shocking abuse of women by Republicans in Virginia

[seeka]

and '2 anti-abortion' Democrats -some fucking Democrats ! Bastards

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/news/2012/feb/29/tdmain01-senate-approves-bill-to-require-ultrasoun-ar-1727954/

[The Toad]

At the risk of sounding right-wing, I'll have to admit to a degree of sympathy for the Republicans.  Is it really a 'shocking abuse' of a woman, to make her face the possible consequences of an action she may take?  I am not against abortion under all circumstances, but I do think that we as a society tend to gloss over the fact that each time an abortion is carried out a potential human life is lost, a potential human being destroyed.  If I was forced to watch what goes on in abbatoirs I would probably stop eating meat; it's only by ignoring what goes on that I can continue to enjoy my sausages and bacon.  In the same way, if everybody knew what abortion involved, and how baby-like an aborted 'foetus' can be, would they continue to be so matter-of-fact about it?  Is it really 'A Woman's Right To Choose', as demonstrators used to chant?  If it is, how far does that right extend?  Should a woman be able to abort her foetus right up to the day of birth?  If not, why not?  If she shouldn't, when to the foetus's rights take over from hers?  If abortion is allowable up to, say, thirty weeks, why isn't it allowable at thirty weeks and one minute?  Or thirty weeks and a day?  Or thirty weeks and a week, or a month?
I fear that we are well on the way to regarding 'foetuses' (that disinfected word; so less painful to us than 'unborn babies' but still not as sterile as that other gem, 'the products of conception') as disposable.  The words of a song, 'Complaints', by Sparks, spring to mind.  It deals with the day-to-day life of a man working in the complaints department of a big store, and the refrain is 'Just give it back, no questions asked'.  The final verse goes: "Now she says she is expecting; that's my fault for not protecting her from all the risks of passion.  She's complaining, she's old-fashioned - just give it back, no questions asked."  I think there's some truth in that; and therefore whenever I hear people trying to prevent the ending of a potential human life becoming as meaningless as the returning of unwanted goods to a department store, I tend to have some sympathy with them.  ‘Bastards’?  Not in my book.  I’ll save my insults for the people who have taught us to regard pretty well everything – including human life – as disposable, as having no worth beyond its usefulness to us.

[OR]

In my small experience of people I know having abortions it is the old case of it being all very well to adopt moral positions until it is your 14 year old, or your promising career. I also know of comfortably off people who have had more than one abortion for the reasons of just not wanting a child.

Has a foetus rights? or more rights than the parent? Is abortion to a foetus at an early stage more traumatic than the actual process of birth? Are we just dealing with a human genetic prejudice about preserving the race, and the usefulness of an extra human to grow the power of the tribe? because we have little compunction about spaying cats.  I hate the whole 'where do we draw the line' argument, but just to feed it back to The Toad - If we get abortion on demand banned, do we then get abortion for medical reasons banned? Are we going to go back to the RC view of the life of baby being more important than the mother? Will contraception then become the subject for fanatics?

This is not an easy question for anyone to come to a clear decision, or even a rational decision, about.

[The Toad]

Quotes from OR -

If we get abortion on demand banned, do we then get abortion for medical reasons banned? Are we going to go back to the RC view of the life of baby being more important than the mother? Will contraception then become the subject for fanatics?

My own answers would be, 'No', 'no', and 'no'; but then, I can't speak for the Roman Catholic Church, whose answers would probably be 'Yes', 'yes' and 'yes'.
If moral positions can be abandoned when the subject under consideration stops becoming theoretical and affects you personally, is there any point in holding them at all?  Surely the point of any considered moral opinion is that is should apply to everybody, including its holder.

Has a foetus rights?

Potentially, yes.  It all depends on the answer to the question, 'When does a foetus stop being a foetus and start being a baby?'  I accept that OR hates the 'where do we draw a line' argument, but, like it or not, don't lines have to be drawn somewhere?  If no lines are drawn, if we say that a mother can do what she likes the the foetus / child in her womb, does that mean that we believe that she has the right to end its life right up to the moment when it is born?  If that is the case, how could we justify the idea that what is merely a medical procedure in the hours before birth becomes a murder if done in the hours after birth?

Has a foetus rights? or more rights than the parent?

For my money, it depends on the stage of development which the foetus has reached.  If it's viable, it has rights - which again means that a line has to be drawn.  It should not have more rights than the parent, but different rights have different values: does a parent’s right to have a night out and enjoy himself / herself override a child’s right to have somebody at home to look after it, if the two rights clash?

Are we just dealing with a human genetic prejudice about preserving the race, and the usefulness of an extra human to grow the power of the tribe?

I’m going to use that excuse, in a slightly altered form,  the next time there’s a disaster and the various charities start appealing for money – “Sorry; I don’t suffer from the general human genetic prejudice to preserve the species; nor do I believe in the usefulness of extra humans to serve that end.”  It’ll be interesting to see what reaction I get.
I agree, it’s not an easy question.  But I fear that we’ve slipped into giving it some very easy, and unconsidered, answers. (I've had to write this in instalments, because my screen keeps slipping and makes corrections impossible.  Thanks for your patience.)

[OR]

The Toad,

Greetings to you, nice to reply to your erudite posts.

I’m going to use that excuse, in a slightly altered form,  the next time there’s a disaster and the various charities start appealing for money – “Sorry; I don’t suffer from the general human genetic prejudice to preserve the species; nor do I believe in the usefulness of extra humans to serve that end.”  It’ll be interesting to see what reaction I get.

There you go again, taking a debateably reasonable moral position to only allow abortions up to a certain time to it's ultimate limits. The current law draws a line which many can agree with. Not many wish to make it a free for all.

