Exodus 21:22 (RSV) When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman’s husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine.
Of the 31,273 verses in the Bible, there is no mention of abortion as a voluntary termination of a pregnancy. The above verse is the only one that mentions a penalty for causing an accidental termination of a pregnancy. It says the person at fault has to pay the husband a fine.
It then goes on to mention that if the woman is harmed however, then it’s a life for a life, an eye for an eye, etc…
So the killing of a woman results in death but the killing of a fetus results in only a fine.
It would seem that if the Bible considered abortion murder, then the penalty for killing a fetus should also be death?
I am confused. I lost two kids due to tubal pregnancies. After that I had one that is healthy. Now I am pregnant again and I don’t want to be pregnant becasue I don’t want to go through the morning sickess again. This may sound crazy but I was considering to kill it myself with turpentine or get an abortion. I am so lost. Then I was hoping that it would be in my tubes becasue I don’t want anymore kids.
Peggy-
How did you find this site?
Don’t use turpentine. It could be very painful and not even work. If you want an abortion, get a legal one.
I hope you find the courage to do what you feel is best for you. Peace.
I wouldn’t have much faith in the biblical god being all that consistent in its actions and thoughts if it did exist.
It’s feeling it needed to test its creation shows its lack of faith in its creation to be what it wanted it to be. This negative attitude would be bound to show up as flaws in its creation.
Its supposed ability to speak things into existence would make any negative thought show up in its creation since its creation was supposed to be created in its image. So much for all of its creation having faith in it if it didn’t have faith in itself.
I think that only those that truly want children should have them. Thats not saying that all who want children are capable of being good parents. But with the support of family. I guess those that aren’t and have the support can.
Would you expect someone to love you that caused you suffering because of something your parents did? Like the god of Genesis. A later scripture in the bible says one should not punish the parents for what the children do or vice versa.
One thing you can believe in the Bible. “Believe a lie and be damned’ If to be damned means to suffer as a result of believing it.
I lie being something one is expected to believe without question. Maybe something that cannot be proven to be true or false. Lke the existence of the proposed gods of religions.
The Bible doesn’t address the adortion issue. However, Jewish tradition, which the continuation of the Biblical tradition states the following: to terminate a pregnancy in the first trimester is the equivalent to the crime of wasting a man’s seed, which is not punishable by any religious court, but to terminate a pregnancy in the second or third trimester of pregnancy is murder, as the soul enters the body at the end of 3 months of pregnancy. So the miscarriage of the verse in question must be referring to a fetus in the first trimester.
Wow, the murder of a woman, results in death. One of the only few defenses of women in the bible, but it doesn’t make up for the rest of injustices to women. Face it, the bible god is man-made as well as all the alleged “divine inspired scriptures.” Of course there are many bible-believing women to this day who submit to such misguided “authority” through blind faith.
I’m not a satanist, but maybe the serpent in the garden made a good point, and the bible god mand a great lie.
Oops, another mis-type in my last comment (for christ’s sake, I don’t even drink anymore). What I meant after I said “maybe the serpent in the garden made a good point” was maybe the bible god made (not ‘mand’ oops) a great lie.
I’m sorry for all of you who feel that my God isn’t real. I’m here to tell you He is and He loves you whether you believe in Him or not. I pray that one day each of you will come to know and love the God who has never left you, even when you say you don’t believe. He is real and He loved you enough to send His son to die so you won’t have to die eternally. Blessings to each of you.
That’s nice of you to be concerned. I know exactly how you feel having been in your situation and believed pretty much the same things.
I’m here to tell you however that believing in something that’s invisible doesn’t make it real, no matter how psychologically appealing it is.
There’s a good reason why the God you believe in is invisible.
Everyone wants to believe in some kind of relationship with a forgiving supreme father
figure. It, along with many other things are part of our psychological nature left over from our childhood that we retain into adulthood.
Again believing in something doesn’t make it real.
