that is born, dies. Death is an integral part of life. Who we really are though, that doesn't die when the body dies. The only thing that can be said to really die with the body is our bundle of thoughts about who we are. But those thoughts aren't who we are in the first place, so losing them isn't the big deal it looks like now from within that limited identification. No one can prove this to you, you have to look within and see for yourself, but the truth is that who you are, who we all are, is the one deathless spirit that transcends birth and death.
I'm not a 'Christian' either, although I can hear some spiritual truths in the words Jesus spoke, truths that should be the foundation for the 'organized Christian religions' but no longer seem to be. Rather than focusing on "loving everybody", "loving your neighbor", and "treating everyone the way you would want to be treated", much of the fundamentalist nonsense that is being sold as 'Christianity' these days seems to focus on feeling judgmentally superior to everyone on Earth who isn't just like them, freaking out over anything to do with sex, supporting war-mongering politicians, and waiting to get 'raptured' directly to Heaven so as to avoid the messy unpleasantness of actual death (which they're terrified of).
The con men who push the hot buttons on the 'religious right', don't care about the "rights of the unborn". They care about money and power. "Murdering babies" is just a slogan to motivate their ignorant followers who don't understand life or death or spirit.
We're all pro-life. It's just that most of us have what is both a more rational and a more traditional view of the question of when a human life begins. Without invoking Catholic/Fundamentalist dogma about souls entering the fertilized eggs right after the sperm cells enter, and then those souls being somehow 'lost' if those cell clusters don't come to term, just what is your reason, as a 'pro-lifer', for opposing the deliberate termination of one potential vehicle for a human life, especially when so many of these small cell clusters are flushed out quite naturally by the human body? I'll say it again: no one is home yet in an unborn fetus so no one is "murdered" or "lost" when one is aborted.
 
livefree said:
The truth is that, apart from their befuddled belief that a soul is "lost" whenever a fetus doesn't come to term, most abortion opponents are sucked into that position, not because of some great concern for life, but because they were subjected to enormous sexual repression when they were growing up. So now anything to do with sex produces a negative reaction and they are easily manipulated by those politicians who know how to push their hot buttons. Subconsciously they feel that if a woman gets pregnant, indicating that she had sex, then she is guilty and SHOULD be punished by forcing her to bear the child, even, for many of these misguided nutjobs, in the cases of rape and incest.

True... but abstinence is still important to some and would solve many of the world's problems. [edit] Had to throw this in there... that was a pretty low blow, so much for not flaming.

Now... I must ask you three questions before I can argue your points.

First, Do you believe that God knows everything?

Second, Are you an animal rights activist?

Finally, Why should an embryo be punished for the crimes of a madman (in the case of rape)?
 
Brutus said:
True... but abstinence is still important to some and would solve many of the world's problems. [edit] Had to throw this in there... that was a pretty low blow, so much for not flaming.

Now... I must ask you three questions before I can argue your points.

First, Do you believe that God knows everything?

Second, Are you an animal rights activist?

Finally, Why should an embryo be punished for the crimes of a madman (in the case of rape)?
One: I know that God IS everything and that nothing exists apart from God and that there is no separation.

Two: No, not particularly. I would agree that humankind's treatment of animals is often unethical and cruel.

Three: Do you even realize that you take your assumptions to be conclusions, in the way you frame your question? My argument in this thread is that an 'embryo' is not a 'someone' in the first place, so there isn't "anyone" to "be punished" or to be saved or to be anything, because there isn't a human person there yet. "Have you stopped beating your wife?"
Turn your question around.
Why should a full grown human person, a woman, with a life, a mind and emotions, who has been raped, be punished with the added pain of being forced to combine her genetic material with the sperm of some perverted animal and then be forced to nurture within her body for 9 months, at some risk to her health, this unwanted and unchosen zygote, which isn't a person with a life or a mind or emotions? Has she no rights to her own eggs and no right to choose with whom to have children? Why exactly should the rights of a clump of cells the size of a fingernail with no nervous system, no brain, no mind, and no experiences, trump the rights of a real person, particularly one who has been deeply abused and injured by one of the most vile personal violations that humans can commit??? Answer those questions and we can talk some more.
 
