Is the support for Trump contrary to Christian values?

[Danmark]

Does evangelical support for Trump create a crisis for Christianity?
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... cn2gnaekoQ

Are his policies and personal character consistent with Christian values?

Related to this, should a Christian who wants to bear witness for the risen Christ sell all he has, give to the poor, and follow Jesus?
Or should he or she accumulate wealth to show he is blessed by God?

[Danmark]

[Replying to post 20 by RightReason]

"Human" can be used ambiguously, "human being" less so. A zygote or even embryo is not a human being at least in some senses. You argue a zygote is a human being. This is not a scientific term, but a social one.

Let me give you an example. There is no such thing as 'race' according to biology. it is a social construct.

In this debate you are conflating your personal/religious OPINION about personhood as if it is an absolute. I'm familiar with this because I used to make all the same arguments when I was in law school, 40 years ago, that absolutely when a human male gamete joins with a female human gamete, then 'Presto!' a unique human being is instantly created and should be considered a person under the Constitution.

The problem with this is multifaceted.
1. It conflates a biological fact with a moral and legal opinion.
2. It results in some bizarre and cruel outcomes such as requiring a rape victim to carry an unwanted pregnancy that was forced upon her by violence to term and to grant the rapist potential custody rights.
3. Even if such legal status were given and the zygote by law declared a 'person' under the Constitution, there is an issue of jurisdiction.

My legal conclusion is that neither you nor The State has jurisdiction over what goes on inside a woman's body.

Roe v. Wade, which I once argued against, sets out a very carefully reasoned analysis which recognizes the long history of human views on abortion and comes to a reasoned decision.

Fundamentally, your problem is your insistence that YOUR understanding of biology should triumph over every other consideration. I disagree and so do most legal scholars and the majority of the American people. The majority is not always right, but your absolutist position leads to rapists having babies against their victims' will and to the murder of physicians and health care workers.

[Danmark]

The personhood argument is an illogical one because a living being does not have to be a person to have value or rights. Heck, dogs have rights and even the eggs of bald eagles have value. So, the whole personhood argument is pretty much a non starter from the get go. The rightness or wrongness of abortion is a moral issue and only one question needs to be answered, “Is it ok to kill an innocent human being?�

This is such a laughably obtuse argument, I'll deal with it specially.
Your fundamental error is in conflating personhood with "having rights."

But before we even get to that, you are wrong factually. Neither dogs, nor eagles, nor their eggs have 'rights;' neither are they 'persons.'
Dog owners have rights that pertain to their dogs. the dogs themselves have no rights. It is against the law to hunt bald eagles (btw, they taste like spotted owl ) or destroy their eggs. This is a prohibition of certain human activity; it does not convey a right upon the eagle or its egg.

"Personhood" has a legal meaning and your ignorance of that fact does not change its status. "According to law, only a natural person or legal personality has rights, protections, privileges, responsibilities, and legal liability."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personhood

[Danmark]

What I find amazingly inconsistent and reprehensible is that so many who claim to revere human life in the form of a seconds old zygote that cannot live except inside another's body, blithely support GOP policy that tortures, kills, and inhumanly treats live human children because they are in custody as asylum seekers in U.S. concentration camps at the border.

Strawman. I don’t value an immigrant less than I value a human embryo. They are both human beings with intrinsic value/rights. It is you who 1) seem to be unable to value the baby in the womb and 2) claim Christians support the torture and killing of asylum seekers. No Christian I know supports treating asylum seekers poorly. You are not presenting the truth or facts – just inflammatory rhetoric.

Careful reading would alert you to the fact I was not personal. I referred to "many... in the GOP" not to you.

White Christians put Trump, a racist, in the Whitehouse and continue to support him. You continue to make arguments as if it is an established fact that a zygote is a human 'person' with all the same rights and status as an adult. This is factually and legally untrue, your religious views notwithstanding. Immigrants actually have greater rights than zygotes. You may not like that, but that's the way it is.

BTW, why debate this dead horse. The battle is over. It's been decided since the 70's. If draconian abortion laws WERE to come back, they would be violated by millions, resulting in millions of deaths from illegal abortions. How very 'Christian' of you to advocate for such.

[Danmark]

[Replying to Danmark

You are correct, just because the law declares a thing so does not make that ethically true for all. However, you have been using a legal term, 'murder.' And you have been using that legally defined term incorrectly.

I don’t think so. Again, I don’t care if the state recognizes abortion as murder or not. It is murder by the definition of murder – purposely killing an innocent human being. ... We need to be intellectually honest.

You SHOULD strive for intellectual honesty.
But again you are not only wrong, you have refuted your own argument by insisting on a false legal definition of "murder."

Even tho I, and many others, disagree with your definition of "human being," that is not at issue when it comes to murder, because murder pertains to "persons." This may be a distinction you cannot grasp, since I have explained it before and you do not appear to accept it.

RCW 9A.32.030
Murder in the first degree.
(1) A person is guilty of murder in the first degree when:
(a) With a premeditated intent to cause the death of another person, he or she causes the death of such person or of a third person; or
(b) Under circumstances manifesting an extreme indifference to human life, he or she engages in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to any person, and thereby causes the death of a personhttps://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9A.32.030

[RightReason]

[Replying to post 21 by Danmark]

Human" can be used ambiguously, "human being" less so. A zygote or even embryo is not a human being at least in some senses.

First, you keep using the term zygote, but I am referring to an embryo. Nobody aborts a zygote. If you have an abortion it is a human embryo you are destroying. Also, yes, an embryo is a human being that is simply at a the early stages of development. Like I already explained human beings go thru many different stages of development. A 3 month old is at a different stage than a 3 year old who is at a different stage than a 30 year old. Yes, they all look different, but they are all still human beings.

