Pastor Protection Bill derail

[Cow Poke]

As I said, my criteria of interest is the level of cognition of the fetus/infant, and a useful comparison is how it compares to animals. If it's less-aware than the animals that we kill on a regular basis, then I don't overly object to it's killing. But if it's more aware than even the most intelligent animal, then I would object.

While I'm not a biologist, my understanding of the basics of the situation, is that the human fetus stays mentally under-developed compared to most animals right up until birth. This is because humans walk upright rather than on all fours which causes the human birth canal to be a lot narrower than in most animals. A lot of animals are born pretty much fully-functioning, as their brains develop extensively in the womb. However the human baby's brain gets squeezed a lot as it travels through the much narrower birth canal, which would cause substantial brain-damage if there brain were already developed, so instead the brain undergoes very little development in the womb and develops almost entirely post-birth, with the result that human babies are utterly unable to fend for themselves when first born, unlike many animal babies. As a result, human babies are born with a cognitive level far lower than most animals. Extensive brain development then occurs in the age range 1-4 years old. Almost nobody has even a single memory from when they were younger than about the age of 3. During this period of rapid cognitive development, the baby increasingly gains cognitive capability bringing it on par with various animals, and then beyond them.

So if I had to give a clear answer I'd say age range 1-4. As such, I've got no inherent objection to post-birth-abortion / infanticide / call it whatever you will in the first couple of months after birth if there is some sort of good reason for it. If I was writing a law, I would probably want to draw the line in the sand at 3 months post-birth, as beyond that there's probably enough cognitive development beginning to occur that we're headed into gray areas, and there doesn't seem likely to be any medical motivations to want to explore those gray areas further.

May God have Mercy on your wretched soul.

[Darth Executor]

May God have Mercy on your wretched soul.

What soul?

[Cow Poke]

What soul?

I'm hoping there's one in there somewhere, and that he's just posting crap to get an argument.

[MaxVel]

I was born into a Christian family, and spent the first 20-something years of my life attending Church every Sunday and was a member of various interdenominational Christian groups. When I prayed for Jesus to come into my heart at the ages of 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 etc, I certainly didn't know what Christians generally thought about gay rights and abortion. I understand these are now big issues in the US, but I heard almost nothing at all ever about either issue when growing up in the Church here in New Zealand. Abortion is legal and regulated here, and while there are a few fringe Christian groups that are anti-abortion, that is not a mainstream position, and I don't recall ever hearing it mentioned in Church.

Uh… the biggest denomination in New Zealand is the Catholic Church, 11% of the population (and something like 30% of all Christians). I think the Catholic Church is against abortion. Next are the Anglicans (10%, 28% of all Christians),and they seem to pretty much be against abortion too. The rest of Christians in New Zealand are a mixture of denominations

So, at least 58% of New Zealand Christians attend churches whose official position is anti-abortion. You’re just ignorant of the reality, or willfully misrepresenting it.

When I first found out due to talking to other Christians on the internet that some Christians in the world thought the bible should be interpreted as anti-gay I was amused by their weird exegesis and discussed the topic with them, because I loved to discuss different interpretations of the bible. When I first found out around age 30 that the majority of Christians thought the bible was anti-gay and that gay people shouldn't be able to marry, I was absolutely furious - I felt tricked as they had never ever told me that this was a widespread teaching of Christianity.

Wow, just wow.
In all those years at church you never heard of Sodom and Gomorrah? Or read Romans 1, or 1 Corinthians 6, or 1 Timothy 1? If you had, you would have at least realized that there was just a possibility that Christians might interpret the Bible to say that homosexual acts are sinful. Unless you are extraordinarily obtuse. But more on that below…

Those passages, don't, on the whole seem to provide a lot of reasoning though. They simply express the opinion that it is wrong. So I'm not sure if that's what Jesse had in mind when I said I should "learn church history to know why Christians would naturally be against homosexual marriage", because while those passages tell me that a small number of the early Christians didn't like homosexuality, they don't really tell me much about why, or "why Christians would naturally be against homosexual marriage".

{post #16}



In his post #13 Jesse cited Didache, Tertullian and Jerome all saying that abortion is murder. SO why do Christians (from the earliest times) think that abortion is wrong? Maybe because they (those crazy religious types!) think murder is, well, wrong.

I don't disagree with this. What I've repeatedly asked about is your suggestion there is something in church history that tells us "why Christians would naturally be against" these things. Giving examples of them being against these things doesn't tell us why Christians would naturally be against such things. I'm still waiting for any form of explanation about why.