FutureIncoming said:
I'm waiting for a pro-lifer to successfully take up this challenge:
"Define "person" to be Universally accurate, regardless of physical nature, to distinguish people from mere animals, anywhere.
For example, if God exists, is non-biological, and is a person, then God is a person because {--put definitive criteria here--}.
After that, please explain how unborn humans are so different from mere animals that they should be classed as persons, too.
Good Luck! ?




A socially constructed moral category that denotes the inclusion criteria and salient characteristics that distinguish human beings from other forms of life and thus specify the individuals to which we owe particular moral obligations, i.e., those obligations we have to others due to their status as persons. In general, there are two ways of defining personhood. Philosophically, personhood is generally defined by some list of essential properties by which we recognize a human being as a person. Though these lists vary, they often include such characteristics as consciousness, the ability to reason, self-movement, self-awareness and a capacity to communicate. The second way of defining personhood is more theologically oriented and entails some relational interpretation of what it means to be a person. In this sense, personhood is often conceived of in terms of one’s ability to have relationships with other human beings .
 
The Real McCoy said:
Yes, but "pro-life" is a term generally reserved to those who oppose abortion.
Well, the anti-abortion folks do try to unjustly reserve that term for themselves in order to imply that their opponents are 'pro-death'. But that's just a propaganda trick. We people who support a woman's rights to have control over her own reproductive system, to choose with whom and when to have children, and to have some basic privacy in making decisions that are nobody else's business because there's no other actual person involved but the woman, we aren't 'pro-death' or 'anti-life', we just don't believe this superstitious nonsense that 'souls' are lost whenever a zygote doesn't come to term.
Tell me this. Why is it that those who label themselves 'pro-life' seemingly have so much concern for the lives of the 'unborn' but then turn around and show no concern at all for the 30,000 actual children who painfully starve to death each and every day of the year on our planet Earth?
 
FISHX quoted my signature line (see at bottom of this Message), and then wrote: "A socially constructed moral category that denotes the inclusion criteria and salient characteristics that distinguish human beings from other forms of life and thus specify the individuals to which we owe particular moral obligations, i.e., those obligations we have to others due to their status as persons. In general, there are two ways of defining personhood. Philosophically, personhood is generally defined by some list of essential properties by which we recognize a human being as a person. Though these lists vary, they often include such characteristics as consciousness, the ability to reason, self-movement, self-awareness and a capacity to communicate. The second way of defining personhood is more theologically oriented and entails some relational interpretation of what it means to be a person. In this sense, personhood is often conceived of in terms of one’s ability to have relationships with other human beings."

How close attention were you paying to the part of what I wrote that specifies "Universally accurate"? If there are any non-human extraterrestrial intelligences Out There, then does what you wrote above allow any of them to be called "persons"? Regarding "one's ability to have relationships with humans", will any of those ETs STILL be allowed to be called "persons" if the human species happens to become extinct? I dare say that your definitiion needs improvement, from a more objective viewpoint! But thanks for trying!
 
livefree said:
One: I know that God IS everything and that nothing exists apart from God and that there is no separation.

Two: No, not particularly. I would agree that humankind's treatment of animals is often unethical and cruel.

Three: Do you even realize that you take your assumptions to be conclusions, in the way you frame your question? My argument in this thread is that an 'embryo' is not a 'someone' in the first place, so there isn't "anyone" to "be punished" or to be saved or to be anything, because there isn't a human person there yet. "Have you stopped beating your wife?"
Turn your question around.
Why should a full grown human person, a woman, with a life, a mind and emotions, who has been raped, be punished with the added pain of being forced to combine her genetic material with the sperm of some perverted animal and then be forced to nurture within her body for 9 months, at some risk to her health, this unwanted and unchosen zygote, which isn't a person with a life or a mind or emotions? Has she no rights to her own eggs and no right to choose with whom to have children? Why exactly should the rights of a clump of cells the size of a fingernail with no nervous system, no brain, no mind, and no experiences, trump the rights of a real person, particularly one who has been deeply abused and injured by one of the most vile personal violations that humans can commit??? Answer those questions and we can talk some more.