The Bible is full of stories of peoples who were wiped out for being of lesser worth than the Israelites. Killing other people like vermin, in the same way we kill locusts or foxes, is very much a human behaviour observable from the dawn of mankind. Therefore, I would think that there is very much a genetic link.

I do believe that there is a school of thought today that we should not protect people from famine because it is for their own good in the long term. For example, the population of Ethiopia during this famine is twice as large as the great 1980's famine. Is the 'let them starve' view immoral? By whose authority? Is it both immoral and sensible at the same time? Would the same people still think it immoral if it was the French starving? or the next village?

Morals, as you are well aware, are abstract and changeable, see the Commandments. Behaviour is a situational thing, moderated by the prevailing morals. The only way for morals to work is to accord with human needs both now and in the long term. There is no substantial difference IMO between birth control and early abortion, except that one violates theoretical rights and the other hypothetical rights.  I will leave the believers to decide the position of the soul in fertilised egg, but it is not a concern of mine in relation to the argument, though it seems to be for many AAs. My concern is with the happiness, fitness and moral guidance of those capable of living in this tough World. And I do think that we have quite enough people to ensure the success of the species - at the expense of all of the other seemingly disposable species whose livelihood seems to conflict with ours. I am not a fan of 'life style abortion'. We have to show life some respect. Then again, I am against keeping pets for the same reason.

I pose the questions - what is the aborted foetus losing out on? Why is living a life so important? What would be the difference if none of us had ever been born, or if the Earth had just remained a sterile rock? When all life is extinguished in future galactic events, what will it have mattered? Life, and creating new life, is an idea which only the living cling to - and that is a purely evolutionary genetic trait common to all species.

[The Toad]

Hello OR - How good it is, to be forced to consider one's beliefs!  After some thought, I've come up with the following points: (the quotations are, of course, yours):

Not many wish to make it a free for all.

True.  But should those who wish to make it a free for all be allowed to do so unopposed?  Not many people wish to take a machine gun out onto the street and mow down all the passers-by, but if we ever stop insisting that such massacres are immoral, or if we abandon the laws against killing, won’t that give the impression that we don't reckon that the killing of people is important, and thus make that sort of event more likely?

The Bible is full of stories of peoples who were wiped out for being of lesser worth than the Israelites. Killing other people like vermin, in the same way we kill locusts or foxes, is very much a human behaviour observable from the dawn of mankind.

It certainly is.  Generally, however, we try to justify our behaviour by labelling those whom we want to kill ‘sub-human’ – we not only kill them like vermin, we imply that they are vermin.  “They’re not real people, they’re infidels / Jews / gypsies / the wrong colour / the wrong tribe / ect ad infinitem.  Were we to acknowledge the humanity of those we wish to destroy, that would make it more difficult for us to get rid of them, so we belittle them in order to make them disposable.  This for me is what lies behind the constant use of expressions such as ‘foetus’ and ‘product of conception’ instead of ‘unborn child’ by pro-abortionists.  ‘Killing an unborn child’ sounds bad; ‘disposing of the products of conception’ sounds, by comparison, neutral – but the end result is the same.  That kind of verbal trickery, however, was used by the Nazis; which should make anybody else think twice before using it.

I do believe that there is a school of thought today that we should not protect people from famine because it is for their own good in the long term... Is the 'let them starve' view immoral? By whose authority? Is it both immoral and sensible at the same time? Would the same people still think it immoral if it was the French starving? or the next village?

It’s one thing to say from a distance, “We are going to let you starve because it is for the good of your nation in the long term,”, but it is quite another to look a starving person in the face and say it.  Again, there is a parallel with abortion: it’s one thing to say ‘abortion is all right’ from a distance, but it is another to look down at the results of an abortion and see something that looks, and sometimes sounds, like a small baby.  I reckon that’s what those politicians were trying to do: to show women who want abortions exactly what it is that they’re going to destroy if they press ahead.  And, shouldn’t they know?  Should we hide facts, turn away from truths, just because people don’t like them?

Morals, as you are well aware, are abstract and changeable, see the Commandments. Behaviour is a situational thing, moderated by the prevailing morals. The only way for morals to work is to accord with human needs both now and in the long term. There is no substantial difference IMO between birth control and early abortion, except that one violates theoretical rights and the other hypothetical rights.

Agreed.

My concern is with the happiness, fitness and moral guidance of those capable of living in this tough World.

That’s my concern, too; though I’d rather that we softened the world a little, to enable more people to survive in it, rather than that we concentrated on the well-being of those who are already strong enough to survive.

And I do think that we have quite enough people to ensure the success of the species...

That, I suppose is where the ‘religious’ person tends to have a different perspective to that of the ‘atheist’.  For somebody who believes only in the human race (or their own race in particular), and whose efforts are devoted to its continuation and improvement, it’s the collective concepts that matter: the Tribe, the Nation, the Species.  Individuals are unimportant, compared to these.  If the killing of hundreds of thousands of Chinese people ensures a glorious future for China, then so be it; if the starvation of hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians means there’s less demand on the world’s resources, and therefore more to share out between the rest of humanity, again, so be it.  For the ‘Christian’, however (I can’t claim to speak for people of other religions, as my ignorance of what they believe is almost total), it’s the individual who is of prime importance.  As C. S. Lewis once wrote (I paraphrase), “It’s not organizations, or nations, who are destined to spend eternity in the presence of Almighty God: it is the individual.  The individual has eternal significance.  The collective has not.”  The fact that Christian organizations are every bit as monolithic and dehumanising as secular ones is to their eternal shame, but it doesn’t negate the principle.  It goes without saying that what is good for the individual may be bad for the society, and vice versa, and as a result the Christian and the Atheist are likely to find themselves with different (perhaps opposing) solutions to the same problem.

I pose the questions - what is the aborted foetus losing out on? Why is living a life so important?

