Prove To Me When God Gives A Child A Soul

[zeyeon]

[quote name='KnightofChrist' post='1132530' date='Nov 30 2006, 11:31 PM']
Yet another conflicting statement. Our "choices" are completely contrary to one another they can not co-exist, ether one is right or one is wrong. Ether the unborn African-American baby girl has the right to exist and can not have her body sold at market, or she is a sub-human, an "it", and can have "its" body parts sold to the highest bidder.
[/quote]

you live with a right wrong, black white mind state.

I believe each situation has to be examined as opposed to generalizing all abortions into one category. Generalizing is ignorant... as racisism has prooved.

Come live with me in the grey area lol

[KnightofChrist]

[quote name='zeyeon' post='1132535' date='Nov 30 2006, 11:36 PM']
you live with a right wrong, black white mind state.

I believe each situation has to be examined as opposed to generalizing all abortions into one category. Generalizing is ignorant... as racisism has prooved.

Come live with me in the grey area lol
[/quote]

Why do you have the right to exist? Why do you have self worth?

[uruviel]

Why do you have self worth? Because God gave you a path. God created you for reasons, He didn't need your help, He didn't give you worth, He created you because He loves you. He created you so that He could be in Heaven with you. He has a plan for you, He made you to fulfill that. Everyone has a right to exist. If one person has no right, then no one has a right.

[N/A Gone]

You are asking the wrong question. Under general christian understanding (*to the best of my knowledge universal, RC, GO, Anglican, lutheran and the majority of evangelical..of course no truth is certain in protestantism) The nature of man, and the soul is not a temporal thing. It is not something that grows and develops as much as it is, and the nature of that develops and grows. Thus, There is not a “moment” when the fetus gets a soul, rather the soul is always there. At the moment of conception, the moment of creation that soul is there, as a soul just as viable to the rights of creation as you or I am. Abortion or contraception is not about whether or not life exists, but whether or not it is worth protecting.

[Kosh]

I have an idea. If you're in doubt give the fetus the benefit of the doubt.

And murder of the innocent is objectively wrong. In any and all cases. Got a problem with that?

[uruviel]

[quote name='Revprodeji' post='1132550' date='Nov 30 2006, 10:50 PM']
You are asking the wrong question. Under general christian understanding (*to the best of my knowledge universal, RC, GO, Anglican, lutheran and the majority of evangelical..of course no truth is certain in protestantism) The nature of man, and the soul is not a temporal thing. It is not something that grows and develops as much as it is, and the nature of that develops and grows. Thus, There is not a “moment” when the fetus gets a soul, rather the soul is always there. At the moment of conception, the moment of creation that soul is there, as a soul just as viable to the rights of creation as you or I am. Abortion or contraception is not about whether or not life exists, but whether or not it is worth protecting.
[/quote]

I don't quite understand. How can there not be a moment when the soul is implanted in the being? If there is a beginning to the life, then there [i]must[/i] be a beginning to the soul. Thus it must be implanted in the being at a certain time. the Church teaches that that occures at conception. What the arguement today is all about is, whether or not your killing a human or not. Us Catholics know, of course abortions are killing human beings with souls just as anyone else here. Thus, it IS worth protecting. But you can't have something worth protecting if you don't believe that there IS a soul, there is something to protect. You have to prove to them that you ARE killing a soul, then it is worth protecting. The only problum is we can't prove with science that the soul is created at conception.

[Socrates]

[b]Jeremiah 1:5[/b] "Before I formed you in your mother's womb I chose you. Before you were born I set you apart. I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations."

[b]Luke 1:44.[/b] "For behold as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy."

And can you give me concrete proof that [i]you[/i] have a soul?

[Winchester]

[quote name='zeyeon' post='1132491' date='Nov 30 2006, 09:40 PM']
Pro choice proponnents will argue, and provide proof, that the embryo is not aware during the first trimester.
[/quote]
Yes, pro-choice proponants may well argue that and skirt the issue.

Are you willing to make awareness the measure of humanity?

[zeyeon]

[quote name='KnightofChrist' post='1132542' date='Nov 30 2006, 11:43 PM']
Why do you have the right to exist? Why do you have self worth?
[/quote]

Ok look... put it this way....I understand why you want to protect life....it's a very plausible arguement and I understand where most of you are comming from.

But do this for me... Imagine You wake up and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious pro football player. A famous unconscious football player. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the NFL has gone through all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the football player's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the NFL did this to you—we would never have permitted it if we knew. But still, they did it, and the Football Player is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But it's all good, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered, and can safely be unplugged from you." Is it morally incumbent on you to yeild to this situation? No doubt it would be nice of you if you did, a great kindness to say the least. But do you have to yeild to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says, "Tough luck, I agree, but you've now got to stay in bed, with the NFL player plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and football players are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him." I imagine you would regard this as outrageous, which suggests that something really is wrong with that plausible-sounding argument I mentioned a moment ago.

