Rising Christian nationalism: a threat to us all

Sowell is quite a contraversial character, and even referencing his works sends people into a frenzy of calling it racist (they ignore the irony that he's black himself).

He believed there were and are deeply rooted reasons, which we are not yet mature enough as a population, as to why white people seem to always flourish to a greater extent. His works are very well written and researched, a true modern thinker.

Also, even if life does start at conception or before conception, there is still the ethical question of whose life is more important, the baby's or the mother's?

You could say that it is up to God to make that decision, and humans should just let fate take its course, because it is always wrong to kill another human being. However, humans have often taken it upon themselves to judge that it is sometimes right to kill another human being, sometimes in the name of God.

Also, even if life does start at conception or before conception, there is still the ethical question of whose life is more important, the baby's or the mother's?

You could say that it is up to God to make that decision, and humans should just let fate take its course, because it is always wrong to kill another human being. However, humans have often taken it upon themselves to judge that it is sometimes right to kill another human being, sometimes in the name of God.

"Thou shalt have no other gods before me..Though shalt not kill, Though shalt remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy... etc. etc., blah, blah, blah, and by the way Moses, you might need another tablet to write this down on, because I'm going to explain exactly how babies are made..."

Many, many years later... "So, what does this bit mean? It seems to be something about eggs and fishes, but swimming around in people?"

"Uh? What? Yeah I couldn't understand it either - just throw it in the 'not canon' pile".

I'd add that around 15-30% of known pregnancies end in a miscarriage (spontaneous abortion), though the actual rate is higher as many miscarriages occur very early, even before a woman knows she's pregnant.
Conception is only the beginning to becoming a human being. The fertilised egg must become a viable human being. Nature quite effectively eliminates those that can't.

But this begs the question : why did God let people believe wrong info for hundreds of years about such important matters as conception & when life begins?
Why didn't He make it clear to the OT authors? He could have announced it when he gave the Commandments, for one thing.

PP mentions 'being a man' because RapidOnset did so.

And yes, it matters. This is a feminist board. I appreciate it when men can respect that.

I'd add that around 15-30% of known pregnancies end in a miscarriage (spontaneous abortion), though the actual rate is higher as many miscarriages occur very early, even before a woman knows she's pregnant.
Conception is only the beginning to becoming a human being. The fertilised egg must become a viable human being. Nature quite effectively eliminates those that can't.

I think your first comment here though is really the reason for the historic differernces in how abortion and contraception were understood. The principles were fairly clear, being:

Sex outside the controlling purpose of reproduction is off limits, in much the same way eating without the controlling purpose of nutrition is. (So, to eat or have sex for fun is fine, but if you do that outside the bounds of the biological end of the activity you are a kind of glutton and the activity will likely have negative results.) From this perspective contraception or masturbation are problematic in the same way that using diet pills to allow you to over-eat would be. Spiritually it would be seen as unhealthy, and represent a loss of important self-disapline, but are also likely to result in poor health and social outcomes.

For theologians who thought sperm were essentially tiny people, they also saw contraception and masturbation the same as abortion. That's a scientific error though, not a theological one.

Abortion was simply disallowed because it was seen as killing a person, which is to say, a separate human being. They question of when there was a separate person was quite mysterious however, again, a scientific question. Quickening was a common belief for I think obvious reasons. Today it's conception because that is when, scientifically, you have a human being.

The theological side which says that any human being is a person is a pretty well established Christian principle which gives rise to Christian views on slavery, abortion, treatment of infants and children, the ill, the deformed or medically fragile, and euthanasia, among other things.

It's not the only defensible principle, but I think it's actually a lot more difficult to put limits around it in one area, without compromising another, than a lot of people think. i.e, if a fetus which is a human being but not a person, what other kinds of human beings might not be persons?

For the reason I said? If your view on abortion is especially regressive and you're a man, I really think you should hesitate before deciding if this incredibly complex issue that affects women needs your personal opinion. Especially when it's not scientifically informed at all.

In any case, not knowing the exat time when conception occurs in a particular pregnancy is not the same as not knowing that it is at conception you have a separate human life. These are very differernt statements.

They're not really different statements when you're saying something as massive as "life begins at X" in a discussion such as abortion where we have practicalities such as term limits when we don't know when conception is and it can vary from anything we can pinpoint to within hours or days. Until it has any definable point we can actually identify, someone's personal magic beliefs about it are no value to the topic of access to abortion.