As a ‘believer’ (of sorts; I prefer to think of myself as a ‘faither’, albeit a very weak one), the only answers I can give are from a ‘believer’’s point of view.  If, as I hope, there is a ‘God’ whose ‘nature’ is love and who has ‘called us into being’ in order to share that love with us, then the aborted foetus is missing out not only on the wonderful experience of living (and it is wonderful, for most of us, when we pause to think about it) but on ultimate fulfilment, and on union, in love, with ‘God’.  Who can tell what an aborted ‘foetus’ might have become, even in human terms – a great musician, a Nobel prize winning scientist, the person who brought all the nations of the world together and ushered in a billion years of peace...?  The possibilities are endless.  Except that they have been ended.

What would be the difference if none of us had ever been born, or if the Earth had just remained a sterile rock? When all life is extinguished in future galactic events, what will it have mattered?

Again, I can only reply as a ‘believer’: if there is a ‘God’ and if ‘his’ purpose is to ‘bring into being’ people who are able to spend ‘eternity’ sharing love with ‘him’, then if none of us had ever been born, or if the Earth had remained a sterile rock, that purpose would have been frustrated – ‘God’’s love would have remained dammed up instead of flooding out, and we would have missed out on knowing (and hopefully returning) that love.  That’s a big difference.  And while I agree that galactic events will at some point in the future wipe out all life, I hope that by that time ‘life’ – in the form of the individuals who have lived – will be wrapped up in a mutual embrace with ‘God’ and thus will be far beyond the reach of even the most catastrophic galactic event.
If I believed it was impossible for there to be a ‘God’, then I would have to agree with you: in the long run it’ll all count for nothing, and the best we can do is grab what we can, and enjoy what we can, before we disappear into oblivion, individually and collectively.  “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”  I have nothing but admiration for Atheists: anyone who has the courage to keep on from day to day, knowing that their own extinction is growing closer by the hour, and knowing that whatever they do will be utterly futile in the long run, is a braver, better man than I am.  But, while I am far from sharing the (often annoying) blithe optimism and cast-iron confidence of those who believe themselves Saved, I haven’t yet come across anything which has torpedoed my ‘God’ entirely; and thus I am able to hope for a future beyond the future, unimaginable though it is, in which we will find that meaning and fulfilment, not pointlessness and frustration, have had the last word.  I count myself lucky to be able to hope in that way.
Thank you for all the points you raised.  I’ve really enjoyed thinking about them.

[OR]

Toad,

Thank you for the wonderful exposition of your faith. I wish I shared something like it to make sense of this ball of rock which constitutes less than a billion, billionth of a percent of the known universe.

As you say, people of faith are going to have to face up to their own fatal population paradox some day very soon.

Just as the 'right to life' is a conceit only of the living, so 'God will provide' is a conceit only of the believer.

BTW

It’s one thing to say from a distance, “We are going to let you starve because it is for the good of your nation in the long term,”, but it is quite another to look a starving person in the face and say it.  Again, there is a parallel with abortion: it’s one thing to say ‘abortion is all right’ from a distance, but it is another to look down at the results of an abortion and see something that looks, and sometimes sounds, like a small baby.  I reckon that’s what those politicians were trying to do: to show women who want abortions exactly what it is that they’re going to destroy if they press ahead.  And, shouldn’t they know?  Should we hide facts, turn away from truths, just because people don’t like them?

Whilst I agree that people should see the result of their actions, this is not what the AAs are trying to do. They are trying to humiliate the women by insisting on vaginal examinations. I do believe that many authoritarians have insisted on virginity examinations to discourage complaints and to dehumanise ethnic minorities throughout time. Nasty misogynism as a control mechanism.

The point could also be made that although an abortionist stance seems OK at a distance, an anti abortion stand point is also a feast best observed from a soap box. It is not the same when it is your relation, or neighbour who finds themselves pregnant when that should not be happening to them. Maybe AAs should be taken to see premature births of druggies babies who have a 75% chance of serious birth defects, and end up in permanent care.

One final question you raise about the necessity of being alive. What of all those potential people who by the mere chance of being the unfertilised or defective egg or sperm are not allowed to live to experience the wonder of God's Love? Do they miss not being born? and what can we do about it?

CS Lewis slightly understated his case. In the long run there is not just the individual, there is the 'me', which is the single most important attitudinal and existential building block. When the 'me' ceases to be, so do all the rest of you, and all the Gods -forever. Just as none of you existed before the 'me' was born.

[The Toad]

Quotes from OR:

Whilst I agree that people should see the result of their actions, this is not what the AAs are trying to do. They are trying to humiliate the women by insisting on vaginal examinations. I do believe that many authoritarians have insisted on virginity examinations to discourage complaints and to dehumanise ethnic minorities throughout time. Nasty misogynism as a control mechanism.

That may very well be the case with a proportion of AAs: I don't know enough of them to say what proportion.  But I'm always wary of lumping people together: "The English are...", "White people are...", "Women are...", and so on.  People are people, and in any group there is bound to be a spectrum of opinions; the larger the group, the broader the spectrum.  Therefore while some AAs are, doubtless, guilty as charged, there will be others - perhaps the majority for all I know - whose motivation is not a wish to humiliate women but a genuine concern for what they see (and up to a point I agree with them) as an unborn but practically human life, a life with no voice of its own and no way to defend itself.  Standing up for the voiceless and defenceless is, in my opinion, one of the ways in which humans show that they are better than - or at least different from - the mass of other creatures.
I'm not in the least trying to advocate virginity, as the Churches tend to do: what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms is their own business, as far as I'm concerned, as long as it's done between consenting adults, or the horse has been anaesthatized.  What I am trying to advocate is responsibility: recognition of the fact that actions have consequences, and that what we do affects other people - and can even create other people.  Contraception is fine by me: the day that they invent a pill that is 100% efficient is a day on which I shall rejoice.  The more contraception there is, the fewer abortions there will be.  I'm not even against early abortion, though where it's done for convenience, or as a substitute for contraception, I find it regrettable and I think it demeans the woman who does it.  I certainly don’t share the view of the Holy Catholic that every fertilised egg has a soul and therefore has equal rights with an adult.  I do, however, feel that by the time the ‘foetus’ has become recognizably baby-shaped it has certain rights – including, I would argue, the right to life.  And that applies to handicapped foetuses, too.  Perhaps that’s where the Churches could help, if they wanted to: they could provide foster-parents for handicapped babies, as a recognized alternative to those babies being aborted.

