You actually have that quote backwards. The original quote is from Berkeley political science professor Ray Wolfinger, who said that the plural of anecdote IS data. Here is his anecdote of when he first uttered that aphorism: Quotes Uncovered: What's the Plural of Anecdote? - Freakonomics So after denigrating my true examples as being “merely anecdotes,” you follow with a totally unsupported statement that is not even anecdotes or examples. It’s merely your opinion. Please supply data to back up the statement. Who said anything about supporting Trump? I don’t support Trump, never have and never will. But that aside, again that’s just a statement of your opinion that is completely unsupported.
Where I disagree with you is where you hubristically declare that the “preacher” must preach your brand of storybook or be condemned to eternal damnation. Jesus certainly never said that. And the texts in place at the time of Jesus didn’t say that. It wasn’t until hundreds (or thousands?) of years later that those words made their way into print. And for good reason- the Church needed to install fear to ensure unending loyalty and obeyance. Just like every religion before Christianity. But lest I digress too far off-topic, I agree that the decline of religious observance as a whole (regardless of the version of the story you adhere) has caused a moral decline. Religious school for children is hugely important to mold values and social boundaries, not to mention behavioral expectations.
And yet “Uncle Sam” has now stepped into the middle of it all by legislating, and criminalizing, healthcare given to women. Of the government is going to dip its toes into the issue, it should dive full in and address all of the problems.
But an unwanted child will not have the father. Who’s going to care for the unwanted children??? If you legislate the requirement that the unwanted child be brought to term, then legislate how that child subsists once born. The innocent child brought into the world by government fiat should be able to fully rely in that fiat to have a fair subsistence.
No, I do not know that and you don’t either. That is your opinion. By the way, the truth does make me feel good.
I’m pretty sure the Bible doesn’t say, “Thou shall haveth slaves,” or words to that effect. Rather, it told stories of people who had slaves … because people had slaves at that time. I cannot imagine that someone is going to argue that a person living in the 21st Century live with the same precise values as someone living at the time of the stories (before things like medical science, mathematics, astronomy were developed
Well evangelicals are the base of the modern Republican Party and trumps support. Republicans are for cutting almost all aid for single mothers. I suspect you are being intentionally obtuse.
I like your posts in general Phil, but I have to disagree with you here. Where in that pericope does it say that the woman in question is pregnant? That passage describes a test of faithfulness when a husband suspects his wife of infidelity. An unfaithful wife who was not pregnant would have been affected by the curse. On the other hand, a pregnant wife who had not been unfaithful to her husband would not have been affected by the curse.
Read where I quoted the actual passage. Granted it’s after thousands of years telephone but it is instructions on how to abort an unwanted child.
Two comments. First, it's overly broad to categorize all prolife people as having identical positions. There are plenty of people who are prolife and also support providing assistance to low-income families after a child is born. That being said a lot of them are still inconsistent. While they support private charitable efforts to provide assistance to the poor at the same time they still oppose government programs that do the same and that dichotomy is even much more pronounced among so called prolife politicians. While they vigorously oppose abortion to protect the "preborn" they just as vigorously oppose government programs that provide assistance to low-income families. I am still reminded of a classic line by a speaker at a Democratic National Convention decades ago, paraphrasing the speech "to a lot of prolife Republicans the right to life begins at conception and ends at birth".
To be technically correct, "induce a forced miscarriage against the woman's will." The procedure is outlined in great detail.
I believe there is confusion regarding this passage since more recent translations have concluded the woman would have “miscarried” if she was guilt of infidelity. These later translations have given rise to the argument that Numbers 5 indicates God sanctions abortion as a form of punishment.
Go spend a day in Child Support Enforcement Court and tell me how that "pie in the sky" notion is working out. The passage sets forth a procedure to induce a miscarriage in a woman who has been unfaithful. What, pray tell, do you think Milepristone and Misoprostol do?
Telephone analogy doesn’t hold. Just ask Biblical scholars who don’t profess to be religious. They say we can go back to the person sitting in the second chair!
Hubris is an interesting accusation. Usually when I hear that charge against a Christian what it really amounts to is: claims of absolute truth in the metaphysical realm are morally wrong without question if someone disagrees with those truth claims. The problem with that is you are making an absolute truth claim regarding the metaphysical realm that someone disagrees with when you assert that Christians are guilty of hubris. So, you fail to hold yourself to the same standard that you hold the Christian to. You are equally guilty of the hubris you accuse the Christian of when you make an equally forceful statement about something metaphysical in nature. What is ironic regarding your use of the word “hubris” is its Greek mythological origins. The word in its original usage referred to someone who considered themselves elevated even beyond the gods in the Greek pantheon. If you think extremely hard about it, the person who submits to the truth of God has not committed hubris. It is the one who rejects the truth of God as hubris and then turns around to make absolute truth claims of his own making that is guilty of hubris. That would be you in this debate, not me. Now, I vehemently disagree with your assessment that I own a brand of preaching. You commit hubris if you believe that to be absolute truth. The gospel is not my creation. It is not my brand. It comes from God Himself. I am acknowledging God’s revelation as truth and not my own. You on the other hand reject God’s revelation in favor of your opinions, which you consider to be superior.
Why don’t people drink dusty water any more? Can you name one documented example within the past 150 years where an abortion was performed this way and it actually worked? The truth is Numbers 5:24-27 was not an abortion because the procedure in Numbers 5:24-27 leaves the decision to God to render a judgment or not to render a judment. An abortion on the other hand is where a human being kills another human being. Abortion is 100% cruelty effective in what it is designed to do. In Numbers 5:24-27 God kills the baby, which is more akin to a miscarriage than it is an abortion. And more importantly, sexual sin is brought out into the open and exposed before all of the people including the husband. God is the giver of life, and He alone has the right to prescribe the conditions upon which life is to be taken. It is interesting that the instances that are so clearly laid out in the Old Testament for the death penalty are those most vigorously opposed by the left, but this one instance where God renders the judgment is twisted to mean abortion on demand is OK.
1. When you say that my children are cursed to eternal damnation because they do not believe in your exact brand of faith, it is arrogantly over-confident, in the nicest possible terms. 2. I would argue that your broad-based proclamations that all who do not do exactly you claim they should, in the name of G-d, because that what G-d commands, is facially blasphemous. Your mandate necessarily means that you have been told this from the mouth of G-d (as opposed to some man-created book), unless of course you have indeed been spoken to like Moses. 3. The flaw in your last judgmental paragraph is that you conclude that I view my faith as superior to yours. I don’t believe such a thing. Unlike you, I don’t believe, indeed I don’t even conceive, of judging others based on their faith. I believe faith is individualistic, just as one must be true to their faith (as opposed to simply “yessing” with no conviction). 4. I think the preaching of religion under threats of violence is what has lead to the murders and wars that we have seen for thousands of years, all because people violently believe their version of the story is the only version worthy of breath. How many wars, how many murders — to this day — arise from which version of Abraham’s legacy is correct? 5. Jesus provided such beautiful lessons that continue to this day. I have never read that a nation should go to war against another because the version worshipping his Father might differ from one another. Jesus preached peace and acceptance, not death and eternal condemnation because of which version of a book not even written at his time is correct.
So explain to me how a forced miscarriage differs from an abortion. One is medically induced the other is herbally induced. how about it’s none of my, your and anybody else’s business other than the woman’s.
