Abortion: An Atheist’s Take
Part One, Emotions and Hype:
- This is not a human life, and I will prove it.
Many Christians see the fetus as human life in much the same way they see the face of Jesus on a grilled-cheese sandwich: They have what they believe, and come Hell or high water they will make the facts fit their faith. Church groups use pictures of fetuses that look like small, innocent children to incite, enrage, and motivate their parishioners. (Pretty much the same way they deal with every other issue that opposes them.)
Whether their case is right or wrong, it’s hyperbole. Mention abortion and what you get is vitriol based solely on an emotional response to the images of ‘innocent children being put to death’. To keep their point as emotional as possible, Pro-Lifers use pics taken long after basic human physiology is established. The anti-abortion marketing just wouldn’t work anywhere near as well if they were showing human embryos with gills, webbed feet, or any of the other odd stages of development an embryo goes through. Those pics wouldn’t ‘sell’ as well. So, Point One: If you’re going to address the issue of abortion, you have to start by dismissing these emotional, heart-tugging arguments.
Of course, the other side have their own emotional baggage to dismiss as well. The oft-quoted ‘It’s my body and I have the right to do as I please with it’ line in particular has to go. It’s held a lot of power since the sexual revolution on the 1960’s, tying abortion to the empowerment of the feminist movement. The problem is, successful feminism only puts women on an equal footing with men, and men don’t have a lot of control over their bodies either.
History clearly shows that our freedoms are not inalienable; They are loaned to us by mob mentality and class rule, and they last only as long as the status quo. If you really want to test whether you have control over your own body, try euthanasia, drug abuse, or walking naked through a grade school. You’ll find out rather quick just how little freedom you have to do as you please with your body. Despite leftist claims to the contrary, society sets the rules for most of what we can and can’t do with our bodies, and it doesn’t matter if you have a uterus or testicles if you wind up on the wrong end of our social norms.
Much of the debate regarding abortion comes down to emotional ideals that really have nothing to do with stopping a pregnancy in mid-gestation. They are actually just arguments about Truth and inalienable rights, neither of which actually exist. In reality, the only Truth we can hold to is that (for now) we live in a society where mob rule and class warfare are willing to afford you basic freedoms while you hash out the details.
If you want a real answer to abortion, you have to examine the facts clearly and objectively. You can’t get caught up in emotional judgements based on intangible rights. It only leads to anger and acrimony. Case in point: the embryo pic at the top of this post. Somewhere out there there’s at least one Christian who read the caption and now wants to put a bullet in my head for being an evil baby-killer. Therein lies the biggest problem with the discussion of abortion (and my retirement plans): Snap judgements stop you from looking for the real facts. What I said was that I would prove that it was not a human life, and it isn’t.
It is, in fact, a cow fetus.
(Part II of this series on atheism and abortion will be posted in the next few days.)
Written by Wm. Hopper,
author of “The Heathen’s Guide to World Religions”
Not for Sheep
Filed under Daily Blog · Tagged with Abortion, Atheism
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ohh sweetheart, grilled cheese Jesus was a joke, Glee is ridiculous and definitely stretching things out of proportions.
You talk of Church goers using pictures of late term abortions to, “enrage and motivate”, but you completely fail to mention that pro-choice people are guilty of the exact same behavior, but on the opposite side of the spectrum. Pro-choicers routinely talk as if the only abortions that occur are those in the earliest stages of development. They talk of balls of cells, etc and rarely if ever acknowledge that late term abortions also exist. You ridicule one side for limiting the debate to the most emotionally charged example, but fail to call the other side on limiting the debate to the least objectionable example. Why the double standard? The answer is quite simple and fairly typical of self described atheists; (“atheists” who in reality usually subscribe to varying extents to some sort of NewAge liberal religion, but that’s a different issue altogether) The atheist ego is based mostly on their feeling of superiority of religious people and because of this they are incapable of sharing any positions that a religious person also holds. For this reason, the atheist is unable to grasp the numerous, and compelling, secular arguments against abortion. In this way, the atheists “have what they believe, and come Hell or high water they will make the facts fit their faith”–their NewAge faith.
What you describe as an ‘atheist’ is not atheism. It’s just an invented replacement for religions you don’t like… Basically inventing your own game because you don’t like the rules everyone else plays by.
Having studied theology for many years both personally and academically (4-year university Ba.Hon., World Religions with a Minors in Classics) I was very reluctantly proven wrong in my theistic beliefs. I WANTED to believe, [And DID BELIEVE] but an education into what’s really gone down shows the folly of it. For me, at least, atheism is not an exercise in ego. It’s a crushing blow to how enlightened I thought I was before I learned what is real in religions. Without that education in the history, languages, and lore of world religions I would likely be a priest today. [Every atheist has to cede that there may be something 'real' to spirituality. However, if there is, it is NOT found in the history, myths, and politics of the major faiths.]
Now, as to your point about abortion: This post speaks to the issue of human life and abortion. When I say ‘abortion’ I am not drawing inane lines between 3-month abortions and late-term abortions. If you’re going to stop a pregnancy from becoming a child, the implications of this are equally real at all parts of gestation. I don’t buy into the idea that you should suddenly feel more or less guilty about it just because the zygote had become a fetus. The decision is one of essence, not aesthetics. You either believe that it is a child in utero, or it is not. How it looks is irrelevant, which is why It didn’t come up in my posts.