God kills babies
Mar. 14th, 2006 07:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7I was lying in bed this morning, and as I was waking up (impossible to sleep in with March coming in like a lion and rattling the bloody windowpanes to beat the band. Oh, it's supposed to snow today. Great.) I was thinking briefly about the blog I was reading last night, and more specifically about the entry shortly after the blogger lost her twin babies at 20 weeks-- one died in the womb, and then when preeclampsia became so severe that she was faced with imminent multiple organ failure they had to dilate her and extract the surviving fetus. The child could not have lived-- he had not developed lungs yet, and the technology does not exist to keep a fetus that premature alive for more than perhaps a couple of days in excruciating pain. On top of that, the mother herself was in a state too fragile to survive labor and delivery. But the procedure that saved her life, and killed the child, is what's called a partial-birth abortion. Without it, she was hours from death.
And a couple of weeks later she's going through the grieving process, and a commenter posts asking (in a mild and reasonable tone) why she had to kill her baby.
Naturally the other commenters flame this ignorant shit, but throughout, the commenter maintains this mild and reasonable tone, and actually has the gall to complain that the name-calling hurts her feelings. Meanwhile she's insisting that there was a slim chance the baby could have survived if delivered alive (backing this up with links from pro-life propaganda sites that she's just found in Google as if that means she's got access to information that the mother didn't have at the time of the choice-- which, quite aside from the content of them, is a shockingly rude and ignorant assumption to make, but I digress).
And this woman... She just doesn't get that it's like walking into an NAACP conference and suggesting (in a mild and reasonable tone) that perhaps the troubles of America's youth would not be so severe today if we could only re-institute race-based lynching as a cultural control mechanism. You can be as calm and pseudoscientific as you want, and they are still in the right if they beat you to a bloody pulp and hang you from the tree outside just to stop you spreading that poison.
To her immense credit, the mother responds patiently and tries to answer calmly and reasonably for much longer than any normal, non-saint human would, before finally banning the unreasonable bitch entirely. And later she wrote about how she felt she was learning from these wacko nutjobs who contact her now that she's some sort of poster child for the Satanic procedure of partial-birth abortion.
So I was lying in bed this morning and I thought... All these right-to-life people arguing about how Man has used Science to subvert God's will and all that, and you know what? I just don't understand that whole point of view. (First off I don't believe that God sits up there watching everyone with his finger over the Smite button; I just don't have that concept of it, and I have never, never understood the people sitting by the road cradling their roadkilled pet animal and crying "How could God do this?!" Uh-- God didn't, that was sort of Fluffy's fault for diving under the wheels, and I can't even see how anyone could pin that on God. But I digress. And in the rant below, if you don't believe in that sort of God, feel free to substitute Mother Nature (which is how I initially thought of the rant) or Entropy or whatever force you believe governs the universe.)
Ain't nothing Man can do that God didn't do first. Killing babies? God does it all the time. Just check the infertility blogosphere and watch these women undergo pointless agonies. God kills babies, loved and unloved ones indiscriminately. Anniliating entire villages? Check. God does that. He buries elementary schools under tons of mud, sucks whole extended families into the sea (perhaps leaving behind a few traumatized orphans to spite the completists), sends plagues through population centers and decimates them. Those who can't see the big picture will claim that this was God's way of punishing evildoers, but when you really look at all of these events, truly examine the specifics all together and see everything all at once, how can that even hold up? Many women whose babies survive are unfit mothers who abuse them. Many women whose babies died are intelligent, dedicated, even God-fearing people who would have raised their children wonderfully. Was all of Southeast Asia steeped in sin, that the sea had to rise up and swallow large portions of the seaside population entirely at random? If God is so all-powerful, he should be able to kill only the evildoers, and leave the innocent infants and the mothers who drowned clinging to their children, or the firefighters racing up the steps to help those trapped in the blaze before the building collapsed.
I do not see how anyone could ascribe these actions to a sentient and human-scaled God and keep their faith.
But I don't see the sense in doing so in the first place.
If there is a Heaven and a Hell, why is there punishment in this life? Why bother crippling a man's children to punish him for his sins, when he is going to burn in eternity anyway?
Eh. This was all a much better-formed rant in my head before I fully woke up, and I should probably go back to blogging about more personal topics. But I suppose there's nothing more personal than a worldview. And everyone who reads this has shown signs of believing things relatively similar to me in many cases, and so it's not like I'm going to change someone who was going to attack someone like Cecily and only now sees the error of her ways. But still I felt I had to remember why I suddenly think that it's a great idea to make bumper stickers that say "God kills babies" on them. Ain't nothing new under the sun, baby, and there ain't nothing we puny humans can do that God didn't do first and worst.
Edited to add: But I ain't saying he doesn't love us.
And a couple of weeks later she's going through the grieving process, and a commenter posts asking (in a mild and reasonable tone) why she had to kill her baby.
Naturally the other commenters flame this ignorant shit, but throughout, the commenter maintains this mild and reasonable tone, and actually has the gall to complain that the name-calling hurts her feelings. Meanwhile she's insisting that there was a slim chance the baby could have survived if delivered alive (backing this up with links from pro-life propaganda sites that she's just found in Google as if that means she's got access to information that the mother didn't have at the time of the choice-- which, quite aside from the content of them, is a shockingly rude and ignorant assumption to make, but I digress).
And this woman... She just doesn't get that it's like walking into an NAACP conference and suggesting (in a mild and reasonable tone) that perhaps the troubles of America's youth would not be so severe today if we could only re-institute race-based lynching as a cultural control mechanism. You can be as calm and pseudoscientific as you want, and they are still in the right if they beat you to a bloody pulp and hang you from the tree outside just to stop you spreading that poison.