Edited December 1, 2006 by zeyeon

[Winchester]

[quote]Generalizing is ignorant... as racisism has prooved.
[/quote]

Oh the delicious (and multi-faceted) irony.

[Didacus]

[quote name='zeyeon' post='1132574' date='Dec 1 2006, 12:11 AM']
Ok look... put it this way....I understand why you want to protect live... it's a very plausible arguement...

But do this for me... Imagine You wake up and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious pro football player. A famous unconscious football player. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the NFL has gone through all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the football player's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the NFL did this to you—we would never have permitted it if we knew. But still, they did it, and the Football Player is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But it's all good, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered, and can safely be unplugged from you." Is it morally incumbent on you to yeild to this situation? No doubt it would be nice of you if you did, a great kindness to say the least. But do you have to yeild to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says, "Tough luck, I agree, but you've now got to stay in bed, with the NFL player plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and football players are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him." I imagine you would regard this as outrageous, which suggests that something really is wrong with that plausible-sounding argument I mentioned a moment ago.
[/quote]

1. The football player attached to me is not the result of a natural function of reproducing. There is a fundamental difference between "causing with medical intervention in the intent of preserving life", and "natural occurances producing life".

2. There is a difference between actively killing and letting someone die. Letting the football player die of his natural illness would not be immoral in this case but the infringement to my person would be.

3. By principal, should the situation occur, the importance of life, in my belief, would supercede my choice and thus I would yield but this hangs on one condition; that the football player recovers, and eventually becomes independant of me. If the situation is permanent then it becomes the unwilling sacrafice of a life to save another which is questionable to say the least.


football ain't a sport in my book

[Farsight one]

[quote name='zeyeon' post='1132574' date='Nov 30 2006, 11:11 PM']
Ok look... put it this way....I understand why you want to protect life....it's a very plausible arguement and I understand where most of you are comming from.

But do this for me... Imagine You wake up and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious pro football player. A famous unconscious football player. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the NFL has gone through all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the football player's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the NFL did this to you—we would never have permitted it if we knew. But still, they did it, and the Football Player is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But it's all good, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered, and can safely be unplugged from you." Is it morally incumbent on you to yeild to this situation? No doubt it would be nice of you if you did, a great kindness to say the least. But do you have to yeild to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says, "Tough luck, I agree, but you've now got to stay in bed, with the NFL player plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and football players are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him." I imagine you would regard this as outrageous, which suggests that something really is wrong with that plausible-sounding argument I mentioned a moment ago.
[/quote]Not the best analagy in the world. I would have been kidnapped against my will and done nothing to risk such an event. If a woman has sex, there is a risk. period. You take the chance, you be prepared to suffer the consequences. I, however, would have performed no conscious act to deserve to be kidnapped. (Just as the fetus has done nothing to deserve to die).

[KnightofChrist]

[b]When Babies Get Their Souls[/b]

[i]By Jimmy Akin[/i]

One of the arguments used by pro-abortion individuals is that it is permissible to kill an unborn child because nobody knows when the child gets a soul. Prior to this point, the unborn would not be a human being, and so killing it would not be homicide.

A parallel argument is sometimes made in the case of euthanasia. Some individuals confronted with a loved one who is comatose are counseled that the person’s soul is no longer present, that it has "already gone home to God," and so it is okay to kill the body that is left over.

Both of these arguments are wrong for a variety of reasons. To see why, let’s begin by looking at when the child gets a soul—i.e., at the point of ensoulment. There are four basic options for the time this can occur: at conception, between conception and birth, at birth, after birth. Let’s look at them in reverse order.



After Birth


This idea is so far out of Judeo-Christian tradition that it has always been recognized as an impossibility. It is, however, held in a small number of New Age circles. I have read that some New Agers state that some children do not get their souls until several days after birth. This harmonizes with a common New Age idea that souls get to choose the body in which they reincarnate. The idea in this case would be that there is no magic point where a child has to get a soul; it just depends on what soul chooses the body first.

Needless to say, this is a bizarre idea and is not likely to have much traction outside New Age circles. It may become more somewhat more common as abortion and euthanasia lead to a greater push for infanticide and thus a greater desire to rationalize away the humanity of a newly born child.


