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On Jun 8, 4:42 am, "Ed Huntress" wrote:

Why do you suppose that Christians accepted it for nearly 2,000 years, but
then reversed course, Roger? Were they all liberals then? And, if so, what
in the hell is a "conservative" Christian?

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Ed Huntress

General change in belief of human rights. Note the change occurred
about the same time as when Christians quit believing in slavery. The
Christians accepted slavery for nearly 2,000 years too, but you would
not use that as an argument that slavery was still acceptable.

Dan

That's a strong possibility, Dan, and I'd even hypothesize that it's true --
or at least that it was a strong motivating factor for the change.

Here's what's interesting (and annoying) to me about that idea: The
Enlightenment concept of human rights was behind a lot of such changes, and
it's not surprising that religion in those countries that were heavily
influenced by the Enlightenment -- the UK and the US to begin with -- would
adopt the attitudes and philosophy that were behind it. It had a "natural
rights" and scientific basis. But when it was adopted by religions, the
origins of this right, at least, morphed from a logical/scientific idea into
a supernatural/spiritual one, in which words and ideas became absolutes and
the practical, scientific basis of Enlightenment thinking -- that we have no
right to take a person's life or make him suffer -- was applied to
undifferented lumps of tissue that are "human" only because they have human
DNA (or a human soul, in the case of earlier religious thinkers).

So now they've turned it into a spiritual issue while trying to couch it as
a human rights issue, playing both sides and probably, in almost all cases,
being unable to distinguish the two, often contradictory philosophical bases
behind their thinking. The upshot is that they've demonized those who hold
to the rights basis, those who would deny a right to late-term abortion but
support the woman's right to abort an early-term fetus. This is the
common-sense position that dominated the issue throughout most of Christian
history.

When someone says that they would outlaw abortion from the time of
conception, or that a gestating fetus in the first 20 weeks or so of a
pregnancy is a "person," it's apparent that word magic or religious magic
have taken over their thinking on the issue. Aborting an early-term fetus
has no possible relation to Enlightenment ideas behind human rights, except
to those of the mother. Anyone who has actually read Roe v. Wade will
recognize that this is the underlying philosophy behind that decision.

The conflict is dominated by extremes of philosophical/religious thinking
(those who have no qualms about abortion up to the time of natural birth,
versus those who would accord full rights of life to a zygote floating in
something that resembles a primordial soup). And, as usual with such cases,
common sense has flown out the window.

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Ed Huntress