What's new
By:
Filters
Christian Forums

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Abortion Biblical?

truth_will_prevail said:
Quath why do people live at different ages? Just say there are two people who both have the same build and are good in health, but one of them dies a natural death.
Click to expand...
I don't follow. Does the other one die an unnatural death? What kind of natural death are you talking about? A bear attack? A disease? A heart attack? Cancer?

christian_soldier said:
Because you choose it to be so, Quath.
Click to expand...
Heh. I guess we will have to agree to disagree about how meaningless my life is. :)
 
There may actually be good biblical support that abortion is wrong, apart from the obvious argument from the sanctity of human life. Really, it should just end there but people always want more proof, and usually for such people there can never be enough proof.

Anyway, according to Alvin J. Schmidt in Under the Influence: How Christianity Transformed Civilization, the Greek word pharmakeia is used in Galatians 5:20 and Revelation 21:8, two lists of sins. The word means "the making and administering of potions" and is usually translated as "sorcery" and "witchcraft", for obvious reasons. However, Greco-Romans commonly used potions to induce abortions, as mentioned by Plutarch, Clement of Alexandria, Minucius Felix, Bishop Ambrose, and several others throughout the centuries (they all used pharmakeia as a method of abortion).

Schmidt points out that Revelation 21:8 is particularly interesting because pharmakeia is condemned immediately after "sexual immorality" - commiting abortion to conceal sin and/or to do away with an unwanted child is probably 99% of the reasons why people continue to have abortions, IMO. It is also worth mentioning that the Didache, an early Christian text, possibly for catechism, dating from the mid first to mid second centuries, condemns abortion - "you shall not kill a child by abortion".

So there you have it. Both pagan and Christian writers showing that pharmakeia, a word used by Paul and John in lists of sins, is used in direct reference to abortions.

BTW, I strongly recommend this book for Christian and non-Christian alike.
 
That is very interesting, Free. It is kind of the stuff I was wondering about.

However, it seems to me that potions seem to be used more generically than just for abortion. For example, love/lust potions also fits this just as easily.
 
While that is a possibility, I have shown through extra-biblical pagan and Christian sources that pharmakeia is used directly in reference to abortion. While pharmakeia would most certainly also be used in the context of sorcery and various other potions, it does provide a plausible biblical argument against abortion.
 
I would probably say "possible" instead of "plausible" since it is a stretch to assume that it could only man abortion drugs when most people thought it was just straight out magic.

However, even it it did only apply to abortion magic potions, does that mean it has to apply to other medical procedures that are nonmagical?
 
Personally speaking, I am sick of the topic of abortion. I have always voted for pro-choice candidates, because I am not a single-issue voter. I myself have always been somewhat pro-choice; but it must be in the first trimester. I read the article, and basically have no prob with it.
 
Steve said:
Personally speaking, I am sick of the topic of abortion. I have always voted for pro-choice candidates, because I am not a single-issue voter. I myself have always been somewhat pro-choice; but it must be in the first trimester. I read the article, and basically have no prob with it.
Click to expand...

Doesn't your position fly smack into the position of Rome? Bishops have threatened to withhold the Eucharist to those who support abortion!

Interesting how on one thread you seem to say it is okay to murder the defenseless, but on another say any church ordaining women is going to hell in a hand-basket!

:o :roll: :o
 
Steve said:
Personally speaking, I am sick of the topic of abortion. I have always voted for pro-choice candidates, because I am not a single-issue voter. I myself have always been somewhat pro-choice; but it must be in the first trimester. I read the article, and basically have no prob with it.
Click to expand...

Congrats. Your complacency helped kill 4,000 babies today.

:roll:
 
christian_soldier said:
Congrats. Your complacency helped kill 4,000 babies today.
Click to expand...
Are you saying that if Steve had changed his single vote that 4000 less abortions would have occured? Which vote was that close that he would have caused a change?
 
christian_soldier said:
Killing babies is nothing to make light of.
Click to expand...

I would agree - but who is making light of whom?

I do not believe Quath was attempting to make light of anything - rather, you cannot say that Steve contributed to the death of babies - no more so than our President has contributed to the death of babies. Where has Bush championed a law to completeling outlaw abortion?

Your snide remark to Steve was ... well... just snide.
 
aLoneVoice said:
I would agree - but who is making light of whom?

I do not believe Quath was attempting to make light of anything - rather, you cannot say that Steve contributed to the death of babies - no more so than our President has contributed to the death of babies. Where has Bush championed a law to completeling outlaw abortion?

Your snide remark to Steve was ... well... just snide.
Click to expand...

Bush isn't on the board professing Christ and pro-death.
 
christian_soldier said:
Bush isn't on the board professing Christ and pro-death.
Click to expand...

True - but isn't Bush in more of a position to do something about it more than Steve is?
 
Steve said:
Personally speaking, I am sick of the topic of abortion. I have always voted for pro-choice candidates, because I am not a single-issue voter. I myself have always been somewhat pro-choice; but it must be in the first trimester. I read the article, and basically have no prob with it.
Click to expand...
I am more sick of abortion and the spineless cowards who will not stand up for the defenseless unborn of this country, than I am of being sick of the topic of abortion.

May all of those who do not stand for the innocent unborn be accursed.
 
Here is a picture from the 7th week of pregnancy:

562px-Tubal_Pregnancy_with_embryo.jpg


But pictures are not the best way to debate abortion. After all, I could launch a good campaign against knee surgery by showing the graphic details of the operation. It would cause people to feel queasy and feel uncertain about it. However, that is an argument by grossness, not by logic.
 
Quath said:
Here is a picture from the 7th week of pregnancy:



But pictures are not the best way to debate abortion. After all, I could launch a good campaign against knee surgery by showing the graphic details of the operation. It would cause people to feel queasy and feel uncertain about it. However, that is an argument by grossness, not by logic.
Click to expand...

Human Embryo (7th week of pregnancy, 5th weeks p.o.)

This photo of an opened oviduct with an ectopic pregnancy features a spectacularly well preserved 10-millimeter embryo. It is uncommon to see any embryo at all in an ectopic, and for one to be this well preserved (and undisturbed by the prosector's knife) is quite unusual.

Even an embryo this tiny shows very distinct anatomic features, including tail, limb buds, heart (which actually protrudes from the chest), eye cups, cornea/lens, brain, and prominent segmentation into somites. The gestational sac is surrounded by a myriad of chorionic villi resembling elongate party balloons. This embryo is about five weeks old (or seven weeks in the biologically misleading but eminently practical dating system used in obstetrics).

The photo was taken on Kodak Elite 200 slide film, with a Minolta X-370 camera and 100mm f/4 Rokkor bellows lens at near-full extension. The formalin-fixed specimen was immersed in tap-water and pinned to a tray lined with black velvet. The exposure was 1/4 second at f/8.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image ... embryo.jpg

No matter how you slice it, abortion is murder, knee surgery isn't.
 
The photo was taken on Kodak Elite 200 slide film, with a Minolta X-370 camera and 100mm f/4 Rokkor bellows lens at near-full extension. The formalin-fixed specimen was immersed in tap-water and pinned to a tray lined with black velvet. The exposure was 1/4 second at f/8.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image ... embryo.jpg

No matter how you slice it, abortion is murder, knee surgery isn't.
Click to expand...

Wait... isn't this and Quath's photos the same? 8-)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top