• ChillPill@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    scripture says the soul enters at its first breath.

    Do you remember where this is said? I grew up in a church and remember a lot of the rhetoric about how sacred life is and blah blah blah, but I don’t specifically remember that part. I’d say knowing that scripture would help me convince people that their views are incorrect, but let’s be real, these people don’t want their minds changed.

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      loads of places, more or less. Keep in mind, it’s the human soul (‘made in his image’), that makes us ‘special’, compared to animals. christian doctrine, this distinction is what makes it acceptable to kill animals for food, etc. It’s not murder because they have no soul. So the technicality of when life begins is different than the technicality of ‘when is it murder’.

      We can see this in numerous points of scripture:

      Gen 2:7:

      Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

      This is specifically to the creation of Adam, however, we see this distinction made in other places as well. Job 33:3

      The Spirit of God has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life.

      clear distinction, and also in Job 32:8:

      But it is the spirit in man, the breath of the Almighty, that makes him understand

      There is also the distinction made in Exodus 21:22-25

      When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

      The punishment for causing a miscarriage is the more as taking the life of livestock, as seen in Exodus 22:1

      If a man steals an ox or a sheep, and kills it or sells it, he shall repay five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep.
      which is why exodus 21 specifies if there is harm (to the mother), the punishment for murder is death. It also is why it’s specified that if others do it. If the husband, well… that’s an entirely different matter. which, abortions… they even contain a recipe… in numbers 5- but only if the husband wants.