As far as I can tell on either issue there's pretty much just been Chinese-whispers: "We're against this, pass it on." There doesn't seem to have been an overly great deal of thoughtful reflection, and nobody seems to quite have an overly good explanation for why they're against those things.

{post # 23}



To Jesse –

Since then I've asked you about that statement over and over. In response all you've provided is insults and some goal-post moving and a very short list of quotes against abortion that told me nothing much at all about why Christians would naturally be against it or how I might have learned this from studying church history.

I know from previous discussions that your reading comprehension is pretty poor, but I've tried to be as clear on the subject as possible and repeated myself many times now. I guess if you've got nothing, you've got nothing.

{post # 29}

How ironic. Jesse is the one with ‘poor reading comprehension’. Yeah, right.



Starlight, are you really interested in truth? I think you ought to consider that, seriously, in light of your posting in this thread.

[Cow Poke]

Starlight, are you really interested in truth? I think you ought to consider that, seriously, in light of your posting in this thread.

I think Starlight is just interested in provoking a fight.

[Christianbookworm]

Starlight, the trolly wolly, must be hungry wungry. He keeps a trollin' for replies.

I hope he's just trolling. Either way, he is behaving in a wicked manner.

[MaxVel]

I think Starlight is just interested in provoking a fight.

That's not too smart on his part. He gets thoroughly beat down every time he does.

And I question the wisdom of a minority group (and it's allies) picking fights with, and provoking, the majority.

[rogue06]

Uh… the biggest denomination in New Zealand is the Catholic Church, 11% of the population (and something like 30% of all Christians). I think the Catholic Church is against abortion. Next are the Anglicans (10%, 28% of all Christians),and they seem to pretty much be against abortion too. The rest of Christians in New Zealand are a mixture of denominations

So, at least 58% of New Zealand Christians attend churches whose official position is anti-abortion. You’re just ignorant of the reality, or willfully misrepresenting it.

Considering that slightly less than half of the world's Christians are Catholic and they are strongly anti-abortion, the entire claim that only "a few fringe Christian groups" are anti-abortion and "that is not a mainstream position" is utter nonsense.

[Jesse]

Starlight, are you really interested in truth? I think you ought to consider that, seriously, in light of your posting in this thread.

No MaxVel, he really isn't. His modus operandi is to throw out a ridiculous opinion, then when he is shown to be wrong on it, deflect to another topic or ignore it altogether. I've spoken with him enough now to know he was never serious. He is incapable of having conversations in good faith.

[Christianbookworm]

Starlight. Is. A. Troll.

[Zymologist]

Considering that slightly less than half of the world's Christians are Catholic and they are strongly anti-abortion, the entire claim that only "a few fringe Christian groups" are anti-abortion and "that is not a mainstream position" is utter nonsense.

He seems utterly shocked that somebody could have so insane and ridiculous a belief as the position that infanticide is morally objectionable. I mean, how silly.

[Starlight]

Uh… the biggest denomination in New Zealand is the Catholic Church, 11% of the population (and something like 30% of all Christians).

That's a very new thing that's only happened in the last few years, it was always Anglicans previously. As I've mentioned elsewhere, when I was a Christian I regarded Catholics as having weird views on lots of issues and ignored them. Whenever I see them in the paper expressing whatever their latest silly view on social issues is, I just remind myself they're against condoms and then have a little chuckle.

Next are the Anglicans (10%, 28% of all Christians),and they seem to pretty much be against abortion too.

No. Firstly, do yourself a favor and never ever link to conservapedia except as a joke. Secondly, most Anglican churches are extremely liberal, and certainly are not anti-abortion. It's not relevant whether you can find it written on paper somewhere that they are supposed to be anti-abortion, because that's really not at all how the Anglican churches work on such things.

So, at least 58% of New Zealand Christians attend churches whose official position is anti-abortion.

You're confusing church attendance with writing a religious denomination on the census. They're not at all the same thing - around 50% of NZers write a religion on the census, but only around 15% attend church at all, with around 5% attending regularly. Catholics and Anglicans contain the largest numbers of nominal Christians - ie who are writing that on the census but not attending church.

I myself mainly attended 3 different Baptist churches, very occasionally a Presbyterian or Anglican church, and belonged to a few interdenominational (but implicitly Protestant) groups. As I've said, in 20 years of doing that I knew that there were some Christians who were anti-abortion but such teachings were never explicitly given to me from the pulpit that I can recall. Any views on homosexuality were basically never mentioned.

