• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Life Begins at Conception

Status
Not open for further replies.
9-10ths_Penguin

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
smokydot said:
Do you see any basis for it in natural law, as presented in post #602, regarding the nature of seeds?
Click to expand...

I don't.

2) So having shown the Biblical principle regarding the authority of natural divine revelation as seen in creation (Rom 1:19-21), let us move to the second "dot,"
which is to examine what this Biblical principle (authoritative natural divine revelation in creation) reveals in regard to life in the womb.
Let's do this by the Socractic method, questions.

What kind of life is in a corn seed, corn life or cotton life? When the corn seed is planted in the ground, what kind of life begins to grow, corn life or cotton life?
And what kind of life is in a cotton seed? When the cotton seed is planted in the ground, what kind of life begins to grow?
And what kind of life is in human seed? When human seed is planted in the womb of a woman, what kind of life begins to grow?
Is there any time when the life produced by the corn or cotton seed is not corn or cotton life, but is tomato or grape life instead?
And because God's laws in his creation make clear the nature of seeds, neither is there any time when the life produced by human seed (Lev 15:16-18,32, 1 Pet 1:23) is not human life,
but generic "animal life" instead.
Click to expand...

Here are the problems I see with this argument:

First, being distinct doesn't equate to life. As an analogy, a set of plans for a building might only allow for the creation of that design and nothing else, but the set of plans is not the building. Neither are the individual parts that are assembled in stages to form the building. All of these are uniquely related to the finished product, but by themselves, they are not the finished product.

The seed for a plant or the "seed" for a person may be uniquely related to that plant or person and to nothing else, but you can't infer from this that the "seed" is the person any more than you can infer that the plans are the building.

Second, you draw a false line between life and non-life. You talk about how "life begins to grow" when the seed is planted in the ground, but the seed will only grow if the seed was already alive when it was planted. Dead matter won't grow; life is a continuous, unbroken chain stretching back all the way to abiogenesis.

BTW: it's not the Socratic method if you answer your own questions. ;)
 
McBell

McBell

Unbound
jtartar said:
Darkness,
One scripture in particular sheds light on your question.
Consider Ex 21:22-25, where we see a scenario where two men are fighting and they hurt a pregnant woman. If there is no death the husband can put upon the guilty man some compensation, but if a death occurs, either of the woman or of the child she was carrying, the law of Moses was to be carried out. The law of an eye for an eye, death for death.
Because of the penalty it seems that God considers the fetus to be a living person, and life would have started at conception, because there is no time period mentioned about guilt for the death of a fetus.
Click to expand...
It actually seems that you are trying real hard to put your own reasoning to why god said or did something.
The only thing one can logically get from the verse is that God views the fetus has value.
The verse does not imply anything about conception, mainly because back when the verse was written it was believed that the man deposited the seed into the woman and the woman was nothing more than an incubator for the unborn child.
 
A

angellous_evangellous

Guest
Mestemia said:
It actually seems that you are trying real hard to put your own reasoning to why god said or did something.
The only thing one can logically get from the verse is that God views the fetus has value.
The verse does not imply anything about conception, mainly because back when the verse was written it was believed that the man deposited the seed into the woman and the woman was nothing more than an incubator for the unborn child.
Click to expand...

I do agree that the verse does not address 'conception,' but I don't think that you're right on this point.

Yes, there were some thinkers who thought that the woman was nothing more than an incubator for the unborn child, but that is more an Aristotelian idea than an ancient Hebrew one.
 
Smoke

Smoke

Done here.
Mestemia said:
It actually seems that you are trying real hard to put your own reasoning to why god said or did something.
The only thing one can logically get from the verse is that God views the fetus has value.
The verse does not imply anything about conception, mainly because back when the verse was written it was believed that the man deposited the seed into the woman and the woman was nothing more than an incubator for the unborn child.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's at all clear that the Torah is referring here, as jtartar thinks it is, to an injury to either the fetus or the woman. The more traditional view is that if the injury causes premature birth, the man is fined whether the child is born alive or dead. The lex talionis only comes into play if the woman is further injured or killed. That is Rashi's view, and I think it is probably the view of anybody who isn't desperate to find a scriptural prohibition of abortion -- which this is not, however one interprets it.
 
