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The author's arguments depend entirely on a religion's views of the purpose of life and the afterlife: "The overwhelming majority of pro-life advocates are rel

The author's arguments depend entirely on a religion's views of the purpose of life and the afterlife: "The overwhelming majority of pro-life advocates are religious, and many of those are Christians who hold the following beliefs: There exists a morally perfect, all-knowing, and all-powerful god who created our universe. Restricting abortions ought to be a top social and political priority. Embryos and fetuses that die all go to hell for eternity, or they all go to heaven for eternity." Why do Judeo-Christian religions prohibit murder? ("Thou shalt not kill") Many religions say that the times when a person should be born and when a person should die are up to God's purposes and plan for that person. By this reckoning a murder causes a person to die BEFORE the time that God appointed for them to die. In a similar way, many religions view abortion as a form of murder--killing a person before they were born and outside of God's plan for that person. The afterlife fate of a murdered person regardless of how they were murdered would be up to God's judgement. To try to declare what God's judgement for a murdered person would be as justification for their murder would be both arrogant and evil.

allturtles 4y ago
> Many religions say that the times when a person should be born and when a person should die are up to God's purposes and plan for that person. By this reckoning a murder causes a person to die BEFORE the time that God appointed for them to die. I can't see how to reconcile this belief with an all-knowing and all-powerful God. If murders were disruptive to his plan, wouldn't he just prevent them from happening? Are all non-murder deaths part of his plan? If I am hit by a car while in the crosswalk by someone who looked down at their phone, is that part of God's plan for me, but if the driver maliciously ran me down, it isn't? What if it was an accident, but they were drunk? Is God somehow frustrated or annoyed when a murder happens? Does it surprise God?
- bombcar 4y ago
  This is one of the oldest theosophical questions and much has been written about it. The quick and dirty answer is that God can permit things he wouldn’t do himself because he deems people having free will as more important basically. But this is a really crappy analogy. The term of art is “the problem of evil” - https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1049.htm#article2 https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1049.htm#article2
- thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
  >> I can't see how to reconcile this belief with an all-knowing and all-powerful God. If murders were disruptive to his plan, wouldn't he just prevent them from happening? Are all non-murder deaths part of his plan? If I am hit by a car while in the crosswalk by someone who looked down at their phone, is that part of God's plan for me, but if the driver maliciously ran me down, it isn't? What if it was an accident, but they were drunk? Is God somehow frustrated or annoyed when a murder happens? Does it surprise God? It depends on how a religion views free will and God's role in governing the universe. Some religions hold that free will exists and that God allows people to act freely according to their own will and choice. In this view, God is all-knowing and all-powerful, but God lets people act freely. In the afterlife, God judges people based on their actions during their lives and rewards or punishes accordingly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will discusses many of the concepts around free will.
  - rich_sasha 4y ago
    "Messing with God's plan" is only one way to arrive at this conclusion; I agree with your objections. As I see it, killing people simply isn't in the gamut of options we should choose with our free will. Ten Commandments state "thou shall not murder" but without an immediate justification; just don't.
dylan604 4y ago
>By this reckoning a murder causes a person to die BEFORE the time that God appointed for them to die. The same god that told his people to go into the populated land and to kill every last man, woman, and child. So was it those people's purpose to be murdered therefore helping them meet their scheduled time of departure?
- thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
  >> The same god that told his people to go into the populated land and to kill every last man, woman, and child. If God appointed them to die at that time then you could argue that God's plan for their time to die was being met. Religions do not always make sense from a modern point of view, but they can be self-consistent in interesting ways.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    You got tripped up on one word I included "murdered". Sending one's people in to annihilate the peoples of the land (some would say genocide) regardless of gender, age, active participation in combat, etc would qualify as murder. Thou shalt not commit murder.* *Unless I explicitly tell you to, then it's okay.
    - thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
      >> Sending one's people in to annihilate the peoples of the land (some would say genocide) regardless of gender, age, active participation in combat, etc would qualify as murder. By modern standards, yes it would be murder / genocide. >> Thou shalt not commit murder.* >> *Unless I explicitly tell you to, then it's okay. Exactly. If God told you to do it, it must be okay. After all, if God commands you to do something and you don't do it, bad things could happen to you. https://youtu.be/c9Z4933yBaU https://youtu.be/c9Z4933yBaU
      - dylan604 4y ago
        >Exactly. If God told you to do it, it must be okay. Okay, so, now that we've established that it's okay as long as god said so, how do we handle those people that said "god told me to do it"? What evidence that god actually did the commanding? Do we look for burning bushes? Do we look out for a pillar fire hanging out by the temple? Oh, right, that was old testament stuff. We're clearly in the new testament stuff, so gonna need some examples of proof of work on that voice in the head being the actual god that it has been established as being okay to say murder someone(s).
incompatible 4y ago
But God, being all-knowing, already knew which fetuses would be aborted, and which people would be murdered, before he even created the Universe. Therefore, it's all God's plan, no matter what.