The point could also be made that although an abortionist stance seems OK at a distance, an anti abortion stand point is also a feast best observed from a soap box. It is not the same when it is your relation, or neighbour who finds themselves pregnant when that should not be happening to them.

Agreed, to a certain extent; though I struggle with the notion of pregnancy ‘happening to them’.  Pregnancy doesn’t just ‘happen’ to people: even the Virgin Maty (“She sounds like a friendly kind of saint.” – Editor) the Virgin Mary, I mean, had to do something in order to get pregnant, even if it was only say ‘yes’.  We’re back to the notion of consequences again.  If I choose to drive like an idiot on the road and I kill somebody, I should be prepared to face the consequences; and so should my relations or my neighbours, if it was them who were driving.  If I get pregnant, and leave doing anything about it until the child in my womb is recognizably human, I should be prepared to face the consequences of that, too.

Maybe AAs should be taken to see premature births of druggies babies who have a 75% chance of serious birth defects, and end up in permanent care.

The assumption that because a ‘foetus’ has a handicap – this ‘differently abled’ stuff is well intentioned, but it strikes me as patronizing and mealy-mouthed – it isn’t entitled to have a go at living and see what it can make of it worries me.  What place will there be for handicapped people, for the infirm, for the frail and the elderly, in the Brave New World towards which we seem to be heading?  Will they be looked upon as a waste of space, will what they consume be seen as a waste of resources?  And if so, how long will it be before they – perhaps it may be we – are disposed of?  As far as the provision of care is concerned, as I said above, that’s an area where the Churches and the AAs could put their money where their mouths are and provide that care themselves.

One final question you raise about the necessity of being alive. What of all those potential people who by the mere chance of being the unfertilised or defective egg or sperm are not allowed to live to experience the wonder of God's Love? Do they miss not being born? and what can we do about it?

As I indicated above, I depart from the beliefs of the Holy Catholic in that (amongst many other thongs) (“I can’t imagine you in a thong, and frankly I’m not going to try” – Editor) amongst many other things, I mean, I’m not convinced that the mere fact of fertilization bestows a soul.  Thus a fertilized egg which doesn’t implant is, in my book, lost: it doesn’t go straight to Heaven, or Hell, or Limbo, or anything like that.  It misses out on not being born, but I’m not convinced that it misses being born – there’s nothing there that can be aware that it might have been born.  As for what we can do about it, the answer is simple: nothing.  Absolutely nothing.
As I think W. H. Vanstone once wrote, for love to be real it must run the risk of tragedy, it must be prepared to face the possibility that it will not be recognized, or appreciated, or returned, or consummated.  Perhaps these never-quite-made-it humans are part of the risk that ‘God’ runs as ‘She’ ‘gives birth’ to creation; perhaps a part of the love that is ‘Hers’ to give is now doomed to remain forever unfulfilled because the person to whom it would have been devoted has not been born.  And, as with all the other tragedies that life and the world throw up, ‘She’ – and we (if it is true that ‘God’ is the ocean and we are the waves, we are inseparable from ‘Her’) – just has to live with it, cope as best ‘She’ can with it, and strive to rescue whatever small amount of triumph ‘She’ can, if any, from the tragedy.  Needless to say, this is just speculation: I don’t even know there is a ‘God’ so I can’t claim to have inside knowledge of how ‘He’, ‘She’ or ‘It’ works.  That said, I don’t think it’s impossible for ‘God’ (assuming that there is one) to be involved in creation in that way.  Indeed, being able to picture God as involved, and caring, and failing, and hurting, in that fashion is one of the things that enables me to hang on to what I laughingly call my ‘faith’.  I no longer find the Big Brother In The Sky ‘god’ convincing at all.  There’s even less evidence for ‘his’ existence than there is for my ‘involved’ ‘God’.  And that’s saying something.

CS Lewis slightly understated his case. In the long run there is not just the individual, there is the 'me', which is the single most important attitudinal and existential building block. When the 'me' ceases to be, so do all the rest of you, and all the Gods -forever.  Just as none of you existed before the 'me' was born.

You may well be right.  One day we shall find out, nothing is more certain than that. All I can say is that a degree of ‘faith’ in an admittedly wispy and ill-defined ‘God’ enables me to hope that you may be wrong: that the ‘me’ of each of us will never cease to exist but will be united with every other ‘me’, including those of ‘God’.  It’s unimaginable, I know, but is there any reason why something that is unimaginable may not be real?  My day-to-day life is far beyond the imagination of a baby, but if it hangs on in there for long enough...

[hatless]

I don't know if this needs a thread of its own or not - it's a bit of a tangent - but I'm intrigued by your paraphrased quote from CS Lewis, Toad.

As C. S. Lewis once wrote (I paraphrase), “It’s not organizations, or nations, who are destined to spend eternity in the presence of Almighty God: it is the individual.  The individual has eternal significance.  The collective has not.”

