Stopping to Think

Just a couple brief thoughts. I was flipping back through Rodney Stark's, "The Triumph of Christianity" yesterday. And one of the themes he explains to be prominent in the early years of the church was the opposition to the (widely embraced) practice of infanticide. The exposing of children to the elements, often on dump heaps, was most often done to little girls because the culture valued men more highly. Christians, following in the footsteps of the Jews, rightly rejected this practice as abominable to God, who created mankind in His own image. And this seeing of humans, women and girls included, as the image bearers of God, is the only sure footing for valuing human life and protecting the dignity of all persons. And furthermore, this valuing of life provides a stark contrast to much of the world around us. It did in ancient Rome, it does in China with one child laws, it does in America with abortion on demand. -------- Most of my conservative Christian readers we...

I feel like the last few posts I've been ragging on traditional values. Allow me to make a clarifying statement. I am all for both traditions, and values. They are not, in and of themselves, bad things, and can be quite good. But when we take an issue of massive import, and lower it to the importance level of tradition, we do our culture, our country, and our fellow man a great disservice. That is my point. And so I want to take some of that logic and apply it to the abortion topic. The prevailing stance on abortion on the "right hand" side of the isle seems to be that abortion is bad, unless the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest, or if the mother's life is at stake.  I want to explain why this position is completely illogical and indefensible. What is the basis for opposing abortion at all?  Opposition to abortion rests on two premises 1)that an unborn fetus is a person 2)that the unprovoked killing of any person, something commonly known as murder, is wr...