GardenLady
Active Member
God told them to stone disrespectful children, but they aren’t doing that.
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Why does being pro-life tend to be associated with being religious?
- Thread starter anotherneil
- Start date
There is also a perception or stereotype that men are prolife as opposed to women, even though there are more women who are prolife than men. When the feminist says a man has no right to tell her what she can do with her body, it pushes an agenda that it is male attitude that is the problem rather than male and female attitude that they are disagreeing with them
There's a reason why verbal contracts, or really any contract that doesn't actually contain written clauses and an intentional signature agreement rarely hold up in court.
You also can't freely give up autonomy, e.g. it is illegal to make someone a slave even if they're 'willing.' And any other forms of consent which involve use of your body, e.g. sex or tissue, can be revoked at any time, no matter how many times they previously said yes.
So consent to sex leading to forced gestation has very little legal premise. Or ethical ones.
No more than our right to refuse organ donation "glosses over" the right to life of people needing donated organs.
I'm comfortable with the statement that there are far more theists, religious or otherwise, pro-choice than there are pro-choice non-religious atheists. Pretty much every secular civil rights battle, including other things like gay marriage, was not won in popular vote by atheists which are in small minority but by secular religious people.
There is, of course, a narrative that religious people are by majority pro-life but I've not found this to be even remotely true, even in the highly evangelical US neverminding the much more secularly religious world at large.
I am also comfortable saying that within the atheistic population division on abortion is less stark than some other civil rights battles which plenty of atheists have been on the wrong side of due to their upbringing and narrative justifications.
But there are absolutely atheists who are anti-abortion. I've met them. But I don't think it's a stereotype to say that their numbers are fewer than pro-choice. (Which I think is also true of religious people at large.)
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
The 90 year old has already done what they're going to do to break the world. A one year old is a future adult who's going to create troubles, headaches and add to the sum of the world's problems.
☆Dreamwind☆
Active Member
Thank goodness for that.
That's not the position pro-choice people object to, nor the entirety of the position of the anti-choice people, which is not merely to consider abortion wrong for them, but to impose that belief on others using the force of government.
And yes, criminalizing abortion is based in an ancient need to spit out as many live births as possible when men died more often in war, women in childbirth, infants mortality was higher, and people everywhere were dying of infections and poisonings. Social pressure through the church included that every young maiden needs to get married at the age of fertility, she must not withhold sex, they must not use the rhythm method, masturbate, or have gay sex, nobody gets a divorce, and when technology made it feasible, they were never to have elective sterilization, use birth control, or get abortions. That's all there to produce more people and has no place today when overpopulation is problem and modern social democracies recognize individual rights.
And yes again, I've known of irreligious people that find abortion repugnant, but none that want to impose their preference on others. That's almost exclusively a religious position based in the belief that a deity that issues commandments and punishes those that defy them wants that.
I find the idea of having an abortion off-putting and am glad to have never been involved in one (it would be as the potential father, not the patient), but that's irrelevant to my pro-choice position, which, as an atheistic humanist, is predicated on reproductive freedom and keeping the church out of lives of those uninterested in what its adherents want. For me the question isn't about how I feel about abortion but how I feel about who makes that decision - the potential mother or the state working on behalf of the church.
Nope. A fetus has no rights not granted to it by others unless the law says it does, and even that is meaningless if it doesn't defend those rights.
Ditto for the theists in the eyes of this atheist. Elsewhere, you wrote, "I have read many atheists saying that human beings are animals. That's not very flattering. What humanism can be expected from people who think that?" That's how a zealous Christian thinks. He's offended to hear that he is an animal, and he finds humanists contemptible for not joining him in his primitive worldview. Humanism is a more evolved philosophy that Christianity, which makes no advances except when humanists lead the way, and even then, not in all Christians. Why are predominantly Christian countries more ethically evolved than Muslim countries that have no use for democracy or women's rights despite having almost the same religion featuring an angry, harsh, judgmental god that issues commandments, demands obedience, punishes, and is very concerned about your sex life? Why are there more atheists and irreligious people in the West than the Muslim world? The answer is that the former but not the latter have been subjected to four or five centuries of humanist influence.
And no, I don't respect Christian ethics. I know that you feel that unbelievers are the moral inferiors of zealous and observant Christians, but we aren't bigots or anti-intellectual. White Christian evangelicals overwhelmingly support Trump, perhaps the most immoral man alive. And why? To impose their faith on others through the Supreme Court. I'm unimpressed.