One of the things that it seems my generation has had to learn, is that there are no individuals apart from community. You can't think of people in isolation, because without relationships there is no self, no individuality, no person. Biblical scholars have re-read Paul and discovered that Paul thinks in terms of corporate identity. Humanity is 'in Adam'. The Jew, the Gentile are important concepts. In Jesus, God was fulfilling his promise to Abraham to make him a blessing to all the nations, and so on. We've misread Paul because we were so individualist.

I don't think we've fully learnt this lesson, yet. CS Lewis comes from a right wing position and from an earlier generation. Right wingers are prone to individualistic thinking, and vice versa - arguably that's what the terms mean. The first half of the 20th Century was strongly individualistic, at least in the thinking and writing of the white male elite, and reacted strongly against the new pattern of society they saw in Russia. Lewis's use of the word 'collective' seems to pick up on a specific Soviet term.

I'm saying that Lewis would say that, wouldn't he? And I would disagree, wouldn't I? We're just playing true to form. (Which, of course, is also precisely the sort of observation I would make, wouldn't I, because it's the result of seeing ourselves as members of groups!) I'm not sure that goes anywhere. But is it relevant to the discussion about abortion, to the value of life, indeed to all moral questions?

Morality is often framed in terms of the rights and wrongs of the choices individuals make: you're wrong; you should have done x. It's like coaching a cricketer in stroke selection: get the right skills for living in this world; in these situations, do this. But you can approach morality in a more collective way, downplaying the individual's choices (they may not really have much choice at all) and asking what sort of a society do we want to build, and how can we get there, meaning what policies, what attitudes, what mechanisms might we put in place?

Eternal life, too, tends to be thought of in terms of the continuation of the soul, as if heaven is a repository of atomic spirits. Tricky, though, when you think of actual people. One might never be at peace without the person they loved, but that person might not be able to stand them. An infant might never have been a detached individual. Bliss can only mean closeness to their mother, but what of the mother's needs? Is there any solution to these conundrums by thinking of the survival of relationships rather than individuals? I've heard a theologian say that God exists not so much in the three persons of the Trinity - the corners of the triangle - as in the relations between them - sending, proceeding, obeying - the sides. Perhaps we are the same.

Talking recently with a woman about her husband who died two years ago and whom we knew and loved very well, remembering him together and involving him in life today, wondering what he would have thought about this and that, acknowledging his continued influence in us, seemed very worthwhile, somehow. As if we were achieving something, not just for her and us, but for him, and perhaps for God. It was more than just conjuring him up by remembering him. We were feeling the continued strength of our relatedness to him in our friendship with each other - a network of interactions of which he is still a part and which feels like the best of us, too. Mmm, there was something more, too, but it has slipped away.

Relationships are always about love, not just the love that brings us together, sex and so on, but the longing, the vision that is about faith. When we are joined in common cause, as followers of Jesus, say, then we are made part of something huge and lasting. We don't just join a church like  you can belong to a bank - the church, the Christian tradition, becomes part of who you are, and who we are is part of something that is going on into the future. For a while, at least. We have eternity because we're all on the side of the angels I don't believe in.

Well, I couldn't find the Lewis quote. Perhaps it's from Mere Christianity? It would be interesting to see which words he used.

[OR]

The Toad,

I think are developing mission creep here, with long posts and longer replies. I shall try to be brief.

That may very well be the case with a proportion of AAs: I don't know enough of them to say what proportion.  But I'm always wary of lumping people together:

Sorry ,Toad, I was referring to the people who actually want this invasive procedure, not all AAs

Virgin Mary, I mean, had to do something in order to get pregnant, even if it was only say ‘yes’.
I don't believe that all people's 'yes's' carry the same force or meaning, or where people. especially when the hormones are flowing, are to be placed on the responsible - irresponsible continuum.

The assumption that because a ‘foetus’ has a handicap – this ‘differently abled’ stuff is well intentioned, but it strikes me as patronizing and mealy-mouthed – it isn’t entitled to have a go at living and see what it can make of it worries me.
I cannot agree with you in this area. Perhaps I should clarify myself. If a baby is born at more or less full term and is handicapped of course it should be given every chance in life. However when medical science has advanced to a point when a prem baby can be saved even when the same science knows it has an extremely high chance of brain, lung and organ defects, I think that the medics are not so much saving a life, but potentially inflicting misery on a human being. On behalf of of whom, I do not know. AAs I suspect. Much better that those prone to prem births, like drug users, should have better access to early abortion. This whole area is a massive debate on it's own. I have just realised how much difficulty I am having sorting my thoughts on this.

I too would like to share a hope in resurrection, but perhaps with more certainty than you that I won't benefit. Frankly, I don't see the point anyway. Once I have been switched off and all consciousness ceases after a full life, why go to the trouble of being switched back on again? The entire concept of life eternal, even if I believed it, does nothing for me. I know that God's deeds are unfathomable, but why must we die anyway. Just send a space ship? If the churches actually believed there own teachings, they should give harp and lute lessons to pensioners so you can turn up with an advantage over the unbelievers?

Thank you for your wit (I loved the anesthetized horse) and your learning on this topic. I have not come across Vanstone before, but the idea seems familiar.

I hope a few more of our learned contributors will join in here.(tis so already, cross posted with Hatless)

[The Toad]

Quotes from Hatless:

Lewis's use of the word 'collective' seems to pick up on a specific Soviet term.

The word was mine, not Lewis's - I couldn't remember the exact words to quote them properly, and I was looking for a term that denoted a collection of people without using 'organization' or 'nation' again.  No Soviet leanings were intended, it's just that my Editor gets stroppy if I use the same word repeatedly in neighbouring sentences.  The original was probably from ‘Mere Christianity’, but as I stopped reading C. S.’s books some decades ago, I couldn’t swear to it.