Actually the third question wasn't really important at all. My attack is actually going to come from the first question, so here goes. This is mainly... attacking the belief that God is the biggest abortionist ever. Obviously (because God knows everything), God knows which eggs are to develop into human beings and which eggs are going to be expelled from the female body. So... I would argue that God wouldn't give souls to the eggs that aren't going to develop into babies and would give souls to the eggs that are. Even if the soul isn't in the embryo yet, terminating the embryo before it has a chance to become a child of God is against God's plan, and destroying a potential is therefore immoral--just like how animals don't necessarily have souls (you may believe it you may not, I don't), but you should still treat them with respect because God created them.

To answer your third response, I'd like to believe that forms of life are more important than emotions. Also, any woman who is thinking about getting an abortion because it threatens her life is a greedy wench who shouldn't be having children in the first place.

P.S. I haven't stopped beating my wife.
 
Last edited:
I'm waiting for a pro-lifer to successfully take up this challenge:
"Define "person" to be Universally accurate, regardless of physical nature, to distinguish people from mere animals, anywhere.
For example, if God exists, is non-biological, and is a person, then God is a person because {--put definitive criteria here--}.
After that, please explain how unborn humans are so different from mere animals that they should be classed as persons, too.
Good Luck!

Hmm... I think that someone religiously inclined would have to answer that people have souls... whereas animals do not. Which is where the usual crossroad (abortionists and anti-abortionists) comes into play--when do humans recieve their souls?

Personally, I believe that the only thing that distinguishes us from our animal counterparts is our physical appearance and cognitive power. The main reason that I am against abortion is because it doesn't give the embryo a fair chance to have a say--which is the same reason why the mentally handicapped and animals should not be picked on. That's my spin on it... now I have a challenge for you.

Define justice to be universally accurate.
Then explain why terminating a life (though unborn) serves justice.
 
Brutus said:
I'm waiting for a pro-lifer to successfully take up this challenge:
"Define "person" to be Universally accurate, regardless of physical nature, to distinguish people from mere animals, anywhere.
For example, if God exists, is non-biological, and is a person, then God is a person because {--put definitive criteria here--}.
After that, please explain how unborn humans are so different from mere animals that they should be classed as persons, too.
Good Luck!

Hmm... I think that someone religiously inclined would have to answer that people have souls... whereas animals do not. Which is where the usual crossroad (abortionists and anti-abortionists) comes into play--when do humans recieve their souls?

Personally, I believe that the only thing that distinguishes us from our animal counterparts is our physical appearance and cognitive power. The main reason that I am against abortion is because it doesn't give the embryo a fair chance to have a say--which is the same reason why the mentally handicapped and animals should not be picked on. That's my spin on it... now I have a challenge for you.

Define justice to be universally accurate.
Then explain why terminating a life (though unborn) serves justice.

That's been done to death.
 
livefree said:
Well, the anti-abortion folks do try to unjustly reserve that term for themselves in order to imply that their opponents are 'pro-death'. But that's just a propaganda trick. We people who support a woman's rights to have control over her own reproductive system, to choose with whom and when to have children, and to have some basic privacy in making decisions that are nobody else's business because there's no other actual person involved but the woman, we aren't 'pro-death' or 'anti-life', we just don't believe this superstitious nonsense that 'souls' are lost whenever a zygote doesn't come to term.
Tell me this. Why is it that those who label themselves 'pro-life' seemingly have so much concern for the lives of the 'unborn' but then turn around and show no concern at all for the 30,000 actual children who painfully starve to death each and every day of the year on our planet Earth?

Everybody knows that the terms "pro-life" and "pro-choice" were created by propagandists who were trying to make the other side look bad, but on the other hand, they've become the accepted terms to describe each group. If I can call the pro-choicers "pro-choice", then you can let us pro-lifers call ourselves "pro-life". All of this is neither here nor there. By debating semantics, you dodged the point of my first post, and the point of this thread.
 
mpg said:
That's been done to death.

Not up to the challenge then? Answer the question instead of dodging it with an insult.
 
Brutus said:
Actually the third question wasn't really important at all. My attack is actually going to come from the first question, so here goes. This is mainly... attacking the belief that God is the biggest abortionist ever. Obviously (because God knows everything), God knows which eggs are to develop into human beings and which eggs are going to be expelled from the female body. So... I would argue that God wouldn't give souls to the eggs that aren't going to develop into babies and would give souls to the eggs that are. Even if the soul isn't in the embryo yet, terminating the embryo before it has a chance to become a child of God is against God's plan, and destroying a potential is therefore immoral--just like how animals don't necessarily have souls (you may believe it you may not, I don't), but you should still treat them with respect because God created them.