In all those years at church you never heard of Sodom and Gomorrah? Or read Romans 1, or 1 Corinthians 6, or 1 Timothy 1?

In general I read a lot of scholarly books that discussed the pros and cons of different exegesis of many passages, because that was a particular hobby of mine. So, depending on what age you're talking about precisely, I was aware of various different interpretations of these passages.

I certainly had read the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and had definitely read the other passages at some time or another in the normal course of my bible studies or reading. I don't recall ever having a "correct interpretation" of any of these passages expounded to me from the pulpit. (I recall joking that Baptist churches in general didn't seem to ever expound any "correct interpretations" from the pulpit on any subject: They were utterly convinced they completely believed the bible, and totally unsure about the correct interpretation of any verse.) The closest it ever got was when my church had a guest speaker, who was an "ex-gay" man who largely just talked about his life for 10 minutes including mentioning that he'd attended a church that held some (pro-gay) interpretations of the Sodom and Gomorrah story and David and Jonathan and he explained what those were. I simply mentally filed them away as 'possible interpretations' for future reference and didn't think much more about it at the time. That's one of only two times I recall homosexuality ever being mentioned in my church* - there was no context at the time that gave me any knowledge of what my own church's official views on the passage were, if any, and no context that told me how I was meant to understand this man's account of his life inside some sort of larger narrative of Christian-view-on-gay-people, simply his own account of his own life story and how his views had changed over time.

* the other was the pastor himself talking, who simply gave a 2 minute account in passing along the lines of "one of the people who came to me for counselling this week was gay and he said some interesting stuff. I suggested to him that being gay might be a choice, and he said he didn't feel it was for him." I recall thinking that the gay guy probably was in a better position to know if it was a choice for him than the pastor was, and that was about it. Again, missing was any context that would have told me "a lot of Christians, as a tenet of their faith, believe being gay is a choice" - doubtless in hindsight the pastor was assuming his audience also held his position that being gay is a choice so he said nothing to support his suggestion or to tell us that it was the "correct view", so at the time I simply assumed the pastor had made a suggestion to the man about a possible theory as to how the guy had become gay and that it was wrong in that instance.

In general it's not really possible to guess at what modern Christians believe based on an informed scholarly reading of the bible. Your implication that by my own reading of these passages I should have known that modern Christians were anti-gay has me laughing. Should reading Paul's commands about hair-length and jewelry meant I should have known that modern Christians were generally against woman wearing jewelry or having short hair? Should reading Jesus' teachings on divorce meant I should have known that modern Christians prohibited divorce? Should reading Jesus' teachings about giving all your money to the poor and then following him meant I should have known that modern Christians generally donated 100% of their wealth to the poor? Should reading the OT law's endorsement of slavery and the various statements in the NT that take slavery for granted meant that I should have known that modern Christians endorse slavery? Should reading God commanding the genocide of the Amalekites meant I should have known that modern Christians were pro-genocide? There is so, so, so much in the Bible that modern Christians read straight past without paying it any attention at all, that when studying the Bible I didn't generally ask myself "would modern Christians generally follow this?" because the answer would almost always be no. There's simply no way to guess-at what percentage of modern Christians hold any particular view about anything simply by reading the bible.

{post #16}
{post # 23}
{post # 29}

Thank you for compiling those. As can be clearly seen I have consistently asked him to explain his original statement repeatedly, which he has not dealt with.

[Adrift]

In general I read a lot of scholarly books that discussed the pros and cons of different exegesis of many passages, because that was a particular hobby of mine. So, depending on what age you're talking about precisely, I was aware of various different interpretations of these passages.

As a Christian studiously thumbing through those scholarly tomes, what were the differing interpretations you ran into on Sodom and Gomorrah, Paul's statements on woman wearing jewelry or having short hair, Jesus' teachings on divorce, and donating 100% of your wealth to the poor, the Bible's endorsement of slavery, and the genocide of the Amalekites? What were the names of those books? Who were their authors? When you read a passage that had you scratching your head, did ever seek the council of your pastor?

[Cow Poke]

Starlight. Is. A. Troll.

You are SO very judgmental!

[pancreasman]

I think you guys have been sucked in. IF Starlight is a troll or even just an extremist, why bother engaging at all? To this moderate, politically liberal, non-theist but not anti-Christian, he seems to be the rough equivalent of DE or Epoetker.