But you can approach morality in a more collective way, downplaying the individual's choices (they may not really have much choice at all) and asking what sort of a society do we want to build, and how can we get there, meaning what policies, what attitudes, what mechanisms might we put in place?

You can, indeed.  Nor would I dismiss that kind of approach.  I would worry, however, that it might result in people blaming their faults on society, rather than taking responsibility for them themselves.  Nobody forces people to torch cars, for example, but if we go around proclaiming that it's society's fault when cars get torched, that may give people who would normally not torch cars an excuse to reach for the petrol and the matches.  The Right Wing, as you indicate, is aggressively individualist; but I suspect that the Left Wing tends to be not individualist enough.  And when it comes to putting policies, attitudes and mechanisms in place, we need to be aware that it is individuals who are going to be responsible for putting them in place, and individuals who are going to be at the sharp end of them.

Eternal life, too, tends to be thought of in terms of the continuation of the soul, as if heaven is a repository of atomic spirits. Tricky, though, when you think of actual people. One might never be at peace without the person they loved, but that person might not be able to stand them. An infant might never have been a detached individual. Bliss can only mean closeness to their mother, but what of the mother's needs? Is there any solution to these conundrums by thinking of the survival of relationships rather than individuals? I've heard a theologian say that God exists not so much in the three persons of the Trinity - the corners of the triangle - as in the relations between them - sending, proceeding, obeying - the sides. Perhaps we are the same.

Yes, it is tricky when you think of actual people.  But people change – that might almost be a definition of what it is to be alive: you change.  I’m not the Toad I was at age twelve, or twenty, or thirty, or even forty.  Is there any reason why we should not continue to change in a life-after-death, if there is one?  I try to avoid being dogmatic about ‘eternal life’: I hope that somehow, after death, we remain ourselves; that  the ‘essence’ of us continues, and enters into relationship with the ‘essence’ of ‘God’.  The mechanics of it, if it happens, are beyond my fathoming, so I try not to bother picturing them.
It’s interesting that you mention the Trinity: I read lately (in one of Harry Williams’s books) about the idea of the Trinity still retaining its popularity because it assures us that two of our greatest fears can be overcome, those fears being the fear of utter isolation and the fear of utter absorption.  If the nature of God is one in which individuality and belonging both exist, and both find their fulfilment (it’s a big ‘if’, I know), may not our own personality be taken up into that ‘trinitarian’ relationship,  and affirmed and shared therein?   May we not find ‘someday’ that the ‘Blessed Trinity’ consists not of three Persons but of billions of Personalities, some of which are ours?  Incidentally, I  think I see what the theologian you mention means; but without individuals, within the ‘Godhead’ or outside it, there wouldn’t be any relations between them – without the corners there wouldn’t be any sides.

Talking recently with a woman about her husband who died two years ago and whom we knew and loved very well, remembering him together and involving him in life today, wondering what he would have thought about this and that, acknowledging his continued influence in us, seemed very worthwhile, somehow. As if we were achieving something, not just for her and us, but for him, and perhaps for God. It was more than just conjuring him up by remembering him. We were feeling the continued strength of our relatedness to him in our friendship with each other - a network of interactions of which he is still a part and which feels like the best of us, too. Mmm, there was something more, too, but it has slipped away.

I’ve taken part in similar kinds of discussion on many occasions; and I don’t doubt for a moment that they are indeed very worthwhile.  It’s just that, for my part, I hope that what has undoubtedly slipped away may ‘some day’ return, in a new and improved form.  Much of traditional Christianity would encourage that hope, so I’m not alone in holding it, I’m glad to say.  There is a stark nobility in the ‘No-life-after-death’ attitude which is undoubtedly admirable.  But when it comes to choosing an attitude to approach life with (which is what we all have to do, Atheists and God-botherers alike), I prefer to go with Julian of Norwich’s “All shall be well; all manner of things shall be well,” than with “Eat, drink and be merry (ect).”  It’s less bleak, it’s not indefensible, and if it’s mistaken I’ll never know.  Is it any wonder that surveys indicate that people who have strong religious beliefs are happier and generally healthier than those who haven’t?

When we are joined in common cause, as followers of Jesus, say, then we are made part of something huge and lasting.

Perhaps that’s where my personality lets me down: I’ve never been one for joining, for devoting myself to The Cause.  Groups tend to worry me: so often when (even basically good) people get together the herd instinct takes over, and they do things collectively which they would be ashamed to do individually.  I stopped going to football matches because of the sheer hatred that was generated amongst the supporters, and the abuse which they (most of them doubtless decent people outside the stadium) hurled at the players and officials.  Humans, as individuals, I can put up with.  Humans en masse worry me – their humanity seems to decrease as their numbers increase.  Perhaps that’s why I’m so keen on the importance of the individual.
Quotes from OR:

when medical science has advanced to a point when a prem baby can be saved even when the same science knows it has an extremely high chance of brain, lung and organ defects, I think that the medics are not so much saving a life, but potentially inflicting misery on a human being.

I’d go with you, with regard to brain defects.  With regard to lungs and other organs, however, it’s possible to have badly functioning ones and still be a proper, full, dyed-in-the-wool human being.  Rather than take the decision to put such people out of their misery, I would prefer to keep them going until the point is reached where they’re capable of asking to be put out of their misery if they want to be put out of it.

This whole area is a massive debate on its own.

It certainly is.  I’m not claiming to have the answers; just saying that the answers aren’t as simple as people sometimes tend to suggest.

I too would like to share a hope in resurrection, but perhaps with more certainty than you that I won't benefit. Frankly, I don't see the point anyway. Once I have been switched off and all consciousness ceases after a full life, why go to the trouble of being switched back on again? The entire concept of life eternal, even if I believed it, does nothing for me. I know that God's deeds are unfathomable, but why must we die anyway. Just send a space ship? If the churches actually believed there own teachings, they should give harp and lute lessons to pensioners so you can turn up with an advantage over the unbelievers?

