The question is how to mitigate abortions by asking why people abort people. The direct cause is a financial situation, for young women of college age they believe in delayed gratification and abort early. While poorer women will keep their first two and abort usually after 2-3 children because they value children more highly than their college educated peers. So if we tie down towards two different trends with women abortion with one singular cause, then we must approach the issue from an economic perspective as well as an issue with the adoption industry in the US.
The taboo over different races adopting children of different ethnic backgrounds is one area that can be addressed culturally. The other direction is to look at getting people out of college faster with less debt so they do not feel the pressure to abort, while those in lower economic situations to be able to have upward mobility to keep more of their own progeny. Yet, we must look at the Malthusian problem in that regard to comprehend population explosion and the limited nature of our current resources with the population bubble we have during the Age of Oil. As a nation, the US is at zero population growth and has encountered a rising amount of seniors as well as a baby bust during the economic recession. We only have a positive population growth because of immigration.
So when looking for a policy answer, we have to ask wider questions on women employment, family wages, technology, marrying age, adoption system, methods of getting pregnant, and on and on. Rather than looking at a policy towards abortion, looking at a childbearing policy that is pro family and pro child is necessary to compute over that of just singularly abortion.
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- PandasRpeople2
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Member for 16 years, 6 months, and 5 days
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Where? Specifically (as to what I said earlier) where did he tell Christians to act with hostility towards homosexual non-believers? Because, yes, he told his audience not to associate with any of the "sexually immoral" people who were also professing to be Christians. Christians were to hold one another to a certain standard, but not seek to impose that standard outside of the church. I think 1 Corinthians 5:12-13 sums it up:
"What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.”
True. The weird thing about the Christian view is that you have a personal God who loves people enough to incarnate and die a horrific death for their sake, and yet who also asserts that they are dust and their best deeds are "filthy rags" in His sight. Which indicates that He loves us not because of anything we can intrinsically be or do, but because love is His nature. I am not aware of any other worldview in which humanity's relationship to the divine is so passive, in which our role is not to do any meritorious deeds or prove ourselves worthy, but simply to accept a gift of unmerited love and then to serve as conduits of that.
I said that naturalistic morality is irrelevant aside from my standing as a member of society. If I have no more interest in being a member of society (perhaps due to a terminal illness) -- or if I have utter assurance that I can get away with something without being noticed -- what is to stop me from doing whatever "bad" thing strikes my fancy?
Do you assume that I haven't actually read the Bible? To take the gretachristina blog post a starting point: it may seem clever and smart to those who haven't done any serious study of Christianity; yet it is full of willful misinterpretation of the texts and basic exegetical errors. Still, I can see why someone with "modern, progressive morals" would have troubles with a lot of Jesus's teachings. That's fine. Now demonstrate that the modern and progressive morals in question are actually the best and truest morals that have ever been held, the golden standard by which all others should be judged. (Also, much of what Jesus says assumes, axiomatically, the sovereignty of God the Father. If you do not (even for the sake of discussion) accept that axiom, then many of Jesus's words will of course seem absurd.)
Bad religion does indeed inflict massive harm. And good religion does massive good. Why must all religion be bad? Is religious fundamentalism inherently bad; or doesn't it (as one would reasonably suppose) depend on the nature of the fundamentals? We are obviously justified in fearing an Islamic terror attack. So why don't we fear an Amish terror attack in the least?
Ah, but don't you see? The importance God places upon us is only noteworthy because of our inherent insignificance.
Again, I don't think that the Bible was written by God (that's what Islam says about the Koran). I believe that many human authors were, to varying degrees, inspired by God to transmit a message. The message was couched in the language and circumstances of its time and, in some instances, adulterated by the prejudices of the authors. But its overall story is clear and its message timeless.
Also, why should God have told us about electricity or germ theory? From a divine perspective, why should it matter one bit whether humans live in huts for forty years or in condos for eighty years? What does it avail us to live longer, or with more material comforts, if we are not actually living better? Look at the news and tell me with a straight face that human nature is any less avaricious, cruel, deceitful or petty than it was 2000 years ago.
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Would you care to back that assertion up with evidence? Because I'll give you, right now, several verses from the Bible which instruct Christians how to live their lives, which sound nothing at all like what you're claiming.
“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; and do not condemn, and you will not be condemned; pardon, and you will be pardoned.” (Luke 6:37)
“For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.” (Matthew 6:14)
“Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt from him either.” (Luke 6:29)
“See that no one repays another with evil for evil, but always seek after that which is good for one another and for all people.” (1 Thessalonians 5:15)
“He who is greatest among you shall be your servant.” (Matthew 23:11)
“Let no one seek his own good, but that of his neighbor.” (1 Corinthians 10:24)
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:43-45)
“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Be of the same mind toward one another; do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation. Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men.” (Romans 12:14-18)
There are hundreds more verses just like that. Consistently like that.
Where in that do you see immorality, hatred and intolerance? Where in that do you see anything like a justification for someone like Fred Phelps, who was repudiated by Christians as much as by anyone?
EDIT: BTW, welcome to these forums! (Although, if your intent is simply to bash Christians with unsubstantiated blanked statements, you will not find much welcome even from atheists.)
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Anyway, thanks again for the replies; and this thread can now resume being a China vs. Europe debate...