Capella, Thank you for not attacking someone with a different belief than you! You say that believing in something/someone you can’t see doesn’t make sense, but you can’t see the wind, but you can see the effects of the wind. Do you believe in the wind? I see the effects of God. Not believing in something doesn’t make it not real either!! I would challenge you to check out CreationInstruction.org they have some really great videos that approach creation/evolution from a scientific standpoint. I had a great family, my parents have been married 36 years (yesterday, in fact!) I was not abused in any way, shape or form, I am in a very healthy and loving marriage. I believe in my loving, graceful, supreme Father because my Bible is real, my God is real and my relationship with Him is very real. Why do you feel like God is invisible? Having been a Christian before, you know you don’t have to have a divine experience to know that God is there, I see him in everyday life. In fact, last week we put our house on the market, 2 days later our toilet vomitted (I think a valve broke) and flooded our entire upstairs and ruined our ceiling downstairs. My husband and I went to stay at my parents house (yikes!!) only to find out that they were out of town and the spare key my dad had locked inside the house, my parents came home from the beach and my dad had to have an MRI because they think he has a brain tumor, my son is sick with 2 ear infections, the list goes on and on, I have never felt so much peace amongst so much chaos. I know that it is because God won’t give me anymore than I can handle. This could easily overwhelm me, but when I pray I feel calm and peace! Being a Christian is real and it works for my family. I am sorry and scared for you that you feel like it doesn’t work for you. But I understand that sometimes people have bad experiences with church. I really hope that you will check out that website! Thanks again for not attacking me I certainly hope you don’t feel attacked by me! Have a great day!
Hi Capella,
Thanks for not attacking someone with a different view than you! I appreciate that! You said that believing in something doesn’t make it real but I would say not believing in something doesn’t make it not real. It goes both ways. I didn’t have any traumatic experiences from my childhood, I had a wonderful childhood, I have a wonderful married life. I seek and have a relationship with God because I know it is real and is needed in my life. Being a Christian is real, and my God is very real and it works for me and my family, I am sorry and scared for you that it doesn’t work for you. I would challenge you to check out creationinstruction.org, it talks about creation/evolution in a scientific light! One more question, Why do you think my God is invisible?
It’s funny that you should use the wind for your analogy because long ago, some cultures believed the wind was a god.
Seems funny to us today because we know that wind is simply a movement of air between weather pressure systems or from convection.
The point however is that long ago before we had knowledge of what some things are actually caused by in nature, some cultures mistook these things for a god. Sound familiar?
In any case you might ask yourself why a god would create the universe and mankind and then go hide behind a rock. Doesn\’t make any sense at all if you think about it.
The God of the bible and all other gods imagined by cultures have/has been invisible because they simply don’t exist. They are the result of cultural and psychological needs.
As far as your childhood. I didn’t say that only people with bad parents switch to imagining an invisible father figure.
All kids become disillusioned with their parents at some point. When we were two feet tall, our parents appeared to be ten feet tall, magical, and to control the universe (again, sound familiar?).
As we got older we all realized they weren’t so tall or magical and consequentially, most of us transfered our parental needs to others or in the case of religious people, an imaginary invisible parental figure (who is imagined to be infinitely tall, magical, and to control the universe).
BTW, if your God is not invisible, have him drop by sometime. ;^)
Hi Capella:
He is with you, in fact He says, “And surley I am with you always to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:20. I will not be swayed in my belief, I came upon your site when I googled something for church. I am not a seeker, but I wish you the best and pray you will find the truth before it is to late. Blessings
Again that’s nice of you to be concerned. Like I said, I was once in your shoes and genuinely concerned about the souls of others as you obviously are and I applaud you for that unselfishness.
However, I hope that you aren’t the type of Christian that is in favor of religious political involvement such as persecuting gay people or stopping stem cell medical research or forcing children to pray or be taught creationism in school, etc…
These sorts of things are throwbacks to the Middle Ages and very sad to see.
There are good Atheists and bad Atheists, good Pagans and bad Pagans, good Jews and bad Jews, good Christians and bad Christians.
As far as good or bad of the mainstream religions that actually have books that they believe is the word of some monotheistic god (that “exists whether people believe in “him” or his “son” or not”), let’s not forget the allegedly “divinely inspired scripture” that helps one to shape their beliefs. They contain both “good and bad.” Some scriptures convince people into thinking that women are inferior to men, some convince people into believing that homosexuality is wrong/against nature/a sin/a learned behavior that can be overcome through god, Jesus, Allah, etc, ad nauseum.