The point... I hope that the point is ‘fulfilment’, that somehow, ‘somewhere’, ‘in ‘God’’, the capacity for love that we all have, that capacity which we are so little able to use, will flower and that we will be the bright, glorious, open, merry, joyful, communicating, complete people that we have it in us to be.  I’d be prepared to be ‘switched back on’ in order to take part in that.  Besides, can we be sure that our consciousnesses cease?  Nobody has ever come back to tell us what dying is like.
The rouble (“That’s ‘trouble’.  You’ve slipped back into the Soviet era.” – Editor) the trouble, I mean, with eternal life is that it sounds so dull: “I’ve only been here for ten thousand years, and I’ve run out of things to do.”  But perhaps eternity isn’t like that.  We’ve all known days (at least I hope we have) where we’ve been so caught up in what we’ve been doing that we haven’t noticed the time passing; days when we’ve eventually looked up at the clock and thought, “Gosh!  It’s never that time already!”  Well, perhaps ‘eternity’ is like that.  Perhaps it’s not that time is unending but that time is unimportant, unnoticed.
I have to agree, if there is a ‘God’ ‘Her’ deeds are unfathomable; and there are lots of questions that I would like to ask ‘Her’.  One thing I’m sure of, however, is that believers who get to ‘Heaven’ (if there is one) won’t be waving their harps and lutes in an effort to get precedence over the non-believers.  If this ‘First among you must be the last’ business of Jesus’s is true, then surely it must apply in ‘Heaven’ – and indeed, it must apply to ‘God’ too.  I find myself dredging up another idea of C. S. Lewis’s: that life in Heaven is like a game of Pass The Parcel, where everybody delights in handing around all that is given to them, and the only way to get ‘out’ is to hang on to it.  As with all ideas about Heaven, though, it’s just a way of picturing it.  Another thing I’m sure of is that if you yourself die and find yourself – against your own expectations – at the Pearly Gates, you’ll be welcomed in with open arms; not just because ‘God’ is a ‘God of Love’, but because you are you, because you matter.

[OR]

Toad.
As an independently minded person, I don't like the idea of a pre-ordained future. If I am pleasantly surprised it won't be long before St Peter puts me down in his book as a dissident. Anyway, amid all of the conjecture, lack of information, and plain wishful thinking on the subject you are forgetting that you may not be so pleasantly surprised at all when you get that warm feeling and smell of sulphur. And don't tell me that modern thinking discounts the idea. The conclusion I will draw is that all the theologians were wrong for the first 1960 years.

[The Toad]

Quotes from OR:

As an independently minded person, I don't like the idea of a pre-ordained future.

I have obviously given the impression that the future is 'pre-ordained' - it was not my intention to do so, and I apologize for the offence that I have caused you.  I was working on the assumptions that love is the core of our being, and that all our human faults and failings are down to the lack of it; that our desperate pursuit of money, power, celebrity, sex, and so on, is fundamentally a futile attempt to make up for that lack; and that (my own and other) people's fear of and dislike of others are founded on what I think H. A. Williams called (something like) a 'violation of our intrinsic tenderness' - on the fact that our attempts to give love, to share something of our deepest selves, have in the past failed, or have been rejected, and the pain of that has caused us to vow never to risk anything on that kind of love again.  I overlooked the fact that not everybody shares those assumptions, and I was unjustified in doing so.
Working on the basis of those assumptions, however, I would guess that in Heaven, if there is one,  (a) our ability to give and receive love, which is so imperfect, so stunted and so under-employed here, will 'eventually' be perfected, and that (b) there will be no more need to fear having our 'intrinsic tenderness' violated.  I assumed that if love is indeed the core of our being, and we were offered the chance to express that love perfectly, nobody would refuse to do so (why should they?); I didn't intend imply that God will bounce everybody willy-nilly into a kind of ghastly eternal party game, all false bonhomie and compulsory jollity.  Love, in order to be real love, must be optional, and refusing to go through the 'Pearly Gates' must be a possibility; though if our fulfilment really lies in loving,and we are able to realize that fulfilment, I struggle to see why anybody would want to opt out of it.  Why would a fish opt out of the ocean?

If I am pleasantly surprised it won't be long before St Peter puts me down in his book as a dissident.

I know the Churches scorn, revile, hate and damn dissidents (I've done it myself, in the folly of my youth, and later been on the receiving end); but I’m not convinced that God does.  If ‘He’ does, then, as someone who has repudiated 98% of the Faith Of His Fathers and hasn’t darkened the door of a church in thirty years, I am as likely to be in St. Peter’s bad books as you are.  However, at least dissidents care enough about ‘God’ – or the idea of ‘God’ - to think about it and dismiss it.  If I was God, I’d be more pleased by that than by the tens of thousands of people who treat ‘Him’ as an Eternal Life Insurance company and go to church every week merely to pay their premiums.

... amid all of the conjecture, lack of information, and plain wishful thinking on the subject you are forgetting that you may not be so pleasantly surprised at all when you get that warm feeling and smell of sulphur.