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Dao Hao Now
Active Member
To which you got the very common sense reply:
And you answer….
So you were motivated enough to ask the question, but not motivated enough to look into the question…….
This makes no sense.
Since you don’t apparently have enough time or motivation to look up the answer to the question you claim to be curious about, yet have enough time and motivation to initiate this thread and read through it; allow me to give you a quick synopsis of what it took me about 5 minutes to discover through Wikipedia……
Of the 95 organizations listed under;
“List of anti-abortion organizations in the United States”…..
List of anti-abortion organizations in the United States - Wikipedia
40 include a religious reference in their name or in the blurb that identifies them.
Of the remaining 55; 27 can be identified with a single click onto their page with a quick skim to be recognized as having religious influence.
That leaves 28 of 95 that don’t specifically mention a religious affiliation, though often include language that one might easily infer religious influence, but giving them benefit of doubt I did not include as being obviously religious.
Only 2 specified that they were secular.
Under the article entitled “Anti-abortion movements” which is redirected to when searching the term “pro-life movement”:
Anti-abortion movements - Wikipedia
Under the sub title “Historical”:
“In the 19th century United States, Anthony Comstock launched an 'anti-vice crusade' that included opposition to contraception and abortion. He successfully got the US congress to pass laws later known as the Comstock laws that included provisions that made it illegal to send materials used for abortion through the mail.”
For reference:
“Anthony Comstock (March 7, 1844 – September 21, 1915) was an anti-vice activist, United States Postal Inspector, and secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (NYSSV), who was dedicated to upholding Christian morality. He opposed obscene literature, abortion, contraception, masturbation, gambling, prostitution, and patent medicine.”
Anthony Comstock - Wikipedia
“The United States anti-abortion movement formed as a response to the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton U.S. Supreme Court decisions with many anti-abortion organizations having emerged since then.”
“The current movement is in part a continuation of previous debates on abortion that led to the practice being banned in all states by the late 19th century. “
“Anti-abortion groups like Focus on the Family, Students for Life of America, and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America are considered part of the Christian right. They call themselves "pro-life" because they are often united in their belief that a fetus is a person that has legal rights. Since the U.S. Supreme Court decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, some of these organizations have turned their attention to banning abortions at the state and local level and asking the U.S. Supreme Court to recognize fetal personhood under the Constitution.”
It does when “most” of those screaming are the ones “most” people hear the “most” and are also numerically the “most”……wouldn’t you say?
What else might you mean by “dominant representation”?
Of course this is not the same as saying “exclusively”, and yes there are people who are “pro-life” that are not religious.
Since there is not as many and they are not as vocal about it, and those that are very vocal about it and are therefore heard from the “most” tend to be religious and openly profess that their reasoning is based on their religion, it’s only natural that they are typically associated with it.
The fact that there are religious people that hold a different position doesn’t change that fact.
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anotherneil
Active Member
Plenty to respond to on this thread. I'll get back to this thread when I have enough time to focus on it - probably not until this weekend.
This gives the impression that you haven't met many religious people.
They're often quite happy to "play God." They'll even say that their actions are God's will expressing itself.
PureX
Veteran Member
You seem to be ignoring your own stated exception ... that is when they believe they are acting as their God mandates. They do not see this kind of action as presuming unto themselves that which is only God's purview. They see it as acting on God's behalf, not on their own behalf. Which is how they see a woman choosing an abortion.
I'm not suggesting that you agree. I am simply pointing out why many of those who are against the right of a woman to choose an abortion tend to also be people that believe in a sovereign God. Because these two concepts are directly related.
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... but what their God mandates is an expression of their own views. It ends up circular.
Oh, I know.
... because other people's abortions offend them personally, therefore they offend their God as well.
... and because their God is opposed to abortion, their actions to oppose abortion are an expression of "God's will."
It's a neat trick: they get to play God while all the time attributing what they're doing to something external.
PureX
Veteran Member
They don't see it that way.
We all want to be the gods of our own realities. It's not just 'them'.
Oh, I know.
One key difference, though: you can't think your opinions are God-endorsed - and therefore immune to criticism - if you don't believe in God.
PureX
Veteran Member
That can work for us or against us. I think you're only seeing it one way.
Oh, nobody's immune to overconfidence. It's just that certain flavours of theistic belief are a fast track to it.
PureX
Veteran Member
Same can be said of politics and business.