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The sort of Christians who hate on the game are the same sort who forbid their kids from trick-or-treating on Halloween, who are almost to a one also young-Earth creationists. They do not excel in Christian fidelity; rather, they are literalists who suffer from stunted imaginations (and would suffer likewise regardless of what creed they followed). They read in 1 Thessalonians 5:22, "Abstain from all appearance of evil," which means, "Don't live in such a way that someone could assume you're morally compromised." But they interpret it as, "Stay away from anything that's got pictures of demons, vampires or witches in it." So they steer clear of Magic.
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...means that you get to DIE over and over again. As a disgruntled and disturbed American kid, kill the teacher you hate and then blow your own brains out; come back as a rabbit, get flattened by a semi; come back as a wolf, get poisoned by a rancher and die writhing in agony; come back as a Bangladeshi orphan, suffer and succumb to malaria; come back as an Iranian, get caught up in Jihad and obliterate a marketplace as a suicide bomber; come back as a toad and get gobbled by a hawk; etc. Perpetual, involuntary rebirth proceeding to perpetual, ghastly re-death.
Karma is so metal.
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Your win condition will be a giant Mistcutter Hydra. You'll punch it through blockers with Prowler's Helm. In order to make it giant, deploy obscene amounts of mana from Karametra's Acolyte and Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. Helping your mana and devotion count will be Sylvan Caryatid and Courser of Kruphix.
You'll need some ways to remove opponents' threats, of course. Bramblecrush gets rid of everything that isn't creaturely; Ratchet Bomb has to be good for something too. We can use Flamecast Wheel as a faux Lightning Strike because, after all, six mana for a green deck is the equivalent of two mana for a red deck.
Your removal suite will be rounded out by the inclusion of the dreaded Sedge Scorpion/Time to Feed combo. Sure, you'll expend two cards to eliminate one of your opponent's; but you gain 3 life from Time to Feed, which represents virtual card advantage vis-a-vis Healing Salve. So it's basically a wash.
Throw all these cards together and there's your green control deck. It should do pretty well if your meta consists of BNG precon decks piloted by ten year-olds.
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I never said I thought Phelps was "pure evil." No one can be and live, because evil by nature is divisive and destructive; and so the purely evil person would have to destroy himself concurrently with whatever else he could touch. But the idea is that in a person such as Phelps or bin Laden -- these were elderly men, mind you -- the warped ideology of evil is so intractable that no rational argument, no emotional plea, and no unvarnished experience could possibly move them from their convictions... convictions which, of course, lead to harmful activity in the world. So it remains for the great leveler Death to put them down, and for the rest of us to feel happy/relieved when that happens.
And on reflection I would say that I was indeed relieved when bin Laden died, but my feelings regarding Fred Phelps death would gravitate more towards actual happiness. Because I had nothing personally to fear from Phelps or his ilk, ergo no fear of which to be relieved; I am not gay, and in any event I live far away from his church's sphere of activities. So if I felt good to hear that he was dead, then I felt happiness. Is that crass or crude? I certainly would not seek to repay him in kind; if there were to be a funeral for Fred and if I were given the opportunity, at no real cost of money or time, to go picket it, I would not do so. But I still feel that with his death a hardened kernel of incarnate evil has left the world. And I'm happy about that.
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Here's another angle: based on Isaiah 7:15 and Jesus's declaration that the kingdom of heaven belongs to "such as these" (referencing little children), Christianity has overwhelmingly adopted the doctrine of an "age of accountability." The idea is that before a certain age children cannot be held culpable for their sins, since they simply don't know any better; and therefore, any child who dies before this age is unconditionally let into Heaven. The doctrine makes sense on a visceral level, since not even the most callous person would claim that babies and toddlers could deserve the tortures of Hell.
Of course, there's no agreement as to what the age of accountability actually is; but a much larger and more disturbing problem with this idea presents itself. Namely, if God really wanted to save as many souls as possible, wouldn't he snuff our lives out before it even became possible for us to damn ourselves by our own folly? Perhaps Christians should be grateful for the miserable conditions in many developing nations -- for the malnutrition and preventable diseases that claim the lives of many young children -- especially in Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or animistic communities! For by such wretched earthly deaths are their souls saved from the perdition that would surely await them were they to grow to maturity in their heathen communities and learn the ways of worshiping their idols, which are of course demons in disguise...
Is such talk offensive? Yes, it is. But it is also true. You cannot believe in Hell and escape the abominable implications that Hell makes against a God who would devise or permit its existence. You cannot believe in Hell without making God more of a cruel and capricious tyrant than any man who ever lived. You can talk all you want of His alleged "holiness" and "perfect justice," but you are weighing empty words against the visceral reality of suffering -- suffering compounded a million or a billion-fold over whatever you may have endured in this life. In the end it is simply insanity; and in the end, the sensible person gives it up.
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This may be a bit extreme and imperfect of an analogy, but how about near-death experiences? From what I've read in the literature, nearly everyone who's had a near-death experience has felt profoundly and positively affected by it, to the point of no longer fearing death at all. They can't communicate what it's really like to anyone who hasn't had such an experience. But in the absence of an NDE, an aversion to death is entirely reasonable and acceptable; and indeed it would be ludicrous for anyone to try to induce such an experience on him/herself.
I guess the point is that your opinions about your own course in life should not be considered ill-informed just because there's some experiences you choose not to have, no matter how much those experiences are extolled by those who have had them. Some people say that having children was the best thing that ever happened to them. Others say that getting born again was the best thing that ever happened to them. Well, I love being a parent; but pressuring someone into parenthood is just as uncool as pressuring someone into religion.