Sunday, January 25, 2009

A Question for The Con Men of Religion

Well Obama's gone and done it. With the unheralded stroke of a pen on a presidential executive order he has opened himself up to that sharpest of wedge issues: abortion.

But of all the things that The Con Men (Conservatives) conned America about this issue on abortion may be the most devilish.

Here, the The Con Men of the Religionist variety truly are at their best or worst, depending on your view. Out one side of their mouths comes "science is hokum and bunkum when it comes to Evolution" but it is their "Rock of Ages" that they lean upon (or more likely hurl at all those who disagree with them) when discussing abortion. Which is it? Is science hokum and bunkum or the Rock of Ages?

What prompts this question is another question that never seems to get asked of the radically religious or the religious of any sort on the question of abortion. So I'll ask it here and now.

When does the soul enter the human body? It is the soul that religion is concerned with. It is the soul that separates us, makes us better than, in the minds of the religious, all other living things, and it is the soul that the religious never think about when discussing the abortion.

I will put only one restriction on the answer, but it should not offend the Religionists since they hold science in such low esteem, view it as an instrument of Beelzebub. That single restriction? You can NOT rely on science to answer the question.

I can see where this question may have The Con Men of the Religionist variety rapping their cudgels against their hollow heads since they give little to no indication that they have read the Bible at all or having read it without the jaundiced eye of someone who would use the loving word of God as an a blunt and battering instrument.

Let us unroll the holly scroll. Does it offer any insights into this debate that might help the Religionsists answer the all important question about the soul? Yes, it does, and it doesn't take long to get to a most instructive passage. It's in the very FIRST book of the Bible (King James Version) called Genesis, and, lo and behold, we only have to wade through the philosophical underpinnings of Catholicism to the second chapter and only its 7th verse:

Gen 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became [here is the important part] a living soul.

Even unto the hands of God the dust, the clay, formed precisely by an omnipotent God was just dust, just clay,(just a collections of cells?) UNTIL the breath of life.

There has been much parsing of the bible, much commentary over the centuries but I'll offer up the words of Adam Clarke, a British Methodist theologian who took 40 years to write his commentaries on the Bible over 200 years ago, to flush out the fairly clear meaning of Genesis:

"Gen 2:7
God formed man of the dust - In the most distinct manner God shows us that man is a compound being, having a body and soul distinctly, and separately created; the body out of the dust of the earth, the soul immediately breathed from God himself. Does not this strongly mark that the soul and body are not the same thing?"

I guess when a Religionist is hell bound on pouring hellfire and brimstone on others, casting the first stone, so to speak, it is little wonder that they overlook their own teachings.

How is it that the discussion of the timing of the entry of the soul into the body is left out of the discussion of the timing of abortions? It is the Religionists and their very own teachings that are never brought out. Instead, the Religionists play the hypocrite and march into battle not with the sword of God but the test tube of science.

Perhaps the Religionsits need to be reminded of something else from their Bible: (Mathew 22:21) "Render therefore unto Caesar [science] the things which are Caesar's; and unto God [faith] the things that are God's.

No comments: