Where does the Bible say that a human egg becomes a human being at the moment of fertilization?

[Boojatta]

[laconicsax]

1. ...

:popcorn:

[Miss Chybil]

2. They didn't have microscopes back then.

I'm interested to see if it is mentioned at all. It's been a long time since I've read that book and for some reason, other people seem to find things in it I never could see.

[Boojatta]

12. With microscopes, they could have obtained more information

and passed that information to God. People criticize God, but how is God supposed to be a good writer when people provide God with false, misleading, or seriously incomplete information?

[amdezurik]

3. Onan is normally cited for that

you know, the whole spilling of the sacred seed on the ground. So really if a fundie was a REAL christer they would have to save all their nocturnal emmisions to use to impregnate any woman who would come near them...

[BrklynLiberal]

4. Not in the Bible..I believe the phrase that might be applied uses the

word "quickening".

For more information look here.
http://everything2.com/title/Quickening

[Gregorian]

5. Can I just add something OT, sort of?

I suppose this isn't new thinking, but here's what I've always thought.

It's attached, and actually IS part of the mother. In fact, it IS the mother. It has the same blood. Uses the same air supply. It is only when the cord is cut that it becomes an individual.

[juno jones]

6. It used to be that there was no known female agent of reproduction

The sperm were considered to be homunculii, little 'men' that would occasionally implant in a woman's 'fertile tillage' or whatever(This view also made the children the father's sole property, just as his wife was a mere vehicle for breeding). Quickening, when the baby is felt to move (at 4-5 mos)was the standard of beginning life for a very long time. In the 1800's as medical research surged, our modern knowlege of eggs, sperm, etc was born. Coincidentally, It is about this time that religion starts to get involved with abortion.

Yes the bible is silent because women were not considered to contribute to birth beyond being incubators.

[lurquer]

11. city slickers....

"Yes the bible is silent because women were not considered to contribute to birth beyond being incubators."

I can tell you don't raise cattle....

I guarantee you that 'primitive' cultures based on livestock knew a lot more about reproduction and heredity than most urban cultures.

One would not make it very long in the cattle business if one did not understand the female's contribution to the offspring.

(In any case, do you think that parents began to notice family resemblance to the mother's side of the family only upon the 'discovery' of genes? Give the ancients some credit... )

[juno jones]

13. It was justified by believing that the baby took on the 'shape' of the vessel

Just read some medieval texts on the subject and you'll see what the early church thought. Cattle is one thing, and you are right to a point, they were denying the truth right in front of their eyes.

[Boojatta]

16. If they accepted that lessons learned by observing cattle applied to them...

then what was all the fuss about in 1859 when Darwin's book was published?

Anyway, welcome to DU, lurquer!
:toast:

[olegramps]

20. This thinking resulted in their hysterical condemnation of masturbation.

One of the major problems with Catholicism is that popes make statements that they impose on the entire church as being absolute truths. If popes were to latter contradict these statements they fear that their authority would be lost. This was a major concern of Paul VI in regard to contraception. As a consequence their attempts to justify their previously grand pronouncements that were based on erroneous concepts become increasingly less convincing and they end up losing the authority that they vainly attempted to protect.

[Kceres]

7. Don't know about the Bible, but if you live in Colorado it says so on Prop. 48.

And we are going to defeat it tomorrow!

[sinkingfeeling]

8. Many of the real zealots take some of this belief from the Old Testament.

"The Lord called me before my birth. From within the womb he called me by my name...He said to me, `You are my servant'..." (Isaiah 49:1,3 TLB); "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb" (Psalm 139:13).

"Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations." (Jeremiah 1:5)

[stopbush]

9. The Book of Numbers is quite clear that only people older than one month

are to be considered people.

God orders Israel to do a census and to count only the males older than one month. In Yahweh's eyes, a human life is worthless until it's been out of the womb for a month.

[lurquer]

10. twenty years old

Twenty years old... not one month.
(In light of the fact that the census was for military purposes, it is interesting to note that the Bible is far more progressive than the U.S. That is, anyone younger than 20 was considered too young for military service.)

[leftyladyfrommo]

18. That's what I was thinking. An infant has to be a month old.

I imagine that was because so many infants died at childbirth or right after that people waited a while to see if they would live or not.

[NAO]

14. The Early Christians were RABIDLY anti-abortion in the late second century

First off, I'm an atheist. Have been for over 20 years. And I have a life long fascination with Christianity and the history of the early church.

Early Christians were rabidly anti-abortion. Many of the writings of the "Apolostic Fathers", which were just a few years too late to be included in the New Testament, specifically call out abortion as one of the most heinous sins. If only those guys who picked which books were "from god" would have picked a few more, today's Christians would have had much better stuff to work with.

The "Revelation of Peter" has a lurid description of Hell where the souls of aborted fetuses watch in glee while their mothers are dangled from hooks over the boiling Lake of Fire.

The second century heresy hunter Hippolytus makes a case against astrology because life begins at the moment of conception, not the moment of birth, hence all the calculations of astrologers are inaccurate.

Tertullian, the first Father to write in Latin rather than Greek, writing about 200 CE describes in detail an "abortion kit" and how it is used.

But, unfortunately for today's Christians, none of this stuff made it into the New Testament, and they think that Christians opposing abortion started in 1972 CE, when in reality it was going strong in 172 CE.

[FM Arouet666]

15. Simple answer. No where

Bible never states when an egg and sperm become a human being. As in, NONE. No passage talks of eggs, sperm, zygotes, gametes, embryos, etc etc. NADA.

:popcorn:

[cosmik debris]

17. I can't imagine anyone attributing that to the Bible.

They must have been pitifully uneducated on that subject to believe that such a thing could be found in the Bible.

Of course, we know that the Bible is considered metaphor by many, so who knows. With the casual interpretation often seen in churches, perhaps any of those metaphors could be twisted to mean that. All you have to do is start with the ending an look for some way to twist the story to fit.

If it was up to me, I'd try the story of Sodom, but it would be more challenging to try to make the story of Jericho fit.

[Pterodactyl]

19. The things that you're liable to read in the bible ain't necessarily so.

The bible is not the sole vessel of Christian thought. When the books were written and collected, they were for the purpose of recording and spreading the faith, not providing a how-to manual on every topic.

The bible is silent on all sorts of modern topics, such as genetic engineering, campaign finance laws and wiretapping terrorists. But, we can use it as a guide to form ethical guidelines on a wide variety of subjects.

[Meshuga]

21. I doesn't

But Jewish Law, for example, uses the Hebrew Bible to explain its view as far as the status of a fetus is concerned and the conclusion is that a fetus is considered "partial life" in the eyes of Jewish Law.

Exodus 21:22 has an example stating that if a man hurts a pregnant woman and kills the fetus then the man has to pay a fine but if the woman dies then he is considered a murderer. Jewish Law explains that the fetus has some value but it is not considered a person until the full head (or most of its body) is out the womb.