At Birth


Scarcely less bizarre than the post-birth hypothesis is the assertion made by some, supposedly based on Genesis 2:7, that one receives a soul and becomes a human when one draws one’s first breath. This fails to appreciate the Bible’s use of metaphor. Breath is a biblical metaphor for one’s spirit or life-principle—since the only living humans in everyday life are breathing humans—but breath and spirit are not the same thing.

The idea that one inhales a soul at birth would suggest that souls are made out of oxygen molecules and that we inhale them and exhale them all the time, two notions incompatible with biblical anthropology. Furthermore, modern science reveals that the unborn have been already "breathing" through the placenta (the pre-birth organ equivalent in function to the mouth), which has been taking oxygen, as well as nutrients, from the mother’s bloodstream.

Today the at-birth view is most often found among pro-abortion Christians. However, from a biblical point of view, it is clear that a child is human before birth. When Mary’s greeting reached Elizabeth’s ears in Luke 1, the unborn John the Baptist leapt for joy in his mother’s womb (1:44); we are also told that he was filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb (1:15). The unborn John the Baptist is also described as a brephos (Luke 1:41, 44), this being a Greek term meaning "a babe, an infant, a newborn child." These indicate the humanity of the unborn John the Baptist, who was then in the third trimester (1:36–40).


After Conception


It is sometimes claimed that Thomas Aquinas believed that the unborn did not acquire a soul until several weeks after conception. This is not true. Aquinas believed that the unborn had a soul (a rational, human soul) from the time it was conceived. However, following Aristotelian science, he (and a few other Western writers) thought that conception was an extended process that did not finish until forty or ninety days into the pregnancy: "The conception of the male finishes on the fortieth day and that of the woman on the ninetieth, as Aristotle says in the IX Book of the Animals" (Aquinas, Commentary on III Sentences 3:5:2).

Aquinas was correct that the unborn receive their souls at conception; he was merely mistaken on when conception was finished, due to the science available. As modern medicine has shown, conception in humans occurs almost instantaneously, as soon as the sperm and the ovum unite. This may occur as soon as twenty minutes after the marital act.

Aquinas and a few other medieval Western writers held the forty-to-ninety-day conception theory, but the biological discoveries of the nineteenth century proved it wrong. The view provides little comfort for abortion advocates today for a variety of reasons. It was based on primitive science. It draws a distinction between males and females that many today would regard as sexist. It was held by only a few writers. No single theologian (even Aquinas) speaks for the Church. The writers who favored the theory also opposed abortion as intrinsically evil at any stage.


At Conception


When viewed without the lens of Aristotelian science, the biblical view of ensoulment becomes clear. In the Old Testament, the psalmist assumes the humanity of the unborn child at conception when he says, "Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me" (Ps. 51:5, NRSV). This indicates that the unborn child possesses a sinful, fallen nature at the time of conception (though it does not manifest in actual, personal sins until later; cf. Romans 9:11). Since sin is a spiritual phenomenon, the presence of a sinful nature indicates a spiritual nature and thus a soul, making the child a complete human being from conception.

The humanity of the unborn at all stages of development is also indicated by the biblical terminology used to refer to unborn children. The Hebrew term yeled, which means "child, son, boy, offspring, youth," is used to refer to the unborn child, regardless of the stage of development. (Cf. Ex. 21:22, where the Hebrew says literally "her children come out" instead of "she has a miscarriage," as in some translations.) The same is true of the term ben, which means "son, child, youth" (cf. Gen. 25:22).

From the biblical perspective, all children are children, whether born or not. The Jews neither had nor needed a specialized term for the unborn, whose humanity they saw clearly. Thus the Hebrew Scripture regularly refers to individuals existing in the womb ("I knew you in the womb," Jer. 1:5; cf. Job. 10:8–12, Ps. 139:13–16, Is. 44:2).

The Didache, one of the earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament (c. A.D. 70) states, "You shall not procure an abortion, nor destroy a newborn child" (2:1). The Letter of Barnabas (c. A.D. 74) states, "You shall not murder a child by procuring abortion; nor, again, shall you destroy it after it is born" (19). Numerous other references in the early Christian writers condemn abortion as murder.

The possession of the soul at all stages of development is also indicated by natural reason, once one understands what a soul is. From an ultimate perspective, a human is comprised of a human soul serving as the substantial form of a human body (cf. Summa Theologiae I:75:4), as indicated in Genesis 2:7. The fact that a soul is needed to turn a human body into a human has sufficiently penetrated the popular consciousness that people recognize the presence of a soul is tied to the right to life.

This leads to the argument in which pro-abortion individuals try to turn the concept of the soul against pro-lifers by arguing that there is no empirical way of determining the presence the soul, making it a matter of faith or personal opinion.

