Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Editor's Note


Yesterday morning on my way in to work National Pubic Radio, as is its wont, featured a lengthy, slobbering interview with a wingnut voter, specifically in this case a Roy Moore supporter. He said he was actually a convert to Christianity. He portrayed himself as a skeptic, and said that if somebody tried to tell him what the Bible said he'd confirm it for himself.

Then he said that he was voting for Roy Moore because the Bible says that life begins at conception and abortion is murder.

News flash: it doesn't. Read the Bible, young man, from cover to cover, as I have done, and you will find that it does not contain one single word about abortion, or when life begins. The only possible exception is a ceremony described in DeuteronomyNumbers, which some people think is actually intended to induce abortion, although that is not clear.  In fact Christian condemnation of abortion is a modern innovation, dating only to the 19th Century. The complete lack of biblical authority for the Catholic and Evangelical position on abortion ought to be a major embarrassment, but the preachers and their sheep just pretend that it exists.

Surveys consistently find that atheists tend to know more about the Bible than do believers. The reason for that is that you cannot possibly simultaneously know the contents of the Bible; be sane; and be a Christian. It is full of contradictions, moral depravity, and absurdities.

Accordingly, I will start a new series on Sundays in which I read the Bible. Perhaps it will be educational.

(I started a similar project before, on a blog I maintained called Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, but abandoned it due to lack of a suitable interlocutor. That was supposed to be a conversation with a believer. I'm just going to do this myself.)


2 comments:

Don Quixote said...

THANK YOU! I was listening to NPR's show, "1A," and I called in to say there is NOTHING in the Bible about abortion ... anywhere ... but I had to get going and the show was almost over.

A fetus is not a human. Yes, all the DNA programming is there but it ain't there yet. And as you've pointed out, since half of all fertilized eggs in humans fail to implant, does this make god a murderer?

Please include something in your upcoming primer about where this nonsense in the 19th century came from (didn't it have something to do with a pope?) about abortion being immoral. Women must have control over their own reproductive decisions.

Related: I was thrilled to hear--also on NPR--recorded calls from Alabama voters--women--saying they will NEVER again vote Republican. Mirabile dictu! People are waking up! And when they do, they can influence stupid people like the numbnuts you quoted in today's blog. Get the men OUT of politics, I say.

Cervantes said...

Yes it was Pope Pius the whatever in the 1890s. It was a response to the feminist movement of the time.