If life begins as conception, what about miscarriages?

[Pitchforkpat]

Would the loss be any different in those two cases? No. Would the two situations be morally equivalent? No. Just like a person dying of a heart attack vs a person dying because they were stabbed to death. The loss is the same, but one is a moral outrage and the other is not.

I'm not seeing a problem here.

Yes, but I’m not so much taking issue with the action involved with ending a life, but whether the ending of that life at that stage of development constitutes a tragedy. Leaders in the movement are fond of placing emphasis on the sacredness and preciousness of every fetus as the reason the ending of the life is to terrible, even if the fetus consists of a few cells. However, God designed the female reproductive system and this biological system ends the life of millions of these sacred and precious fetuses every year, so if they are so sacred and precious, the question is why would he design it to do this?

Bear in mind that I don't believe in endless suffering, so for me the worst case scenario here is that their existence is over…Will they be part of the new creation or not? I think the jury is out. I don't know

Ok, well that’s interesting. Let’s hypothetically say that they’re not part of the new creation. If they were people at the moment of conception, I’m wondering what the point would be in God creating a system whereby millions of unique precious individuals are created every year to exist for a few weeks then die without ever having any awareness of their existence and any chance to make a decision to follow God or not follow God.

Perhaps you could explain what the point of this could be.

I don't think there can be a blanket answer that will be correct, since one can (very probably) be a person with different genetic makeup from a normal human being.

But if you even entertain the thought that a given miscombination of chromosomes might NOT be a person, then it’s possible that LIFE does not necessarily begin at conception. It depends how miscombined the chromosomes are. So wouldn’t a conservative anti abortion Christian pretty much have to give a blanket answer of, yes, no matter how the chromosomes are miscombined, once an egg has been fertilized, it’s a person?



I’ll ask you another question since I’m curious how you would answer it. A morbidly obese woman greatly increases the likelihood of a miscarriage. Now if life begins at conception and she knows her obesity increases the risk of miscarriage, if she tries to conceive while obese, and this results in a greater number of miscarriages, is this not a form of manslaughter ?

[shadowmaster]

snip



I’ll ask you another question since I’m curious how you would answer it. A morbidly obese woman greatly increases the likelihood of a miscarriage. Now if life begins at conception and she knows her obesity increases the risk of miscarriage, if she tries to conceive while obese, and this results in a greater number of miscarriages, is this not a form of manslaughter ?

Same as driving a car:

http://abouthealthzone.blogspot.com/...k-of-road.html

[lilpixieofterror]

At the risk of incurring wrath and scorn, the usual arguments seem to me:

'good thing' = look, there MUST be a designer. Isn't God nice?

'bad thing' = the fall did it, God has nothing to do with it, it's YOUR fault.

Which is pretty much how the atheist say:

Good things happen = the wonders of humanity, technology, science, etc are responsible for these things and we don't need God to do it.

Bad things happen = ask Christians about why God allows suffering, while ignoring that humanity could avoid many of these disasters by following the principles that Christ laid down to start with.

[Sparko]

Now, in regards to question 2, if you think they go to heaven, you'd have another question to answer.
If God were truly moral he would design a system whereby the greatest number of people possible go to heaven. If people could get to heaven by spontaneous abortion then he would be morally obligated to have a many persons as possible aborted spontaneously. This would surely be higher than one in five. So why isn't this figure higher?

...

With new highly sensitive equipment, researchers have been able to demonstrate that many miscarriages occur without the woman even knowing she’s pregnant and that the rate of spontaneous abortions may be as high as 60% to 70%.

Well, there ya go Pat, you answered your own question. Heck by page 10, I am sure the miscarriage rate will be 99%!

[Mountain Man]

Which is pretty much how the atheist say:

Good things happen = the wonders of humanity, technology, science, etc are responsible for these things and we don't need God to do it.

Bad things happen = ask Christians about why God allows suffering, while ignoring that humanity could avoid many of these disasters by following the principles that Christ laid down to start with.

Reminds me of the old joke:

"When I get to heaven, I'm going to ask God why he didn't do more to alleviate suffering in the world!"
"When I get to heaven, I'm afraid he's going to ask me the same question."

[Pitchforkpat]

Well, there ya go Pat, you answered your own question. Heck by page 10, I am sure the miscarriage rate will be 99%!

So is your answer that spontaneously aborted fetuses all go to heaven?

[TimZim]

Which is pretty much how the atheist say:

Good things happen = the wonders of humanity, technology, science, etc are responsible for these things and we don't need God to do it.