Others believe in equality of all people and agree that harming others is wrong. Some believe in a loving God (capital “g” that time), and even still, there are some that actually leave people who don’t believe in their doctrine (whether the good or the bad… oh wait a minute, none of it could be bad because it is “god-breathed.”) alone.
Atheists, Pagans, Heritics, Jews, Christians, please forgive me. I am into love, and dislike hate, but I have a confession… I am still learning to not be a hypocrite and replace hate with hate.
Hugs
Anyone who believes in eternal punishment is sick, demented, and divisive of humanity. I could never in good conscience follow a man or a god who expoused such hatred and evil.
Hi folks
Let me just start off by saying that I’m a Religious Studies//Anthropology Major at college here, I’m a freshmen, I’m new, and I just started looking at religion only a year ago.
Let me also point out that lots of folk confuse religion with god/God/gods/godess(es)/whatever, and I would like to point out that under the surface of everything, this just can’t be true! I mean, of course, in contemporary dictionaries, that’s what you find.
But to me (and what I’ve been learning), religion is the relationship between Human beings what what is most important to them. That is of course, a very relative concept, and of course, lots of people hold different things as their ‘most important item’ thinger.
I’d also like to point out that I’m a perennialist, and I believe in some form of Higher Entity [or whatever], but the most important thing in my eyes is loving my fellow man, and expressing virtue, blah blah blah. Not because I believe in fancy bible stories or neato stuff like that, but because either something out there is Truth, or mankind has been making these grand mistakes of the Divine for 6000 years and running.
But as to a particular Faith, good news! I don’t have one.
As far as abortion goes: Whatever. Bible seems to not think it too big a deal, so a lot of conservative arguments are knocked down in a flash. And since Christianity is a conservative religion based of Judaism, which is the original doctrinal group [or religion XD] of the Old Testament that the few scriptures discussing abortion actually appear, yeeeaaaah.
But let me point out something else, if you will:
Most ‘Christians’ [personal bias against most personally] take it into their hearts to stomp all over other people’s beliefs, mostly because they believe that the religion [or relationship between them and the most important thing in their mind] they have found is satisfying to them, and it makes them happy. Out of the good intentions they try so hard to have [and many of them do things with only good intentions, although others get a thrill of killing other people’s beliefs], they feel that they must spread this religion that they have found, because they see it as Absolute TRUTH.
All caps.
The difficulty is that absolute Truth for one person isn’t necessarily the same for the other. Thus, many skeptics/athiests/’so-called pagans’ come off calling many Christians ’self-righteous’ because undeneath everything, Christians believe themselves to be declared righteous, and out of the good intentions of their hearts, they seek to have everyone else be declared righteous as well. At least, this is what they believe.
I challenge you, O Christians, to deny this. But please note: I do not say what Absolute Truth is. I merely say that other people see it in different ways. My advice however, is to not assume you have absolute Truth, because honestly, what if you were wrong? You would never know, because you were so intent on believing you were right!
I’m personally looking for Truth. And I’m personally seeking to love others, in the sense that I have compassion for them, and that I’d rather they NOT die, or hurt themselves, or put themselves through grief. That’s kind of unrealistic I guess. I guess I’m just trying to be selfless. You might tell me that I’m wasting my life, but then, what else could I do? Most things in life aren’t very interesting to me. Call it some form of justification, be it sociological, pyschological, whatever. But it might be spiritual.
Or it might just be some need that I want to satisfy in myself. Nevermind how I got it, it’s still a need. Gotta do SOMEthing, right?
I really hope you’ll forgive me if I seem to not have very much tact. I’ve been through … well, a few ‘bad’ faiths before I came to my state of being.
Flat-out Athiest
Agnostic
Born-Again [urgh!]
Jehovah’s Witness [the belief system …]
Now: Perennialist seeking Truth
My religion is very personal. But my doctrine is Love. My method, I’m still figuring that one out. I need some tact, ya know?