S

smokydot

Well-Known Member
Smoke said:
I don't think it's at all clear that the Torah is referring here, as jtartar thinks it is, to an injury to either the fetus or the woman. The more traditional view is that if the injury causes premature birth, the man is fined whether the child is born alive or dead. The lex talionis only comes into play if the woman is further injured or killed. That is Rashi's view, and I think it is probably the view of anybody who isn't desperate to find a scriptural prohibition of abortion -- which this is not, however one interprets it.
Click to expand...

The death penalty in Exod 21:22-25 is for killing the fruit of the womb.
The penalty for killing the pregnant woman is dealt wiith in Exod 21:12; Gen 9:6; Lev 24:17,19-21; Deut 19:11-13,21.
The death penalty applied only to the taking of human life.
Therefore, the fruit of the womb is human life.
 
Last edited:
9-10ths_Penguin

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
smokydot said:
Exod 21:22-25 requires the death penalty for killing the fruit of the womb.
Click to expand...
No, it doesn't. Did you not read the post you were replying to?

smokydot said:
The death penalty applied only to the taking of human life.
Click to expand...
No, it didn't. For instance, take Leviticus 20:16:

If there is a woman who approaches any animal to mate with it, you shall kill the woman and the animal; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltiness is upon them.

smokydot said:
Therefore, the fruit of the womb is human life.
Click to expand...
Nope.
 
S

smokydot

Well-Known Member
9-10ths_Penguin said:
I don't. Here are the problems I see with this argument:

First, being distinct doesn't equate to life. As an analogy, a set of plans for a building might only allow for the creation of that design and nothing else, but the set of plans is not the building. Neither are the individual parts that are assembled in stages to form the building. All of these are uniquely related to the finished product, but by themselves, they are not the finished product.

The seed for a plant or the "seed" for a person may be uniquely related to that plant or person and to nothing else, but you can't infer from this that the "seed" is the person any more than you can infer that the plans are the building.
Click to expand...

Non-living beings do not make good analogies for living beings.
The seed is the plant in its first stage.
The planted seed (fertilized egg) is the human, in its first stage.
It is never anything but human.

Second, you draw a false line between life and non-life. You talk about how "life begins to grow" when the seed is planted in the ground, but the seed will only grow if the seed was already alive when it was planted. Dead matter won't grow; life is a continuous, unbroken chain stretching back all the way to abiogenesis.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Seeds are alive.
And there is only one kind of life in a seed, the life of the plant from which it was produced.

That is the natural revelation found in seeds, and to which natural revelation the Bible gives authority on matters of truth and morality relating to it.
To assert that we don't know what kind of, or when, life in the womb "becomes" human is to deny the natural revelation found in seeds,
just as the pagans denied the natural revelation found in creation (Rom 1:19-21), and for which denial they were held accountable.
We know the truth of the matter here, from natural revelation. To Wit:

There is only one kind of life in human seed, the life of the human(s) from which it was produced.
Human life begins at conception.

BTW: it's not the Socratic method if you answer your own questions. ;)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I know, but you get my meaning.
 
Last edited:
9-10ths_Penguin

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
smokydot said:
Non-living beings do not make good analogies for living beings.
Click to expand...
And plants don't make good analogies for animals, but we muddle through as best we can.

smokydot said:
The seed is the plant in its first stage.
The planted seed (fertilized egg) is the human, in its first stage.
It is never anything but human.
Click to expand...
So... before the "planted seed"/fertilized egg, we still have a human? This implies that the life exists before conception.

smokydot said:
Agreed. Seeds are alive.
And there is only one kind of life in a seed, the life of the plant from which it was produced.
And there is only one kind of life in human seed, the life of the human(s) from which it was produced.
Human life begins at conception.
Click to expand...
No, it's not - you just argued against this above. You just finished arguing that life begins before conception; don't you see that?

smokydot said:
Yeah, I know, but you get my meaning.
Click to expand...
No, I don't see the point of that whole sideshow at all.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top