Abortion, Souls, Evolution - and Thanks for the Pictures!
Claire E. O'Connor claireoc@softdisk.com
Sat, 22 Nov 1997 18:47:42 -0600 (00880267662, 34777D2E.6B11@softdisk.com)
> RJV 11/9 {Assisted Suicide, overpopulation, etc. -
> Let's debate on CyberBlasphemy (FWD)}
> Well, what do you think about giving birth to infants who can't live at
> all -such as those without brain stems
> (http://usrs.accescomn.net/mhames/gore/frog2.jpg) or children that had
> SERIOUS cell migration problems in the womb
> (http://usrs.accescomn.net/mhames/gore/opig.jpg). Yes, mothers should
> be allowed to see these children burst from their loins. These children
> - and there are MANY other malformations that are lethal to the fetus but
> not the mother - should be born, even if we know that they have 0% chance
> of survival for any sort of meaningful life. These pictures came from a
> gore page located here:
> http://usrs.accescomn.net/mhames/gore/oddities.htm . Every last one of
> these pictures are congenital malformations - some are lethal to the
> child, others aren't. (My dev. anatomy text has some of these pics.)
> (http://usrs.accescomn.net/mhames/gore/jokerbo1.jpg) However, every
> last one of these can happen without causing the mother to be in serious
> danger. But, why - when we can ultrasound and determine by week 8
> (fertilization age) if a child will be this malformed - shouldn't we abort
> the pregnancy? Of course not! The mother should be allowed to see what
> happens in her womb when something horrible goes wrong.
>-- R Jason Valentine ..ooOO miracle@procyon.com
CLAIRE
Jason, I would like to thank you for the links to those highly edifying
web pages, complete with phone-sex advertising! (Note: I have
intentionally altered the web-site addresses in this response; the above
addresses are invalid.)
Let me ask you a question: How would you react if I provided links to
anti-abortion web pages with photographs of healthy aborted fetuses
thrown in garbage cans? Would you accuse me of making appeals to
people's emotions?
>> CLAIRE {RC Beliefs about Bible 11/7 - within the thread
>> "Did the Burning Bush Lie to Moses?}
>> ...The RCC has announced that
>> evolutionary theory should be accepted, as long as there is no denial of
>> the human soul.
> RJV 11/9 {Side Thread}
> Could you please define the "human soul"? I have never seen a definition
> of it. What is the official RCC definition of "human soul"? Just
> wondering... This all leads up to the question: If it can't be defined,
> then how can it be denied?
>And what about the "animal soul"?
> TIM {Side Thread Gets Pulled, Unravels Sweater}
>Think about it:
>1) RC church admits to evolution
>2) humans have souls
>3) humans are just a highly evolved animal
>Does the RC church preach "animal souls"? If not, why not? If so, is
>putting to sleep unwanted baby kittens any worse than aborting unwanted baby
>humans? If so, is "fixing" a pet the same as using a contraceptive? If not,
>why not?
>Give rational reasons, not appeals to emotions which I'm sure we all share.
> Tim
CLAIRE
The RC church does not teach that non-human animals have souls.
Destroying unwanted kittens is not as bad as aborting unwanted baby
humans. However, the fact that humans created a situation in which
unwanted kittens had to be destroyed would be considered to be the fault
(sin) of the humans. As God's representatives on earth, we humans are
supposed to be responsible stewards of God's creation. Allowing cats or
dogs to breed unchecked would be considered poor stewardship of the
animals God has entrusted to our care. Domesticated cats and dogs are
not subject to the same natural population-controlling pressures that
wild cats and wolves are subject to, but they still produce large
litters and have mating and roaming instincts which they cannot be
expected to consciously control on their own. So the RCC would approve
of people sterilizing their pets. Humans are expected to have conscious
control over their own mating instincts, so sterilizing a human is not
considered to be equivalent to sterilizing a pet.
I believe that the soul is created at the moment of conception, and God
"sees" this soul. If a zygote splits to form twins, it had to have the
potential for twinning at conception, so God must have "seen" two souls
there. Of course, I could never PROVE my belief about souls. But it
can't be disproved, either.
I think of the soul as being (partly) a function of the brain, but it is
more than just the brain. In his book _The Man Who Mistook His Wife for
a Hat_, neurologist Oliver Sacks discusses the cases of several patients
who have suffered profound personality changes due to brain tumors or
other pathological processes in their brains.
One of Dr. Sacks' patients, W., living in a nursing home run by
Catholic nuns, had severe Korsakov's syndrome and amnesia due to
alcoholism. W. constantly confabulates stories about himself because he
has "lost his own identity" (my term for his affliction). Sacks
describes him as having "some ultimate and total loss of inner reality,
of feeling, of meaning, of soul...". Dr. Sacks asks the Sisters: "Do you
think W. has a soul?" The Sisters agree that W. may appear (to us) to
have been "de-souled", but he still has a soul which is seen and loved
by God.
Dr. Sacks shows in his book how the case of W. and the cases of other
brain-damaged patients can offer us insights into the workings of the
human brain. It might be more convenient for us in the short term to
kill off people with brain damage, but I think we will lose a lot of
information (and maybe our own souls) by doing so.
I quote from John 9:1-3: "As [Jesus] passed by, he saw a man blind from
birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his
parents, that he was born blind?' Jesus answered, ‘Neither he nor his
parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible
through him'."