Incidentally, a fun fact:
Sin is a form of currency. Or rather, it’s a debt. And it pays death. It’s like a symbolic loan [as far as the Bible states it]. Christ apparently buys it back, since Christ was a perfect Man, which we’re not (blah blah blah). Incidentally, the original translation for “Forgive us as we forgive others”
Was actually:
“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”
So when we ’sin,’ we’re racking up a debt against God, or the supreme divine reality//Whatever.
And, if we’re to be forgiven of our debts against God, we have to forgive other people’s debts against us. As in: forget about it. Don’t collect. Period.
Nifty fun facts that most Christians ignore. So sad.
Ah well.
[Just some friendly interjection]
Strongs indicates that the verb is to “bring forth.” Since there is no indication that this law applies to only the final month or so of the pregnancy, then obviously if the womb contents is brought forth any earlier by an injury to the woman, it’s going to be a miscarriage which is the way that many translations and paraphrases state it.
I’m sure that Christians with the contemporary take on abortion ideas (in the last century or so) prefer translations such as the NIV which ignore the first 8 months of pregnancy and conveniently translate it as dealing with injuries to only 9 month stage pregnant woman and injuries which very luckily only cause an early delivery.
Ironically this way of translating the verse also implies that there was *no* provision at all in the law for the 8 prior months, not even a fine if there is a miscarriage caused by an injury. This of course implicitly trivializes the miscarrage even more which again contradicts the idea that bible authors considered abortion to be murder.
KJV: (Exo 21:22 KJV) If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, …
Amplified bible: If men contend with each other, and a pregnant woman [interfering] is hurt so that she has a miscarriage,
New life version: If men fight with each other and hit a woman who is going to have a child so that she loses her baby
English contemporary version: Suppose a pregnant woman suffers a miscarriage…
etc…
Meant to say, “your time on this earth”
2nd to last line. Thank you.
For anyone reading:
The actual translation from the Hebrew is if the woman’s “fruit” (contents of her womb) “departs from her.”
Even in today’s medicine in developed countries, if a woman’s fruit departs her before the 7th month for any reason much less a blow from a brawl, it’s going to be a miscarriage because the fetus simply can not survive outside the womb at that point, even with today’s medical advances. That’s about 2/3rds of all preganancies where the fetus departs the woman in modern times and in developed countries.
In ancient times, without hospitals, incubators, antibiotics, C-sections, etc… it’s much much worse. A woman would have been extremely lucky if a blow from a brawl that caused her “fruit” to “depart her” wasn’t a miscarriage even in the 9th month.
Obviously for the vast majority of women in ancient times with no access to decent medicine, a blow from a brawl that caused her “fruit” to “depart her,” caused a miscarriage and that is what this verse is actually talking about.
I have just looked over what you had posted at the top of the page Capella. I think I got the wrong message and would like to apologize if that’s the case. Correct me if I’m wrong, but your saying that regardless of what Christians say, the Bible doesn’t specifically say that abortion is a sin against God. If that’s true then I agree. It doesn’t. But Capella, I think your missing the overall picture of the Bible. If your are to take a piece here and a piece there, you take away from the overall message that the God is trying to convey. A lot of things will be taken out of context and made to look completley the opposite of what is going on.
Now, if we look at abortion as the willful termination of pregnancy, then considering the message of the whole Bible saying we are not supposed to Judge what humans live or not, then it would seem that it would go against it. Now say a woman gets pregnant and she has a tubular pregnancy(forgive me if I’m calling it the wrong name, but you know what I mean) is it wrong to tell the doctor to get rid of it. I don’t think so, if the pregnancy is going to continue it will kill the mother and the baby. Do you sort of get what I’m getting at. Now, if the two men are fighting and the woman gets knocked down or pushed or whatever causes the pregnancy to get disrupted, was it purposeful or an accident. I think that is what the verse is relating to. There has been a loss, and somehow it should be made compensated, and try to be as fair as possible.
I have known people who have accidently hit someone with a car, and unfortunatley the victim died. The person didn’t get the death penalty but they did have to spend time in jail. If it was on purpose I think it would have been a different case. Thanks for your time Capella. Waiting on your response.
I don’t think the Bible has any overall or consistent messages about killing. In the numerous places where Bible figures do kill in the Bible, they are often depicted as making decisions to kill.
