{"id":8157,"date":"2003-03-15T14:13:59","date_gmt":"2003-03-15T19:13:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/2003\/03\/15\/a-response\/"},"modified":"2003-03-15T14:13:59","modified_gmt":"2003-03-15T19:13:59","slug":"a-response","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2003\/03\/a-response\/","title":{"rendered":"A Response"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the post<\/a> below
\nAndy of Word Wide Rant commented:<\/p>\n

"Under the law that claims that life begins at fertilization,
\nwill they be able to prosecute God for the significant number of fertilized
\neggs that spontaneously
\nabort or fail to attach to the uterus?"<\/p>\n

Andy had also posed this question in my previous weblog, and
\nI will attempt to answer that question. I am no theologian, and I use to think
\nthat philosophy was about people talking endlessly about trees
\nfalling with no one to hear the sound. But after all I have a weblog so I am
\nunafraid of talking about things when I don’t have all the answers.<\/p>\n

Since the format of the question already assumes the existence
\nof a creator God I will start from there. God has set up the universe that
\nis both finite and understandable by human reason. We can come to understand
\nmore fully the constants and laws that govern our universe through scientific
\nmethodologies. This question I believe falls into the category of a mystery
\n(No Andy I am not just going to say "it’s Gods will, or that if is just a mystery).
\nA mystery in this case is where we can not know every nuance and reason
\nbehind what the question asks but can delve more deeply and come
\nto
\na fuller
\nunderstanding and knowledge
\nabout
\nit.<\/p>\n

As I posted earlier St. Irenaeus’ quote "In
\nProportion to God’s need of nothing is
\nman’s need for
\ncommunion with God.<\/span>" There is nothing that compelled God to create the universe
\nand life. God is lacking in nothing and any created thing can not fulfill him
\nor add to his infinite nature. Existence is pure gift, any existence is a good
\ncompared to non-existence. Whether our physical life span is but minutes or
\na hundred years it is still a good. The normative process for eventual union
\nwith God in eternal life is through us living a relatively normal life span
\nand through exercise of our free will choosing that good which is eternal life
\nwith him. The worst thing in the world in not death but it is not fulfilling
\nthe purpose for which we are created. All of us will die at some point; as
\nGeorge Carlin once said "I don’t understand people’s faith in God’s track
\nrecord,
\nafter
\nall everything he has created has died." Physical aspects of life depend on
\nunderstandable processes that by their nature can fail. Thus someone may die
\nin the very earliest stages by failing to attach to the uterus, by disease,
\nor by failure of bodily systems brought on by old age.<\/p>\n

The parallel drawn in the question is between God allowing a
\nhuman being to not advance longer in life toward birth and comparing that to
\nthe purposeful destruction of that life throught human agency. The analogy
\nthat I
\nwill
\nuse is not perfect in any way (which applies to any analogy between human action
\nand God) ) but it may help to draw the distinction. An artist who creates a
\nwork of art in
\na
\nstatue
\nand
\nthen
\nafter
\ncompleting it
\ntakes
\na
\nhammer to it is not doing anything wrong in the view of human reason. The artist
\ncreated it and has every right to do with it as he wills. Others may decry
\nthe destruction of the work of art, but they have no true say in the matter.
\nIf someone without permission of the Artist takes a hammer to that statue than
\nour reason condemns that act, they had no right to act without permission of
\nthe artist who created the work. Just as we are given permission to kill when
\nit is in an act of self defense, it becomes murder when it is not within those
\ncircumstances. Murder is the unjust taking of a life. Abortion is also murder
\nsince it is also the unjust taking of a life. With abortion we are not acting
\nwithin the area of self defense (no matter what the pro-aborts might argue),
\nbut are destroying the physicial life of someone created by God. My analogy
\nbreaks down in the fact that the statue after destruction does not live on
\nin any
\nway,
\nwhereas the soul of that preborn human being does live on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the post below Andy of Word Wide Rant commented: "Under the law that claims that life begins at fertilization, will they be able to prosecute God for the significant…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pro-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}