Do you believe using birth control is destroying a potential?
 
[edit - misread your post] Yes, I feel that birth control is also destroying a potential, and immoral.
 
Brutus said:
[edit - misread your post] Yes, I feel that birth control is also destroying a potential, and immoral.

Then I propose this question: by not having sex with and impregnating a random female stranger, am I destroying a potential?
 
Of course not, that would go against God's plan of having stable monogomous relationships.

You should first have a stable relationship, get married, then have children (or not in this case).
 
I need to ask a question, why do you pro-lifers keep jumping around? I have two posts that were basically looked over and not refuted. Please look back and respond to them, or at least consider the reasoning behind them.

Brutus said:
Actually the third question wasn't really important at all. My attack is actually going to come from the first question, so here goes. This is mainly... attacking the belief that God is the biggest abortionist ever. Obviously (because God knows everything), God knows which eggs are to develop into human beings and which eggs are going to be expelled from the female body. So... I would argue that God wouldn't give souls to the eggs that aren't going to develop into babies and would give souls to the eggs that are. Even if the soul isn't in the embryo yet, terminating the embryo before it has a chance to become a child of God is against God's plan, and destroying a potential is therefore immoral--just like how animals don't necessarily have souls (you may believe it you may not, I don't), but you should still treat them with respect because God created them.

To answer your third response, I'd like to believe that forms of life are more important than emotions. Also, any woman who is thinking about getting an abortion because it threatens her life is a greedy wench who shouldn't be having children in the first place.

P.S. I haven't stopped beating my wife.

Brutus said:
Hmm... I think that someone religiously inclined would have to answer that people have souls... whereas animals do not. Which is where the usual crossroad (abortionists and anti-abortionists) comes into play--when do humans recieve their souls?

Personally, I believe that the only thing that distinguishes us from our animal counterparts is our physical appearance and cognitive power. The main reason that I am against abortion is because it doesn't give the embryo a fair chance to have a say--which is the same reason why the mentally handicapped and animals should not be picked on. That's my spin on it... now I have a challenge for you.

Define justice to be universally accurate.
Then explain why terminating a life (though unborn) serves justice.

Please... I don't put things on this board to hear myself argue. I put my thoughts on the board for them to be refuted and thought over. Thanks for your consideration.
 
To Brutus:
I've been away from the 'Net for a couple days. Regarding your references to souls in Messages #15 and #16 of this Thread, I strongly recommend you go back and read Message #2. It does NOT make sense to think that God puts souls into zygotes, and may not make sense for God to put souls into any fetus younger than 6 months. Regarding your opinions about "potential" in Messages #15, #16, #21, and repeated in #24, you should SERIOUSLY think again. IF potentials MUST be fulfilled, then what of your own potential to fall down a staircase and break your neck? Regarding your reference to "God's Plan" in Message #23, HOW DO YOU KNOW that monogamous relationships are God's Plan? Weren't the Hebrews God's Chosen People, who routinely practiced polygamy? Did you know that the Jews continued practicing polygamy up until approximately 1000AD, and then they instituted a thousand-year ban (in order to get along better with the persecuting Christians) which recently expired? And don't forget the Muslims, who also are allowed to be polygamous.

Here's something I originally posted elsewhere, regarding beliefs (I recommend you choose yours carefully!):

Christians who are pro-choice may simply not believe everything they are told by the preachers.
They have been told that God gave them a brain to use, to analyze their experiences, and to sort out the wheat from the chaff. From inside their own heads they can see that they DO have minds that can analyze experiences, and decide what was good and sensible and what wasn't.
So some Christians are told about the Earth being Created a few thousand years ago, and laugh in the preachers' faces. Ditto with respect to the Flood. And so on. To believe that God planted all that evidence for Evolution of the Universe, galaxies, stars, planets, Life, and humanity -- and directly Created the lot in six Acts -- that is to believe that God is a liar, see? Not to mention wimpy, if six Acts were needed when a really powerful God could have done it in one. So, better to belive that only one Act was needed, setting off the Big Bang, and that God, being omniscient, KNEW that humanity would be an inevitable consequence of the evolutionary laws built into the resulting Universe. Simple and logical, and reason enough to laugh at the preachers!
 
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