allturtles 4y ago

> Many religions say that the times when a person should be born and when a person should die are up to God's purposes and plan for that person. By this reckoning a murder causes a person to die BEFORE the time that God appointed for them to die. I can't see how to reconcile this belief with an all-knowing and all-powerful God. If murders were disruptive to his plan, wouldn't he just prevent them from happening? Are all non-murder deaths part of his plan? If I am hit by a car while in the crosswalk by someone who looked down at their phone, is that part of God's plan for me, but if the driver maliciously ran me down, it isn't? What if it was an accident, but they were drunk? Is God somehow frustrated or annoyed when a murder happens? Does it surprise God?

bombcar 4y ago
This is one of the oldest theosophical questions and much has been written about it. The quick and dirty answer is that God can permit things he wouldn’t do himself because he deems people having free will as more important basically. But this is a really crappy analogy. The term of art is “the problem of evil” - https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1049.htm#article2 https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1049.htm#article2
thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
>> I can't see how to reconcile this belief with an all-knowing and all-powerful God. If murders were disruptive to his plan, wouldn't he just prevent them from happening? Are all non-murder deaths part of his plan? If I am hit by a car while in the crosswalk by someone who looked down at their phone, is that part of God's plan for me, but if the driver maliciously ran me down, it isn't? What if it was an accident, but they were drunk? Is God somehow frustrated or annoyed when a murder happens? Does it surprise God? It depends on how a religion views free will and God's role in governing the universe. Some religions hold that free will exists and that God allows people to act freely according to their own will and choice. In this view, God is all-knowing and all-powerful, but God lets people act freely. In the afterlife, God judges people based on their actions during their lives and rewards or punishes accordingly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will discusses many of the concepts around free will.
- rich_sasha 4y ago
  "Messing with God's plan" is only one way to arrive at this conclusion; I agree with your objections. As I see it, killing people simply isn't in the gamut of options we should choose with our free will. Ten Commandments state "thou shall not murder" but without an immediate justification; just don't.

dylan604 4y ago

>By this reckoning a murder causes a person to die BEFORE the time that God appointed for them to die. The same god that told his people to go into the populated land and to kill every last man, woman, and child. So was it those people's purpose to be murdered therefore helping them meet their scheduled time of departure?

thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
>> The same god that told his people to go into the populated land and to kill every last man, woman, and child. If God appointed them to die at that time then you could argue that God's plan for their time to die was being met. Religions do not always make sense from a modern point of view, but they can be self-consistent in interesting ways.
- dylan604 4y ago
  You got tripped up on one word I included "murdered". Sending one's people in to annihilate the peoples of the land (some would say genocide) regardless of gender, age, active participation in combat, etc would qualify as murder. Thou shalt not commit murder.* *Unless I explicitly tell you to, then it's okay.
  - thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
    >> Sending one's people in to annihilate the peoples of the land (some would say genocide) regardless of gender, age, active participation in combat, etc would qualify as murder. By modern standards, yes it would be murder / genocide. >> Thou shalt not commit murder.* >> *Unless I explicitly tell you to, then it's okay. Exactly. If God told you to do it, it must be okay. After all, if God commands you to do something and you don't do it, bad things could happen to you. https://youtu.be/c9Z4933yBaU https://youtu.be/c9Z4933yBaU
    - dylan604 4y ago
      >Exactly. If God told you to do it, it must be okay. Okay, so, now that we've established that it's okay as long as god said so, how do we handle those people that said "god told me to do it"? What evidence that god actually did the commanding? Do we look for burning bushes? Do we look out for a pillar fire hanging out by the temple? Oh, right, that was old testament stuff. We're clearly in the new testament stuff, so gonna need some examples of proof of work on that voice in the head being the actual god that it has been established as being okay to say murder someone(s).

incompatible 4y ago

But God, being all-knowing, already knew which fetuses would be aborted, and which people would be murdered, before he even created the Universe. Therefore, it's all God's plan, no matter what.