I am not sure why you are going on about anyone "being a man" unless you believe that women don't share RapidOnsets perspective? THat simply isn't true however, owmen are about as likely, maybe more likely, to be conservative on abortion issues as men.

In any case, not knowing the exat time when conception occurs in a particular pregnancy is not the same as not knowing that it is at conception you have a separate human life. These are very differernt statements.

Having a protocol to declare someone dead is also not at all the same as being able to pinpoint when death occurs. I would think that fairly obvious tbh

I am not sure why you are going on about anyone "being a man" unless you believe that women don't share RapidOnsets perspective? THat simply isn't true however, owmen are about as likely, maybe more likely, to be conservative on abortion issues as men.

In any case, not knowing the exat time when conception occurs in a particular pregnancy is not the same as not knowing that it is at conception you have a separate human life. These are very differernt statements.

Having a protocol to declare someone dead is also not at all the same as being able to pinpoint when death occurs. I would think that fairly obvious tbh

If anything, Aquinas ought to have opposed prostitution because in the days before reliable contraception, there were still plenty of prostitution booms esp in times of poverty. Women used methods, but also very disturbingly, infanticide was common, as Hollie mcNish wrote in this poem.

https://x.com/holliepoetry/status/1120749179247239175

Augustine rejected Manichean dualism pretty forcefully, so I would be hesitant to assume he just didn't think about it in the case of sex.

My suspicion is just that it''s a lot harder, on a social level and often on a personal level, to control sexual desire. Compared to something like food. (Though maybe in the 21st century gluttony is not far off?) Augustine seemed to be aware of that as a problem from his own experience and I don't think he is particularly unusual in feeling that way.

And the consequences of unfettered sex, personally and socially, are so much greater than gluttony. Children without parents. Children without fathers. Abandoned mothers. Children born with congenital STIs. Adults riddled with sexual disease. Rampant prostitution. All of these things have a massive social cost.

When you look at the discussions different churches had about contraception when it first became wildly available in the 20th century. a lot of what they talked about were the negative consequences of making sex so easy. In terms of pressures to have sex, the growth of prostitution, pornography, things like that.

Which have in fact largely come true. People seem to be willing to go to pretty extreme lengths to get their rocks off.

I think your first comment here though is really the reason for the historic differernces in how abortion and contraception were understood. The principles were fairly clear, being:

Sex outside the controlling purpose of reproduction is off limits, in much the same way eating without the controlling purpose of nutrition is. (So, to eat or have sex for fun is fine, but if you do that outside the bounds of the biological end of the activity you are a kind of glutton and the activity will likely have negative results.) From this perspective contraception or masturbation are problematic in the same way that using diet pills to allow you to over-eat would be. Spiritually it would be seen as unhealthy, and represent a loss of important self-disapline, but are also likely to result in poor health and social outcomes.

For theologians who thought sperm were essentially tiny people, they also saw contraception and masturbation the same as abortion. That's a scientific error though, not a theological one.

Abortion was simply disallowed because it was seen as killing a person, which is to say, a separate human being. They question of when there was a separate person was quite mysterious however, again, a scientific question. Quickening was a common belief for I think obvious reasons. Today it's conception because that is when, scientifically, you have a human being.

The theological side which says that any human being is a person is a pretty well established Christian principle which gives rise to Christian views on slavery, abortion, treatment of infants and children, the ill, the deformed or medically fragile, and euthanasia, among other things.

It's not the only defensible principle, but I think it's actually a lot more difficult to put limits around it in one area, without compromising another, than a lot of people think. i.e, if a fetus which is a human being but not a person, what other kinds of human beings might not be persons?

Augustine rejected Manichean dualism pretty forcefully, so I would be hesitant to assume he just didn't think about it in the case of sex.

My suspicion is just that it''s a lot harder, on a social level and often on a personal level, to control sexual desire. Compared to something like food. (Though maybe in the 21st century gluttony is not far off?) Augustine seemed to be aware of that as a problem from his own experience and I don't think he is particularly unusual in feeling that way.

And the consequences of unfettered sex, personally and socially, are so much greater than gluttony. Children without parents. Children without fathers. Abandoned mothers. Children born with congenital STIs. Adults riddled with sexual disease. Rampant prostitution. All of these things have a massive social cost.

When you look at the discussions different churches had about contraception when it first became wildly available in the 20th century. a lot of what they talked about were the negative consequences of making sex so easy. In terms of pressures to have sex, the growth of prostitution, pornography, things like that.

