With regards to the abortion issue, I would think that most deeply religious people are anti, and most pro-lifers are religious. That, along with all the bumper stickers I see saying “God is pro-life” and “God listens to prayer”, leads me to think that there are a heck of a lot a prayers being said, by any or all denomination you choose, to end the practice of abortion. Yet, abortion remains legal and widely used. From this, I conclude that one of the following must necessarily be true:
There is no god.
There is a god, but he doesn’t listen to prayers.
There is a god, he hears the prayers, but doesn’t care. That flies in the face of traditional thinking.
TIAG, but all of the religions doing the praying are offensive to him, so he does not respond. Maybe something else is the “true” religion?
TIAG, but the prayers are defective in some way, so there is no response.
TIAG, but there is some level of prayer intensity or volume that hasn’t been reached. It follows that this god cares not for the fetuses (fetusi?) aborted so far.
TIAG, he hears the prayers, wants to do something (change the hearts of judges/politicians) but is unable to do anything about it. What kinda god is this?
He is of the Old Testament variety, and likes blood sacrifices. The abortionist is doing god’s work.
God, being god, knows which babies will be aborted. Therefore he does not create a soul to go with the physical body. This begs the questions, “Can god DO that?”, “Are there things god is not allowed to do?” and “Who says god has to create a soul for every human.”
TIAG, and abortion is okay with him. It’s one of his ways of keeping the population down – along the lines of anthrax, Ebola, smallpox, etc.
I’m sure I missed some, but doesn’t this mean that the militant pro-life movement is out of step with main stream religious thinking?
there is a god
we are an ant farm, and he’s just watching, seeing what we do.
abortion likely makes him cringe but, hey, he’s god, it’s not like if we kill off a person he can’t make another one. or even a whole new planet full.
I think we overestimate our ability to influence and speak for the almighty.
Free will is a non-issue here. One minor, “Hey down there, I’m God, and this abortion thing pisses me off,” message from the sky to a large crowd or two would settle his opinion on the issue nicely, and still give us dirty heathens the oppertunity to disobey Him.
11: TIAG, and since his standard method of message from the sky is to throw a tantrum with plagues, fire, etc., we haven’t noticed, what with fire extinguishers and penicillin and whatnot.
Just because you pray for something doesn’t mean it will happen. I could pray for a real Godzilla to attack Tokyo, but if that isn’t part of what is supposed to happen, ah well…
Let me try this, see how bad i screw up explaining what i try to explain. The prayers are fine, you are just attempting to have God do something that will help influence the people to freely choose to do what you want, in the belief that what you want done is God’s will. You are not praying for god to robotically control said people and make them bend to His will.
I think the standard theist rebuttal for this argument is that, although God doesn’t like abortions, allowing humans free will is a higher priority for Him. If He were to intervene in order to prevent the wicked abortionists from performing their evil acts, He would be circumventing His gift of free will. That’s the argument, anyway.
There is a God who listens to prayers, but chooses not to answer them if they conflict with free will.
In other words, He is not a micro-managing God.
If you want to present a stronger argument, I would suggest you pick a topic that can’t be attributed to “free will”, like “Why does God allow babies to get diseases?”, or something along that line.
Wouldn’t it be a heck of a lot nicer if people freely chose to love God, rather than either (i) being robotically subject to his control, or (ii) operated entirely out of fear?
Sigh. For every woman who does have an abortion (or, for that matter, every man who chooses to abandon a child he fathered), there’s just as many parents out there who fully embrace their children. Given that the law lets them choose either way, God’s gotta be pretty impressed with the people who do have kids.
Double sigh. Do you think He’s impressed with irresponsible people who neglect and abuse children that they had no business having in the first place? I would be more impressed when someone realizes that they aren’t ready to be a parent, and that there are already too many people on the planet.
Uh, so just how does praying for intercession work then? If God is going to do what God is going to, then intercessory prayer becomes a pretty futile thing, don’t you think?
Personally, I think it’s because God is too busy dealing with helping people find lost keys, lost pets, and final exams - there must be millions upon millions of instances of those! But abortion? It’s just one topic - he’s just a deity, people! Cut him some slack!
I think a more interesting question is why God, who was said to convey all sorts of messages and guidance via prayer even after Biblical times, never saw fit to mention to anyone the fact that fetuses even existed to abort after conception. Prior to its discovery by scientists in the 19th century, no one had any idea that there was any such things as a “moment of conception,” and god apparently never saw fit to inform anyone that abortions after this point were holocaust scale evil. You’d think, given that this was going on all throughout human history without anyone even being aware of it, god might find time to mention this to people: it seems at least a little more important than the teachings about not eating pork (OT) and women wearing hats (NT).
All anyone really knew was that at some point after sex, something sometimes started growing inside the woman (but not always). Most religions counted quickening as the beginning of a new life, and some drawing on genesis, even dated it at birth. God never corrected people’s misconceptions, despite the fact that people were ending pregnancies prior to these misinformed cutoff points left and right.
Only after the idea of conception, of eggs and sperm and zygotes and such, had become popularized by medical professionals and educators did people start saying that god had, via prayer, conveyed the notion that anything done after conception to end a pregnancy was a horrible thing was going on that needed to be stopped. It didn’t even become a major religious issue right away.
So, if there is a god, why wouldn’t he inform anyone of the existence of sytematical murders in the guise of early term (pre-quickening) abortions? Might they not, in fact, be so bad after all: certainly not worthy of comment by god in several millenia of contact and moral instruction?
That’s a fair but non-sequitur issue. I suspect there really isn’t any way to be “ready” to be a parent–how exactly can someone prepare for the unpredictable?–but what an individual CAN do is accept the responsibility and deal with it when it comes. Obviously, the people who beat or abandon their kids aren’t willing to deal with the sacrifice involved, and should have their parenthood revoked as a result. It’s hard to do have another rule–think of the nonsense that would result if we required “parent licenses” with a written test before sex.
Back to prayer:
My understanding of the matter is that we’re called to participate in God’s life: that is, that he has delegated certain tasks to mankind, and largely given us an incredible amount of freedom in doing so. Prayer is ultimately a request for “thy will be done”–that is, that God’s ultimate desire/plan be allowed to unfold.
The best you can hope for is that God provide grace in the matter–grace being, for lack of a better definition, a God creating a sort of spiritual “pull” that doesn’t force the desired outcome, so much as adds an inclination that the right outcome result. If grace were so strong that it overcame free will, free will would be pointless, and God wouldn’t be providing love so much as tyranny.