Conjecture, lack of information, and plain wishful thinking?  Yes, I have to plead guilty to all of those.  Lack of information is, I would claim, unavoidable: we just haven’t got it.  And that lack means that, in the area of ‘religion’ as in so many other areas of human endeavour, if we want to make a stab at what’s going on, we have to conjecture.  Our conjectures may be mistaken, they may be correct, or they may be somewhere in-between; but there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with us making them.  Putting theories together, often on patchy evidence, is what we humans do all the time, adapting those theories to take account of new evidence when it comes along (or ignoring it if our theory had hardened into a Dogma).  Admittedly, in the area of religion there’s not a great deal of evidence to go on; and certainly there’s nothing like proof.  All I would claim is that there isn’t a total lack of evidence: that here and there down the ages – and indeed now, in our own lives – there have been enough hints and whispers to make belief in a ‘God of Love’, and our own ‘eventual’ dance of unity and separateness with that ‘God’, an option that’s not totally impossible for anybody outside of a lunatic asylum to hold.
The warm feeling and the smell of sulphur?  It’s a possibility.  In fact, if what 70% of Christians (at a rough estimate) believe about ‘God’ is true, than it’s a certainty.  I am bold enough, however, to hope that ‘God’ isn’t as small-minded and vindictive as a lot of ‘His’ followers seem to be.  I may of course be wrong, and I may find myself in a pit of fire being stared at by all those Christians whose Heaven wouldn’t be complete without a Hell full of damned people to gloat over.  But at least I’ll be able to comfort myself that I lived and died believing in a ‘God’ that was better than the real thing.
And that, basically, is what all this religion / atheism business is about: deciding what star to follow, where to pin your hopes, what compass to use to navigate the ship of your life by.  I am wide open to the accusation of setting course for the Wishful Thinking Islands, in the leakiest of leaky boats.  And it may indeed turn out that my voyage has been a futile one, that I’ve been trying to head for somewhere that doesn’t exist.  But even if that is the case, what have I lost?  I will have sailed aboard a game, if tatty, ship, with a friendly crew, a tantalizing map, and the hope of treasure when at last I sink my anchor.  There are other destinations to aim at: social reformers will be looking for the Perfect Society Archipelago, for example, while other people will be looking for Designer Label Land, or the Celebrity States, or any number of other weird and not-so-wonderful lands.  Even the nihilist has to decide where to steer his (or her) ship – a course plotted to avoid any possible harbours is still a course.  To my mind, however, none of these voyages offer me the fulfilment and reward (even now, not in some unimaginable future) that my own voyage supplies.  If there is no ‘God’ and my ship sinks with all hands (“I wish you’d sink this bloody ‘sea’ metaphor.” – Editor) how am I any the worse for having sailed the way I have?  At least I’ve had a purpose, and a hope, even if they’ve been mistaken.  Not all voyages can offer those - there are more than a few ‘Flying Dutchmen’ about.

And don't tell me that modern thinking discounts the idea. The conclusion I will draw is that all the theologians were wrong for the first 1960 years.

 That seems to me to be an entirely safe and valid conclusion.  Indeed, I would add to it that all theologians will continue to be wrong for the next 1960 years, and for the 1960 years after that, and after that, ad infinitem.  As somebody once said, ‘Theology is the only branch of learning in which the practitioners don’t know what they are talking about.’
If ‘God’ is ‘God’, ‘He’ must be so far beyond our imagining that anything we say about him will be wrong.  If we can describe ‘Him’ accurately, ‘He’ is an idol of our own constructing, not the genuine article.  There are a couple of long (but unpopular) traditions in Christianity, one of which (I think it’s called the ‘Apophatic’ tradition) states that ‘God’ may only be spoken of in ‘Not’s – you can say that ‘He’ is not this, and not that, but you can’t say what ‘He’ is.  The other says you can only speak of ‘Him’ in paradox – if you say ‘He’ is one thing you have to immediately say that he is the opposite of it, too.  This, I am sure, must be downright annoying for any Atheist.  The Big Brother In The Sky, so popular with believers and Atheists alike, at least offers something solid, something that ‘His’ believers can cling to and ‘His’ opponents can land their blows on.  How can you launch an effective attack on something as wispy and ethereal as an apophatic, paradoxical ‘God’?  It would be like trying to punch fog.  The Atheist will complain that it’s just not fair for the ‘believer’ to posit a ‘God’ like that.  And, as so often, he will be quite justified in his complaint.
The trouble lies in the inadequacy of our experience, and thus in our language – what we haven’t experienced, at least to a certain degree, we can’t describe.  And the reality of ‘God’ (again, if there is one) lies firmly beyond our experience.  Some of us think we see hints, we think we find clues, we think we hear faint whispers.  If we are to share these, and to say what we think they mean, we have to use language – but adequate words don’t exist.  We have to use poetry, and paradox, and the rest of it: they don’t do the job properly, but they’re the only language we have.  ‘God-talk’ (and I would include the Bible in that) can, at the most, be a signpost, pointing towards a place that may or may not exist.  I wish it were otherwise – it would be pleasant to be able to possess a ton of good, solid God-evidence for believers to enjoy and Atheists to try to disqualify – but it isn’t.  It there is a ‘God’ then ‘He’ must be, literally, beyond our describing.  The ideas put forward by theologians are every bit as inaccurate as those put forward by poets.  All that can be claimed for them is that, at their best, they point towards the reality.  If there is a reality, of course.

[Bonzo]

But at least I’ll be able to comfort myself that I lived and died believing in a ‘God’ that was better than the real thing.

Exactly.  Conservative Christians go on about liberal Christians who pick and choose from the Bible, but what sort of god would they have people worshipping?  Remote, unfriendly vengeful and unfair.  It's not just unattractive.  Even if the God of Love is fictional, it's a higher thought than the conservatives' god.

[OR]

Toad,

I have read and re read you posts, and I cannot really fault what you say. The search for the source of Love must be one of our greatest intellectual achievements. I admire your courage in continuing you quest. Especially as you must have had disappointments and wrong turns on the way. To cling to a vision of intellectual purity when you fully know the problems of ever understanding the reality is heroic. It suppose it all comes down to differences in inbuilt levels of scepticism in the individual

Thank you for a lesson in clarity of thought and excellent penmanship.

Your friend

Ocham.