babelfish

The person who gave you your life was your mom. She's the one who had the power to either continue her pregnancy or terminate it. She's the one who loved and nurtured you when you were helpless. Without her constant attention and example, you would not know how to be a human being today.

If not a birth mother, this person was an adoptive parent, or an employee in an institution such as an orphanage, or even your father or another male caretaker.

Still, in all likelihood, the person who gave your life value and kept you alive was a female. It certainly wasn't some male deity.

And unless you were given the right sort of care and feeding at the beginning of your life, chances are you are a very messed up person now that you're all grown up.

I admit that's a lot of power we women hold, and many people feel uncomfortable admitting this is true.

Frivolous

I agree that mothers are the big players when it comes to creating life. But what i'm also trying to point out is that they are only doing it with tools that they were 'given' and with instincts that they didnt learn. So are we saying thankyou for those? Humans are animals, and our procreation is perpetuated by our instinct.

I interpreted 'Who gives us life?' to mean in a wholehearted sense of life in general, or do you mean only present human life?

babelfish

I was assuming that was what winstonjen meant in her OP. Human life.

The other kinds of life are on their own.

DougI

I've had anti-choice fundamentalists tell me straightforward that parents have no process in reproduction, only gods bring life. Everyone's a product of immaculate conception apparently.

winstonjen

In that case, God is guilty of rape!

Bring on the lawsuits!

Keith Russell

Greetings:

As far as the evidence I've seen suggests, life began only once, and it has existed ever since.

The question is not--and has never been--'when life begins'. The question is whose life takes precedence.

All living things kill; the process is automatic, and unavoidable--and thus amoral (outside the possibility of being morally evaluated).

(White blood cells, anyone?)

Keith.

[ November 27, 2002: Message edited by: Keith Russell ]</p>

B34RZ0R

Wanted dead or alive:
Gawd the fodder the holeyToast and Jebus the bun
for raping Mary
(if you believe in immaculate conception ... slap you self and look down)
tee hee
*Bear*

Davo

winstonjen,

I don't really understand it a great deal either, because there's a lot of hypocrisy in the people who make that statement. By saying "God gave us life; only God can take it," they're implicitly appealing to God's sovereignty in choosing the day that we're born and the day that we die.

Herein lies the problem. Hospitals actively try to prevent death every day, when the death of a patient would be the course of nature. If God's sovereignty over human life is such that we cannot use euthanasia, abortion, etc., we similarly should be disallowed from taking any action that would prolong life beyond the course of nature. That opens up a whole range of questions about shortening and prolonging life, the most obvious of which are: What counts as taking life? Is it only actions that bring on a quick death, or does smoking or eating unhealthy food count? How do we know when God wants our lives to be taken? When we're terminally ill, in intensive care, so monstrously disabled that we have no chance of living a life of any quality?

The "God gave us live; only God can take it" argument, I think, doesn't stand up under logical scrutiny.

[ November 28, 2002: Message edited by: Davo ]</p>

winstonjen

True, true. Perhaps they lean more towards extending life because of all the 'miracles' God performs. However, that viewpoint is invalid as well, IMO, because God has commited atrocities and shortened lives in man cases.

I think that if a miracle was going to occur, I think that it would be fair to say, "Well, let it happen BEFORE I pull the plug (or commit suicide, or whatever)."

happyboy

frviolous, there is no need for a god of ANY kind. back in dark ages europe, we had a culture dominated by christianity, and it led to some of the darkest and most horrible human rights abuses we have ever seen. i for one am done with the idea of "all loving God" who also preaches hate at the same time. i am done feeling guilt for being who i am, i am done worrying obsessively over a hell i'll be damned to for not doing exactly what this invisible man in the sky says, and i am done hating myself.

oh, and frivolous, have you actually read anything concerning abiogenesis that WASN'T on a creationist site?

happyboy