Joshua decided to spare the life of a prostitute who lived in a city where he otherwise had all the men, women, and children killed.
Solomon killed for political reasons, Elisha had children killed because they were mocking him, Samson killed men to pay off a bet, etc…
It is decreed in the bible that disrespectful children are to be put to death, obviously a judgment call on what “disrespectful” means.
If one claims that God speaks to them to let them know when to kill, that is even a scarier prospect. For example: the current US president (GW Bush) has made that claim and it has resulted in as many as ½ million deaths of men, women, and children on the “mistaken” assertion that Iraq was on the verge of attacking the US with “weapons of mass destruction” which we now know was not true.
As far as whether a fetus is a “human” or not, that’s a philosophical distinction.
Contrary to the religious beliefs of many Christians, I don’t think that fertilized eggs are “humans.” 30-40% of them never attach to the uterine wall or are otherwise naturally expelled by the woman. Zygotes are not humans. Clumps of cells sitting in fertility clinics that could be used to save or otherwise drastically improve the lives of real humans, are not themselves humans IMHO.
Yes, these things are alive and are “potential humans” but so are hundreds of millions of human sperm and eggs that die daily when they are either absorbed or in various situations expelled without ever deveopling into humans.
What is a human inside of a woman, at least very early on in a pregnancy, should be the woman’s decision.
I personally think that there should be limits on abortion, but the silly positions that “pro-life” supporters take (fertilized eggs are humans) in the name of “ensoulment” or to avoid legal slippery slopes force those who could argue for more sane distinctions to retreat to when the baby’s head pops out.
Compounding this are those who argue that the mother must be forced to die or carry a rapist’s baby to term to save the contents of her womb. That decision should obviously be the mother’s, not legislators in Washington trying to score points with their religious right constituents.
As far as the Exodus passage, I disagree about the intent of the severity of penalty depending on whether the result of a brawl is on purpose or not.
The passage seems to be clearly making a distinction of penalties between causing “just” a miscarriage and causing injury to the woman herself whether on purpose or not.
I agree Capella, everything is not black and white. And because of the sinful nature of humans all over the globe, you and I not exempt, these issues are always going to plauge us. But I also had a thought. If there is no God, why does all this stuff bother you? Who is to say what is wrong or not. Just one opinion versus another. It makes no sense to find reasoning in purposeless random chance that has brought us to where we are. Things happen, the fittest must survive, never mind love, never mind helping people, and never mind what happens after we die. Look out for you and yours. How can anybody find any sense of selfworth stemming from these sorts of thoughts. If humans came from nothing, why cry at funerals? Why is the fetus such a big deal if the human soul has no value? Is it all just pretend?
One reason is because I’ve found, having myself been a Christian, that it’s better to live in the real world than in a false paradise.
Another reason is that some Christians want to get involved in politics so they can get their view of morality forced on the rest of us as well as supporting a president who claims he hears his God telling him to go to war. Then there are the Kansas Christians who want public school kids taught the Genesis 1 creation myth as science.
As in most cultures over the course of history: Common sense.
It makes common sense to help people and look out and care for each other. It’s also common sense that if you hurt other people or their families in any way, they may come back and hurt you or your family in some way. I find purpose in my family, friends, work, and hobbies.
As I said, I wish people would be more reasonable about abortion. I would like to see a reasonable line drawn where we aren’t worried about the welfare of a single or clump of cells, but that we aren’t killing babies before their heads can pop out (unless the mother’s life is in danger).
I’m still having a hard time understand your answer Capella. What purpose do you find in your family frineds etc, if you accidently are here on this earth. Please understand that I’m not trying to antagonize you or anything like that, I just wannt to know your point of view on these things so I can understand your mind. Call it curiosity if you will.
Common sense says what is right and wrong. How did humans devolope this common sense that seperates us from everything else living on this earth? How did the world get the way that it is with all this violence and abuse. I would like to know your theories on this.
Common sense is a derivative of logic. Logic developed hand in hand with the evolution of the Cerebral Cortex or highest tier of the human brain.
