Quote:
Originally Posted by Displaced Flames fan
By the logic you've used, there would be no pro-lifers who are not religious zealots...or did I misinterpret what you said?
Morality does not stem solely from religion. Sometimes, it doesn't stem from religion at all.
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I did indeed claim that all pro-lifers I had personally met were religious. And that I suspect that most pro-lifers in general are religious or take their morality from the Bible.
I personally agree with you that morality need not stem from religion. However many strongly religious people believe that morality ONLY comes from religion. And this is not just hicks from the bible belt or people who have no consequence on how the abortion issue plays out. There are people in positions of power who also believe that morality must necessarily come from religion.
In fact I've seen arguments from religious people that if there was no god, we'd have no morality and life would be horrible and therefore God must exist.
So lets say we've divided the population into two camps here.
1) Those who feel morality is created by humanity
2) Those who feel morality is created by God and installed in us, or taught to us through a religious text
Then if we spent a lot of time analyzing Christian morality we'd find that a lot of it is rules that must be followed absolutely. The Bible does not say, "Do not kill (except when someone is trying to kill you)". However our own laws (man made morality) do provide exceptions like that.
So PART of the abortion issues might be said to be between a group of people that believes in exceptions and unique cases and between a group of people that believes in following absolute laws. For staunch Christians it is never okay to kill a fetus. For a lot of non-Christians they can imagine scenarios where they believe it is justified. The most famous example being rape. Would you want to raise the child of a man who raped you? Or they can imagine a single teenage mom who is still in high school and they don't think that is an ideal scenario in which to raise a child. And given population problems perhaps not having the child would be for the best for everyone. For the mother, for the child, for the country, for the mother's family, etc. Even if that sounds reasonable to someone, if their morality is of the "absolute" type then they still can't make those exceptions and must say that abortion is wrong in any and every case.
So for this one small part of the issue I've examined, religion plays a major role. My argument being that religious people tend to believe in following absolute laws and that another whole segment of society believes that is a bad way of doing things.
We could talk more about specific differences between the pro-life and pro-choice camps like the emphasis on individual freedom and liberty that the pro-choice camp believes in and show how religion plays a major role in the "pro-life" camp not emphasizing those values.
Anyways in my mind religion and morality are fundamentally linked because a large percentage of the population thinks that they are necessarily linked. We both agree its a morality issue. But to me suggesting that it is much more an emotional and moral issue and not a religious one is to deny the many links between emotion, morality and religion. They are all interconnected IMO.