To her immense credit, the mother responds patiently and tries to answer calmly and reasonably for much longer than any normal, non-saint human would, before finally banning the unreasonable bitch entirely. And later she wrote about how she felt she was learning from these wacko nutjobs who contact her now that she's some sort of poster child for the Satanic procedure of partial-birth abortion.
So I was lying in bed this morning and I thought... All these right-to-life people arguing about how Man has used Science to subvert God's will and all that, and you know what? I just don't understand that whole point of view. (First off I don't believe that God sits up there watching everyone with his finger over the Smite button; I just don't have that concept of it, and I have never, never understood the people sitting by the road cradling their roadkilled pet animal and crying "How could God do this?!" Uh-- God didn't, that was sort of Fluffy's fault for diving under the wheels, and I can't even see how anyone could pin that on God. But I digress. And in the rant below, if you don't believe in that sort of God, feel free to substitute Mother Nature (which is how I initially thought of the rant) or Entropy or whatever force you believe governs the universe.)
Ain't nothing Man can do that God didn't do first. Killing babies? God does it all the time. Just check the infertility blogosphere and watch these women undergo pointless agonies. God kills babies, loved and unloved ones indiscriminately. Anniliating entire villages? Check. God does that. He buries elementary schools under tons of mud, sucks whole extended families into the sea (perhaps leaving behind a few traumatized orphans to spite the completists), sends plagues through population centers and decimates them. Those who can't see the big picture will claim that this was God's way of punishing evildoers, but when you really look at all of these events, truly examine the specifics all together and see everything all at once, how can that even hold up? Many women whose babies survive are unfit mothers who abuse them. Many women whose babies died are intelligent, dedicated, even God-fearing people who would have raised their children wonderfully. Was all of Southeast Asia steeped in sin, that the sea had to rise up and swallow large portions of the seaside population entirely at random? If God is so all-powerful, he should be able to kill only the evildoers, and leave the innocent infants and the mothers who drowned clinging to their children, or the firefighters racing up the steps to help those trapped in the blaze before the building collapsed.
I do not see how anyone could ascribe these actions to a sentient and human-scaled God and keep their faith.
But I don't see the sense in doing so in the first place.
If there is a Heaven and a Hell, why is there punishment in this life? Why bother crippling a man's children to punish him for his sins, when he is going to burn in eternity anyway?
Eh. This was all a much better-formed rant in my head before I fully woke up, and I should probably go back to blogging about more personal topics. But I suppose there's nothing more personal than a worldview. And everyone who reads this has shown signs of believing things relatively similar to me in many cases, and so it's not like I'm going to change someone who was going to attack someone like Cecily and only now sees the error of her ways. But still I felt I had to remember why I suddenly think that it's a great idea to make bumper stickers that say "God kills babies" on them. Ain't nothing new under the sun, baby, and there ain't nothing we puny humans can do that God didn't do first and worst.
Edited to add: But I ain't saying he doesn't love us.
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-14 05:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-19 12:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-14 08:09 pm (UTC)The God I know isn't vengeful. She just wants me to make good decisions with this life and deserve (or become closer to deserving) this awesome gift of free will.
By the way, I've read a ton on the subject and as far as I can tell, babies become viable at week 27, and even then there are no guarantees. Modern medicine is good, but it ain't perfect.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-14 11:39 pm (UTC)Cecily (of wastedbirthcontrol) lost her pregnancy (had to terminate it to save her life, basically) to preeclampsia at 22 weeks and this commenter seriously would not stop trying to convince her that her doctors were wrong and the fetus was viable. Seriously. 22 weeks. Baby had no lungs. Woman still won't leave her alone-- how could you choose death, I would've chosen life, etc.
On another (pro-life) blog where they more thoughtfully debated the issue, they finally decided that what they were debating was not abortion, but euthanasia.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-14 11:33 pm (UTC)Healthy religion (or religiousness) is vastly different from the mask of religiousness, methinks. It is interesting to look at most religions abroad - with a few notable exceptions, they are all for love, udnerstanding, tolerance, charity and giving your best to your fellow man. And yet, people take this amazing gift and turn it into a twisted, hurtful, petty weapon against others.
Some people are just not willing to listen. There is a reason for the 'none so blind as those who won't see' saying.
This reminds me of a big fall out we had at the web communication class when one student took the preaching (with hardly or none basis on facts except for those their leadership had twisted or misunderstood to fit their preaching; with repeated and sacharine allusions that he respected our opinion when we presented him the bases and sources to them about why his data was wrong). The argument lasted out for days, and made me want to strangle him (I'm rather meek in real life) when he would turn that martyr tone on me (why are you doing this to me, o angry sister? God is by my side and I am Right - he so was not).
And even when a good portion of the students showed him th articles from cnn and stuff he would still insist that we were all getting it wrong.
Eventually the list died. I, for one, did not enjoy having to battle him once or twice a week. It was tiresome and irritating.
Back to the point I was trying to make, the commenter does not really want to get an answer. She just wants to have an effect - give the oman who lost her babies guilt, put the fear of god in her, or pose as a saint in the crusade for that which is good and proper.
Whatever.
Sometimes people scare the hell out of me.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-19 12:46 pm (UTC)Seriously, there is a very clear line between The Divine, and The Church On Earth, and there are whole swarms of people who happily shove themselves into The Church On Earth and espouse its spiritually-empty doctrines without ever giving so much as a moment's thought to the actual Divine.
Like, love one another says Jesus, and turn the other cheek says Jesus, but, then, all my friends are protesting abortion, so I'm going to go shoot me a doctor. WTF??
Yeah.