IN THE OLD TESTAMENT GOD WANTED A HIGH BIRTHRATE
When the Ten Commandments were given, the Hebrew people were a small nomadic group living in the desert. For the survival and expansion of the group, a high birth rate was very desirable.
God promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that they would have a great many descendants. In Genesis, Chapter 13, God tells Abraham, “I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth: so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered.”. In Chapter 26, God tells Isaac, “I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven”. In Chapter 28, God tells Jacob, “Thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south”. In Chapter 32, Jacob says to God, “Thou saidst, I will … make thy seed as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude.”.
Outlawing abortion would help God to fulfill these promises.
These reasons do not apply at this time.
MAN IS A SPIRITUAL BEING
The pro-life Christian believes that conception is the creation of a new life, a new human being. This new human being, like all human beings, is a creation of God. The unborn child, like all human beings, is endowed by God with eternal life. The defining moment of creation of this new eternal life is not birth, but conception. Thus the Right to Life of the new eternal life properly begins at conception, when that eternal life comes into being.
The only thing that makes the moment of conception seem so tremendously important is the idea that at the moment of conception a new eternal life comes into existence.
A materialist does not believe that a new immortal soul is created at conception. It is simply the moment when genetic material from the woman is mixed with genetic material from the man, in the routine biological process of reproducing and making more bodies. Sex is nature’s way of mixing genes. Conception is when the genes get mixed.
Christians tend to think that the only alternative to Christianity is materialism. This is not true at all. A large part of the population of the world believes that man is in essence the same as God, was not created in time, and has lived for many lifetimes. This includes Hindus, Buddhists, and many in the West under the general heading of “New Age Philosophy”.
This can be called “Type 1 religion”. This contrasts with “Type 2 religion”, which teaches that man was created at a particular point in time, and that man is a “creature”, a created thing, not a “creator” like God. The nature of man is entirely different from the nature of God. Christianity is Type 2. Jesus Christ is the “only begotten Son” of God. Jesus Christ has the same nature as God and is eternal like God. According to Genesis, Chapters 2 and 3, men are “dust”. Christians are sons of God by adoption. They are not “begotten sons” of God. Their nature is different from God’s nature. They can be “saved”, but they cannot achieve “enlightenment” or “union with God”.
In my “LAWS OF POLITICS” (http://www.lawsofpolitics.com/), #9, I say, “Man is basically a spiritual being, not a body. He lives forever, both before and after the body he uses in this particular lifetime.”.
For Type 1 religion, there is no creation of a new eternal life at the moment of conception. At some point in time, probably shortly before birth, a spiritual being who needs a new body takes over the new baby body.
THE BHAGAVAD-GITA ON IMMORTALITY
The Bhagavad-Gita is the most important Hindu scripture. It consists mainly of lectures by Krishna, an incarnation of God, to Arjuna, his disciple. These quotations are from Chapter 2 of the Edwin Arnold translation. http://www.bartleby.com/45/4/2.html
“Thou grievest where no grief should be! thou speak’st
Words lacking wisdom! for the wise in heart
Mourn not for those that live, nor those that die.
Nor I, nor thou, nor any one of these,
Ever was not, nor ever will not be,
For ever and for ever afterwards.
All, that doth live, lives always! To man’s frame
As there come infancy and youth and age,
So come there raisings-up and layings-down
Of other and of other life-abodes,
Which the wise know, and fear not.”
“Never the spirit was born; the spirit shall cease to be never;
Never was time it was not; End and Beginning are dreams!
Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the spirit for ever;
Death hath not touched it at all, dead though the house of it seems!”
“As when one layeth
His worn-out robes away,
And, taking new ones, sayeth,
“These will I wear to-day!”
So putteth by the spirit
Lightly its garb of flesh,
And passeth to inherit
A residence afresh.”
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