My point is that even the most damaged humans can teach us something,
about the workings of the human brain or body, or whatever. Those
deformed fetuses shown on your "gore" website can provide clues about
the developmental processes of the human embryo and fetus. That is a way
that "the works of God [and nature] might be made visible through
[them]". The living babies with deformities are still human beings, and
they have souls that are seen and loved by God, no matter how ugly they
appear to us. Also, the overwhelming majority of abortions are
performed on healthy embryos or fetuses.
"God created man in his image" (Gen 1:27). According to the
_Collegeville Bible Commentary: Book of Genesis_, by Pauline A. Viviano,
"‘image' as used by the author did not actually mean ‘soul' [as say, the
Greeks thought of ‘soul']. In the ancient world, ‘image' was used to
refer to a statue of the king that was sent to the distant corners of
the kingdom where the king could not be present in person. [I am not
saying that God can't be present somewhere, though!] This ‘image' was to
be the representative of the king in that area. If we apply this to
Genesis, to be created in the image of God is to be God's representative
on earth."
However, even if I could not say that "image" means exactly the same
thing as "soul", this does not mean that brain-damaged people are not
created in God's image. We should think of them as being here to reflect
the glory of God. I do believe that they have souls which are seen and
loved by God, and that these souls are more than the sum of their brain
functions.
I quote from the articles on the "Soul" and "Mind/Body" from _The Harper
Collins Encyclopedia of Catholicism_:
"SOUL: the principle of life in a human being. Christian reflection on
the nature of the human soul attained clarity only gradually. Thus early
theologians adopted positions that from a later standpoint must be
judged erroneous: Tertullian (d. ~225), for example, took the human soul
to be in some sense corporeal; and Origen (d. ~254) held that it
preexists the creation of the body.
"The notion of soul that has predominated in Catholic theology since the
late thirteenth century is that of Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274). Following
Aristotle, he conceived of soul in general as the pattern of
interrelatedness (‘substantial form') that integrates the many parts and
processes of an organism into a functioning whole. In human beings, this
integrating or formal element manifests itself not only in the
activities that Aquinas referred to as ‘vegetative' (e.g., nutrition,
growth) or ‘sensitive' (e.g., seeing, hearing), but also in the
higher-order activities he designated as ‘intellectual' or ‘rational'
(e.g., questioning, understanding, deciding, loving). On this view, the
human soul is naturally and intrinsically related to the body; it is not
a spiritual captive in a material prison.
"The Catholic Church affirms that each human being has only one soul;
that the human soul is spiritual, for, as Aquinas explained, its
higher-order activities are neither material nor intrinsically dependent
upon matter; that it is created directly by God and simultaneously with
the body [i.e., it comes into existence at the moment of conception];
and that it is immortal, although whether this attribute is natural or a
gift of grace has never been defined."
"MIND/BODY:...Is there a soul, or mind, that continues to exist after
the body no longer exists? .... [The] pivotal divide is basically
between some form of naturalism and some form of dualism. Naturalism
construes human beings as complex physical systems that are continuous
with the rest of the natural order [humans are higher animals]; whereas
dualism locates the distinctively human in a spiritual principle (a mind
or a special kind of soul) that is discontinuous with the natural order
and, therefore capable of survival after separation from the body.
"Most traditional accounts of distinctiveness and survival are grounded
in dualistic accounts of mind or soul. On the other hand, many in the
Christian tradition today construe distinctiveness and survival in terms
of salvation history and the resurrection of the body without invoking
the core metaphysical distinction of mind and body. Belief in eternal
life is not based finally on philosophy but on the gospel of Jesus
Christ."
(Other relevant articles include "Immortality" and "Eternal Life" -
these have quotes from the Bible. If anyone responds to this segment, I
will quote those articles.)
The Catholic Church does not teach that animals have souls, or that
animals will go to heaven, although I personally hope that dogs (at
least nice dogs) will be in heaven. :-)
As far as we know, humans are the only animals that have a desire to
know God. This would make humans the only animals that have been created
in the image of God.
> IAN {Side Thread}
> How long did it take the RCC to accept this theory of evolution? How
> long to accept other scientific findings? How can you be sure they are
> correct about anything else they teach?
CLAIRE
The Catholic Church has not changed its theological teaching that humans
are created in the image of God and have souls, even though the Church
now acknowledges that we evolved from lower life forms. At one time,
ancient Greek theories about nature and the cosmos were at the "cutting
edge" (I use that term very loosely here) of science in
Christian-dominated parts of the world. These theories were integrated
into Catholic theological teachings: Thomas Aquinas used what was known
at the time to try to "explain" God, nature, and the universe. As
limited humans, we can only "explain" God using what we know. The
problem was, the Church became too attached to the old Aristotelian /
Ptolemaic theories even when it became clear that these theories were
wrong. However, only the science was wrong, not the theology.
"Scientific creationism" is invalid not because of its theology, but
because it is bad science. At the time Genesis 1 was written, the
"cutting edge" of Near Eastern knowledge was that the sky was a bowl
turned upside down over a flat earth, with windows in it to let
precipitation through. The sky separated the "upper waters" from the
"lower waters". Of course, this isn't "true". But the point of the
Genesis story is not to give us a scientific account of the creation of
the universe, but to teach us that God created it! The theological
teaching that God created the universe hasn't changed, even though our
scientific understanding of the universe is much better than it once
was. My theology instructors have said that as scientists discover more
about the universe, we will continue to draw closer to how God sees the
universe. God has always known the world was round, the universe is old,
humans evolved from lower life forms, etc. It's just that we humans
didn't always know these things.
I am proud that the Catholic Church has repented of its past
condemnations of scientific discoveries. At the same time, I don't think
the Catholic Church should immediately jump on every new scientific
bandwagon (and believe me, it won't).
~Claire O'Connor