I think most wars are or have been the result of primitive impulses originating in lower tiers of the brain. From the reptilian brain tier comes territoriality and the wiliness to follow others blindly. This along with religious beliefs in the goodness of one’s own “tribe” and the evilness or sub-humanness of the tribe that is being killed.
I think criminal behavior often stems from things such as poor upbringing and education, laziness, high drug prices, and sometimes cases of disfunctionality from extreme levels of personality disorders.
I agree. The religious right has an agenda to legislate their beliefs onto others.
Agreed, and I have no problem with Christian websites either. I even let people such as you post on my website.
I don’t have any beliefs in anything supernatural or spiritual. It is thought that the idea of a “soul” derived from ancient people trying to make sense of death and what keeps a person alive. They noticed that people stop breathing when they die and in the absence of knowledge of respiration and physiology in general, just assumed the breath left the body and that’s why it died. This breath concept of course evolved into the idea of a spirit or soul.
Humans like many mammals evolved to be social creatures. This was extremely vital to the survival of our distant ancestors. This is why the mammalian tier of our brains is so concerned with love and family.
What about the myth of Medicine? Myth of Biology? Myth of Physiology? Anthropology? Geology? Astrophysics? Etc… All related disciplines which contain ideas that are either derived from or contribute to evolutionary science.
One whole discipline of science can’t be segregated from it’s related scientific disciplnes and rejected because of one’s literal religious beliefs of an ancient story in the Bible.
I agree, one shouldn’t seperate science from faith. It’s not a matter of faith versus science, it’s a matter of science versus science. The basic premise of such things being was it designed or evolved. Medicine, Biology etc, have been shown to work and are still being shown and improved upon daily. As far as the evolution theory, it was a guess then and a guess now. An educated guess, but still a guess. But I don’t think this is the room for evolution, it’s the abortion room so I’ll stop. Point being, the soul is distinct from the brain, hence causing us to question morality meaning orignin and so forth. I would be glad to get into more detail about the Soul. I don’t feel that that explanation about the lower tiers of the brain was satisfactory. Can you elaborate on that more. And scientific disciplines are not being reject, it’s the method and manner by which they are embarked upon that is. Talk to you later.
Actually modern Medicine and Biology would be impossible without evolutionary science. They are all closely intertwined. I do agree that this is getting off the subject however.
The human brain has tiers or sections that evolved from the inwards outward, sort of like separate brains. These tiers often have duplicate functionality and are often in conflict with each other.
The lowest section and most primitive is the brain stem which controls involuntary actions in the body such as breathing and heartbeat.
Resting on top of the brain stem is the Reptilian complex which as I explained evolved very early on in our distant past and is a source of very primitive instincts.
The mammalian complex evolved comparatively recently and is a source of passions and emotional instincts such as love, hate, nurturing, jealousy, sadness, happiness, etc… These are attributes that we share with most mammals.
Riding on the very top of the brain is the largest and most sophisticated section called the Cerebral Cortex. It evolved relatively recently. Very few mammals have a significant Cerebral Cortex and none that compare to that of humans. This is the part of the brain which significantly separates us from all present day surviving animals, although there may have been periods in our distant past when inferior species of humans were systematically driven to extinction, hence no close relatives of humans remain today.
The Cerebral cortex is the source of our analytical and abstract thought. It is the source of our ability to reason. The ability to reason combined with the positive emotions from our mammalian brains are where we get our sense of purpose and the ability and desirability of getting along with others in society.
This reasoning ability allows us our only chance to learn that in general what we do to others can come back to haunt us so it’s best to get along and treat each other well. If a person rises to this level of civilization, it is soley a function of their ability to learn and reason.
First, answer me on how you get an omnipotent omniscient creator of the universe “from a bunch of nothing” and we’ll talk.
You’ve closed what is a variation on the typical circular logic presented by apologists when arguing this:
“Here is a rule that proves that a designer must exist, but in order for this rule to work a designer must first exist.”
In otherwords: you’ve tried to derive the existence of a designer by creating a rule, but to make the rule work or be consistent you have to assume the designer itself already exists because it can’t be derived from the same rule.
I’ve got a more detailed explanation in this article:
Why the universe requires a designer argument is flawed