In this debate you are conflating your personal/religious OPINION about personhood as if it is an absolute.

Ha, ha, ha . . . isn’t that what you are doing with your secular view?

1. It conflates a biological fact with a moral and legal opinion.

I already stated how morality is based on what we know. Whether something is right/good or wrong/bad is based on observation of the world we live in. We acknowledge the science/facts and from that truth can know what makes sense/what is right/what is in man’s best interest. So biological fact is related to morality.

2. It results in some bizarre and cruel outcomes such as requiring a rape victim to carry an unwanted pregnancy that was forced upon her by violence to term and to grant the rapist potential custody rights.

Bizarre and cruel are terms based on your opinion. How about this one, is it bizarre or cruel that an innocent human being should be disregarded and killed because of the sins of his father? Yes, I agree that is the ultimate in cruel outcomes.

3. Even if such legal status were given and the zygote by law declared a 'person' under the Constitution, there is an issue of jurisdiction.

My legal conclusion is that neither you nor The State has jurisdiction over what goes on inside a woman's body.

My rights/freedom ends where another person’s freedom/rights begin. Perhaps you are forgetting the very scientific biological fact that the baby is its own unique individual human being. We aren’t just talking about the woman’s body. Another body is now in the equation.

Roe v. Wade, which I once argued against, sets out a very carefully reasoned analysis which recognizes the long history of human views on abortion and comes to a reasoned decision.

Very few people even know what Roe V. Wade was about. And very few people realize that the actual person Roe never ended up having an abortion, became Catholic and became vehemently pro life. You say it was a reasoned decision and yet the Roe in Roe v Wade later explained that she was a pawn to push the pro abortion agenda. She was told to say she was raped and should be able to have an abortion when in reality she simply had little money and was depressed. Her lawyers used her and told her what to say to further their cause. It’s a fascinating story really. You should look into it. Reasoned is not a word I would use to describe it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_McCorvey

This is such a laughably obtuse argument, I'll deal with it specially.
Your fundamental error is in conflating personhood with "having rights."

But before we even get to that, you are wrong factually. Neither dogs, nor eagles, nor their eggs have 'rights;' neither are they 'persons.'

Not true. Animals are protected under the law as well as the eggs of some endangered species. Crazy! We won’t protect a human embryo, but it’s a crime to destroy the egg of a bird.

Careful reading would alert you to the fact I was not personal. I referred to "many... in the GOP" not to you.

How clever of you.

why debate this dead horse. The battle is over. It's been decided since the 70's.

Because it is wrong. Gee, glad those who fought against slavery didn’t say, well, there is nothing we can do slavery has been legal now for quite a long time. The battle is over. We ought to move on. We stand up for what is right.

you have refuted your own argument by insisting on a false legal definition of "murder."

Murder in the first degree.
(1) A person is guilty of murder in the first degree when:
(a) With a premeditated intent to cause the death of another person, he or she causes the death of such person or of a third person; or
(b) Under circumstances manifesting an extreme indifference to human life, he or she engages in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to any person, and thereby causes the death of a personhttps://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9A.32.030

Uumm . . except the unborn is a person. It is simply your opinion that the unborn is not a person, not unlike those who tried to say black people weren’t persons, or Jewish people, etc. Again, I’m not interested in the law per se. I am interested in what is right. Personhood is not determined by a matter of inches. How obscene.

Here’s a great video demonstrating the absurdity of your position:

[Danmark]

[Replying to post 21 by Danmark]

Human" can be used ambiguously, "human being" less so. A zygote or even embryo is not a human being at least in some senses.

First, you keep using the term zygote, but I am referring to an embryo. Nobody aborts a zygote.

Isn't it your position that a zygote is a human being and should be considered a "person" under the law? I use "zygote" because it gets at the very heart of your position; that as soon as the zygote is formed, it is fully human and it is 'murder' to kill it. If that is not your position, please tell us when you believe human life begins.


My Quote:

In this debate you are conflating your personal/religious OPINION about personhood as if it is an absolute.

Your response:

Ha, ha, ha . . . isn’t that what you are doing with your secular view?

No. I have cited the law and reason. You have taken the absolute position that killing a zygote is murder. That even you are embarrassed by this extreme position is evidence by the fact you gripe about my use of the term, 'zygote,' which precisely reflects your position.

[Danmark]

Very few people even know what Roe V. Wade was about.

And apparently you are one of them. Have you read the entire opinion? I have.
The opinion has NOTHING to do with whatever the parties involved later thought or did. Nothing.
It is an opinion based on the facts of that case at the time the opinion was written and how those facts applied to the Constitution. Your arguments suggest you are only familiar with some religious right screed about the case, and not the case itself.

[Danmark]

Not true. Animals are protected under the law as well as the eggs of some endangered species. Crazy! We won’t protect a human embryo, but it’s a crime to destroy the egg of a bird.

Now you are just changing the facts, or are unable to grasp the difference between having rights and protections of animals. Do you even understand there is a difference between an animal being protected and the animal itself having a "right?"

If you can't appreciate such distinctions, there is no point in continuing.

[Bust Nak]

[Replying to post 25 by RightReason]

This is very much a rehash of the conversation you had with me, care to resume our old debate here?

[RightReason]

[Replying to post 29 by Bust Nak]

[Replying to Danmark]

This is the position of both of you:



This was the position of Obama and Hilary Clinton as well. Heck, they even said after the baby comes out of the magical birth canal he/she can still be killed (they didn't even equate being born with being a human being). So, when do you two think the baby deserves protection? At what point?