More on killing aborticians

LearningIsFun brings up a couple of interesting statements from the last post.

Didn't you notice that your original post is entirely an appeal to possible hypocrisy? Wasn't that whole point? You wanted to get people to see the inconsistency between their feelings on abortion and their feelings about the thought experiment?

I don't think it's the same thing. I'm appealing to consistency of position, and illustrating it by removing the age-ist bias, which you display as well. You are a bigot.


I, personally, feel differently about the two scenarios because my moral sense doesn't equate the life of a fetus with that of an adult.

Who cares what you feel, though? How about an argument why they're different? You know, evidence?


I'm genuinely surprised that you would not save the innocent people by killing the person systematically murdering them

It would be murder on God's Law, yes, as murder is defined as the unjustified taking of human life. But it wouldn't be murder on the law of the land, and I as an individual don't have the authority given to me by God to just overturn that law whenever I want towards others. It's the same reason I don't kill aborticians or blow up their abortuaries - that's not my role and I don't have authority to do it.
(As an aside, if someone told me they were the one who killed an abortician, I'm not at all confident I'd turn them in. I'd lean towards keeping mum and plausible deniability, and would have to be persuaded to turn the person in. Same if I witnessed him setting fire to the abortuary.)


You'd probably only have to kill about a dozen doctors to make the rest too scared to continue.

That's true, and it's tempting, and I mean that. But like I said, I don't have the authority to dole out death as I see fit; only in self-defense, just war, or as part of a legitimate gov't capital punishment would I have the God-given authority and permission to do so.


By the way, I'm not advocating violence. I'm advocating that pro-lifers stop equating abortion with murder,

I understood what you were getting at, but I appreciate the clarification.

A quick comparison

Heard a talk-radio host this morning speaking derogatorily of recent Ft Hood mass-murderer Hasan's self-description as "Muslim first, American second". He wasn't thinking very straight, which is, in my lengthy experience, very typical among conservative talk-show hosts when they talk religion. They virtually always get it wrong, to my frustration. I myself am a Christian first, a Baptist churchman second, and an American third. It all comes down to the content of the doctrine, not its priority, as to whether I am thus a danger to society and subject to governmental repression of my religious beliefs which admittedly come before my allegiance to my country. So here's a quick comparison chart:

	Islam	Atheism	Biblical Christianity
Objective moral authority?	Yes	No	Yes
Obligation to put allegiance to religion before allegiance to country?	Yes	N/A. On atheism, there is no obligation to do anything.	Yes
How are you supposed to treat enemies?	Kill them	However you want.	Love them and pray for them (Matthew 5:44-45)
Under what circumstances is it OK to kill people?	If they're unbelievers and won't submit to Islam or pay submission tax	Whenever you want.	As a soldier in a just war; as an executor of just capital punishment as part of a legitimate gov't; in self- defense and in defense of others who are defenseless
Founder have a history of killing people and making war to advance worldview?	Very yes.	N/A	No, He got unjustly killed to advance His worldview.
Suicide bombers?	Quite a lot	No	No

More thinking on church and state

An agnostic with whom I'm acquainted in real life asked some good questions in this post of his. I left a comment and thought it was worth sharing (of course, I could easily be mistaken about that).
It has to do with why Christians, in his perspective, so cavalierly cast aside Old Testament laws in the way they think and talk and discourse in the political arena today. It's a good question. See useful background information here.


Howdy,

-ought not carry much weight in the here and now-

That's not the Christian idea, really. They should carry a lot of weight, but at the same time, we are commanded as Christians to obey the law of the land - Romans 13, 1 Peter, etc. Doesn't mean we can't act to influence or change said laws, but we have to obey them in most every case. OT Israel was its own self-contained (covenant) community, but the covenant community of God now is not a nation, but a church dispersed among every nation. So it's not that they don't carry much weight, it's that another cmdmt carries more, and the OT civil laws were never meant to last forever.
That said, I can't think of an example right offhand of an OT civil law which is no longer regarded as immoral, a sin against God. But the penalties are generally different, if they exist at all. An example is adultery, a capital offense in OT Israel but one that may not cost you much more than $100 in court fees in modern America.

-those which are only relevant within an ancient cultural context (e.g. head-coverings for women, circumcision for men, kosher food for everyone). -

Well, you mixed up the head-covering thing, which is in 1 Corinthians (unless I err) with the other things. Circumcision was the sign of membership in the covenant, which in the covenant community of OT Israel meant membership in the society. But it's replaced by baptism in NT times as the sign of membership in the covenant community of God - the church.
And the food had ceremonial symbolism that is wholly fulfilled in Christ - read Hebrews and Mark 7.


-would qualify as one which Christians should support whenever given the chance-

You might be right about that. If you intend to show that Christians can be hypocritical at times, you'll have no argument from me.


-recriminalize apostasy-

I would not support this, b/c I don't think it lends itself to a culture in which the Gospel has the best environment to be spread and for-real accepted in people's hearts. Some separation of state from church is a good idea, though certainly not to the extent it is today.
I honestly confess I don't know what "buggery" is.
Cursing - how the $%+*#&%^% would you enforce that? ;-)
Divination - ditto.
Though these are hardly victimless crimes. The point is not that, but what amount of freedom is allowable, what consequences acceptable, and what cost entails what level of enforcement.


-What is the reasoning which allows you to treat these seemingly absolute moral commands once set in stone by a perfectly moral being as mere matters of personal conscience? -

Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2 are not all that specific. That is the reasoning.

As a matter of greater disclosure, this is far from a done deal among Reformed Christians. I say Reformed b/c most American evangelicals/evanjellyfish seem to fall thoughtlessly into the Pat Robertson/Dobson mold. But in the Reformed side of things, you have theonomic postmillennialists (like my friend Vox Veritatis, who leans postmil and who digs theonomy) who would indeed like to see the OT Israelite laws in place in modern society. You have libertarians like Vox Day (who's an open theist heretic, but still). You have people like me, somewhere in the middle, sorta, but who prefer more of a 2 Kingdoms model b/c they think it better fits the biblical data (though I'm not solidly convinced either way). So there's diversity of opinion here, and that is no doubt one of the reasons for your confusion. It confuses me too!


Hope that helps. As always, clarifying questions are welcome.

Peace,
Rhology