One response to this argument is to take on the concept of the soul. According to biblical theology, the soul (the spirit) is the life-principle of the body. As such, so long as a human body is alive, it has a human soul, for, James tells us, "the body apart from the spirit is dead" (Jas. 2:26). This point of biblical theology was infallibly proclaimed, using philosophical terminology, by the Council of Vienna (1311–1312). The Council dogmatically defined that the soul is the substantial form of a living human body—the metaphysical form that gives the body its humanness and its life (DS 902 [D 481], CCC 365). When the soul departs, the body ceases to be living, loses its integrity, and begins to decay.

Given this, a pro-life advocate may say that there is an empirical test for the presence of the human soul. Though the soul itself cannot be empirically observed, its presence can be detected (just as an electron itself cannot be directly observed, but the presence of an electron can be detected through various scientific means). The test is simple: If you have a living human body, it is made alive by a human soul. This reduces the issue to the question of biological humanness.

Another way to deal with the argument is to turn the abortion activist’s assertion—that the soul is undetectable—against him. One may argue that if the soul is undetectable, then its presence or absence cannot be used as a test for humanness in a secular society. People cannot be allowed to terminate the lives of others based on their individual beliefs concerning whether their victims have souls. Therefore, we must rely on what we can test, which is whether a life form is biologically human.

This approach will often be more appropriate than arguing about the presence or absence of souls, especially when one is talking with a person of little or no religious faith. It also completely undercuts the argument that the rights of the unborn are a purely religious matter.

Source(s):
[url="http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2002/0203bt.asp"]http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2002/0203bt.asp[/url]

zeyeon your thoughts?

[zeyeon]

[quote name='Didacus' post='1132584' date='Dec 1 2006, 12:20 AM']
1. The football player attached to me is not the result of a natural function of reproducing. There is a fundamental difference between "causing with medical intervention in the intent of preserving life", and "natural occurances producing life". [

2. There is a difference between actively killing and letting someone die. Letting the football player die of his natural illness would not be immoral in this case but the infringement to my person would be.

3. By principal, should the situation occur, the importance of life, in my belief, would supercede my choice and thus I would yield but this hangs on one condition; that the football player recovers, and eventually becomes independant of me. If the situation is permanent then it becomes the unwilling sacrafice of a life to save another which is questionable to say the least.
football ain't a sport in my book
[/quote]

Then would you make an exception in the case of rape?

[quote name='Farsight one' post='1132586' date='Dec 1 2006, 12:22 AM']
Not the best analagy in the world. I would have been kidnapped against my will and done nothing to risk such an event. If a woman has sex, there is a risk. period. You take the chance, you be prepared to suffer the consequences. I, however, would have performed no conscious act to deserve to be kidnapped. (Just as the fetus has done nothing to deserve to die).
[/quote]

rape

[uruviel]

[quote name='zeyeon' post='1132574' date='Nov 30 2006, 11:11 PM']
Ok look... put it this way....I understand why you want to protect life....it's a very plausible arguement and I understand where most of you are comming from.

But do this for me... Imagine You wake up and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious pro football player. A famous unconscious football player. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the NFL has gone through all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the football player's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the NFL did this to you—we would never have permitted it if we knew. But still, they did it, and the Football Player is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But it's all good, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered, and can safely be unplugged from you." Is it morally incumbent on you to yeild to this situation? No doubt it would be nice of you if you did, a great kindness to say the least. But do you have to yeild to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says, "Tough luck, I agree, but you've now got to stay in bed, with the NFL player plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and football players are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him." I imagine you would regard this as outrageous, which suggests that something really is wrong with that plausible-sounding argument I mentioned a moment ago.
[/quote]

An..... interesting.. analogy I must admit. However, it is the mothers resposibility to fulfill her duty as a mother. To carry the child for 9 months and give birth to it, its not up to her whether or not this human fulfill God's will in his lifetime. And if she's wanthing an abortion before marriage, then that was only a fault on her for doing what she did, for making that immoral choice. Don't quote me on this, but I was under the impression that if the mothers life is in danger unless the baby is aborted, then maybe it would be ok. But I don't know about that one.
The fact is, God created this human in the womans womb in result of a choice that she made. Why should the ones with voices be able to control the future of those who don't? Those humans are silenced. It's not the mothers right. Legally it might be now, but she should not have the right to take away a humans life, because it was she that made a very important decision in the first place.

However, I do a very poor job of explaining this, I suggest if you would like to hear a real explanation, try consulting a priest. Phatmass isn't the most reliable source.

Edited December 1, 2006 by uruviel