Which have in fact largely come true. People seem to be willing to go to pretty extreme lengths to get their rocks off.

I think the scientific also comes into play in that debate too. We all know, or at least should, that life begins at conception, so I think the only argument worth having is you either value human life, or you don't.

I am not sure why you are going on about anyone "being a man" unless you believe that women don't share RapidOnsets perspective? THat simply isn't true however, owmen are about as likely, maybe more likely, to be conservative on abortion issues as men.

In any case, not knowing the exat time when conception occurs in a particular pregnancy is not the same as not knowing that it is at conception you have a separate human life. These are very differernt statements.

Having a protocol to declare someone dead is also not at all the same as being able to pinpoint when death occurs. I would think that fairly obvious tbh

I think the thing is, and I have said this before, most of the people who go to marches don't really pay much attention to the details of who organised them. In this case, I don't think many cared much about TR, or Musk, and it wasn't really on their radar.

This seems totally unbelievable to the sort of people who get their knickers in a twist about political purity, but I suspect it really represents the vast majority of people.

How many people on the left did we see complaining about those who went on BLM protests because of the ideas and behaviour of the leaders of the BLM organisation?

I mean you're completely wrong there. We absolutely have a protocol for when to declare someone dead. We don't have any idea when conception occurs for a single pregnancy, therefore you belief that "life" begins at conception, a moment we have no idea of, is invalid when it comes to policy decisions around abortion.

ETA: As a man who is not going to be affected personally by an issue, I think it's good you're hesitant to share your opinion and should probably hesitate further tbh. That you believe in life at conception, when you're not even aware of when conception is, really means FA to women who will actually go through these things.

They could see the goo though. (Ewwww)
The term "seed" was because it sort of seemed to work the same way seeds do. All the plant is in the seed but you put the seed in the soil to make it grow. Which sparks a philosophical question: is a sunflower seed already a sunflower plant? And if it isn't, at what point does it become a proper sunflower plant - when it sprouts roots, when the first green shoot appears etc. Same philosophical argument for humans in the ancient world.

@TempestTost I think there was like one weird cult type thing who did take the line that because sperm is the essence of life, masturbation is murder. Most of the people in ancient times who assumed it was the essential living part, didn't extrapolate from that to it being therefore murder. It is interesting the different spins people put on it.

Augustine's objection to sex without the purpose of procreation went a bit further than it just being like gluttony/lack of self control. It's probably linked to his early Manichean influences https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism or he just had issues. But either way, even within a marriage concupiscence was a problem and a potential barrier between the soul and god.

I think Aquinus built on this with his idea of unnatural sin. Which was much worse than gluttony, eating too much. There has been, and still is, a tension within the Christian religion where on the one hand motherhood, marriage are good ("go forth and multiply"). But on the other hand celibacy is sometimes seen as purer. Basically under that logic even sex within marriage for the purpose of making babies is a necessary evil but sex for anything else was just evil. (Usually religious movements that took this logic too far died out fairly quickly for obvious reasons). I blame the Manicheans.

But the idea that early abortions are bad because they were murder just wasn't a thing for a very long time in the early Christian church. We know Augustine was explicitly concerned with the killing of babies because he wrote about it - but this was always in the context of poorer parents abandoning their newborns when they couldn't afford them. He never connected this to early abortion because it just wasn't seen like that at the time.

Even today, a lot of the language around abortion is connected to promiscuity etc. I don't think feminists are wrong for suspecting that at least some (not all) of the "abortion is murder" people are motivated more by a dislike of women not facing the "consequences" of sex than a genuinely held belief that Zygotes are equal to human life.

But basically knowing when life begins is always a thorny problem. It's never been settled. It probs never will be.

Orgasm not organise!

Until science can pinpoint when death is (and it can't - yet) we don't all have to agree that life ends at it.

Apologies for the sarcasm; I just don't think that we have to know exactly at what point we decide that life starts and ends in order to have opinions on difficult ethical issues. I'm wary of expressing an opinion on this in a feminist space, but for the little it's worth, my current view is that the foetus gains human value continuously from conception to birth, or perhaps from conception to viability (as a premature birth results in a baby just as valuable as a full term one). I therefore have very little problem with the "morning after pill" and considerable problem with a late-term abortion (though it may be justifiable under some circumstances). Though I would much prefer there to be fewer abortions through avoiding unwanted pregnancies, I accept that the law is the law. If an abortion is to occur, the earlier the better.