Bad things happen = ask Christians about why God allows suffering, while ignoring that humanity could avoid many of these disasters by following the principles that Christ laid down to start with.

Is this meant to be funny?

Are you aware atheists, by definition, don't believe a god exists?

So they can't "need" something that doesn't exist.

When they ask you to ask God, they aren't trying to convince you that there is no God. You don't really believe they blame a god for suffering, do you?

I think that might be the OP's intention here. It is a tedious way of asking, "Doesn't it seem far more likely, given how many pregnancies end in abortion, that reproduction carries all the complications that are inherent in evolution? Don't you think a God wouldn't have designed so many people to make so many genetically unviable zygotes that result in spontaneous abortion? If this was God's handiwork, don't you think it is kind of unnecessarily messy?"

As for people that follow the principles Jesus espoused, it seems to me that atheists are far more likely to follow them then most Christians are.

[Hamster]

She was talking about a conversation or debate where an atheist wouldn't use positive events as evidence for God

Don't you think a God wouldn't have designed so many people to make so many genetically unviable zygotes that result in spontaneous abortion

What if God made it so people don't die at all... and they could also live in a paradise. . .

[Pitchforkpat]

What if God made it so people don't die at all... and they could also live in a paradise. . .

Because they need to get to make a choice between following God or not following God. So when do these zygotes get to choose?

So tell us where you think these millions of embryos go when they die? It’s only one of two places, Hamster. Shouldn’t be that hard.

[Hamster]

It’s only one of two places,

I didn't know you were omniscient, thanks for the tip, Charon

[Sparko]

is it time to talk about cat flipping yet?

[TimZim]

is it time to talk about cat flipping yet?

In high school, we called slutty girls, "Cat slingers." is that the same thing?

[phaedrus]

She was talking about a conversation or debate where an atheist wouldn't use positive events as evidence for God



What if God made it so people don't die at all... and they could also live in a paradise. . .

I understand that point, and I think it's a poor argument on either side because it involves cherry picking the data and what's called 'confirmation bias'. From our frame of reference both positive and negative things seem to happen. I don't think one can use either (or even both) as some kind of evidence for or against God.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

The problem of evil is a knotty theological issue but I know plenty of good theological thought has gone into it. In my previous post I wasn't criticising Christianity and its response to suffering in general but rather the superficial response one sometimes gets. Are there superficial atheist responses too? You bet.

[Catholicity]

Is this meant to be funny?

Are you aware atheists, by definition, don't believe a god exists?

So they can't "need" something that doesn't exist.

Thats funny, you can need something whether or not you believe it exists. You can say this for example "I choose to believe water does not exist" or "I believe water does not exist" It doesn't change whether or not you need it, indeed the body dies with out it. And so it is with God. You can say you don't believe He exists, it doesn't change the inherint need for Him. So the soul dies without Him.

I think that might be the OP's intention here. It is a tedious way of asking, "Doesn't it seem far more likely, given how many pregnancies end in abortion, that reproduction carries all the complications that are inherent in evolution? Don't you think a God wouldn't have designed so many people to make so many genetically unviable zygotes that result in spontaneous abortion? If this was God's handiwork, don't you think it is kind of unnecessarily messy?"

As for people that follow the principles Jesus espoused, it seems to me that atheists are far more likely to follow them then most Christians are.

As for the reason why roughly 10-25 percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, it is the natural way of typically a severe genetic defect resolving. Its painful yes, and seemingly unfair, but the reasons are all to often unknown. I can honestly say that if we look for it rather than saying God is so stupid to allow this? we'll find the glorious handiwork of the Master in everything

[Hamster]

I understand that point, and I think it's a poor argument on either side because it involves cherry picking the data and what's called 'confirmation bias'. From our frame of reference both positive and negative things seem to happen. I don't think one can use either (or even both) as some kind of evidence for or against God.

I agree you can't really tell if there's a god by looking at good things or bad things. If anything because we don't really know which bad things are actually the start of very good things and we don't know for certain that every good thing we experience won't have serious negative ramifications down the road. It's an infinitely complex web of cause and effect. What if the beautiful star that appeared above my house is actually a supernova that wiped out a peaceful civilization in a distant part of the galaxy? Not saying that we can't tell God exists from certain specific events, just that finding an extra M&M in the back seat of my car isn't necessarily the result of generous angels. Also, you're right about confirmation bias, it's the reason I can enjoy the show "Ghost Adventures" :-)