The bottom line

[fpb]

If you support abortion, you aren't a Christian. You only delude yourself you are.
(You are also, of course, not a Hinduist or a Buddhist, on an even stronger ground.)

Comments

[eliskimo.livejournal.com]

I know about pro-life Buddhists ... tell me more about Hindus. I've heard that India's rate of abortion is at least 2.5 times higher than that of the United States.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I know. It doesn't matter. In traditional HInduism, garbhahatya - abortion - is one of the worst sins, equal to brahmahatya - murder of a Brahmin - and gohatya - killing a cow. These are sins that not only lead the soul to become reincarnated in the lowest of Hells, but which have such a weight of evil that the soul will never get out, but will be reincarnated in Hell for ever. According to a text in, I think, the Shatapatha Brahmana, the soul guilty of abortion ends up receiving, on top of his own guilt, all the guilt from which all other souls have purified themselves by religious ritual. In fact, to judge by the climax of the Mahabharata, garbhahatya is worse than brahmahatya. In the Mahabharata, God becomes incarnate in two equal and opposite heroes, Krishna, the incarnation of Vishnu, and Ashwatthaman, the incarnation of Shiva. Krishna leads the heroic Pandavas, the good guys, to victory against their evil cousins, the Kaurava; but in the course of the battle the Pandava commit brahmahatya, killing their own teacher, the brahmin Drona. Drona's son is Ashwatthaman, and the dying leader of the Kauravas, Duryodhana, commits their vengeance to him. Together with two other Brahmins called Kripa and Kritavarman, Duryodhana calls down to Earth the whole power of Shiva, and, carrying that power, falls upon the Pandavas' victorious army and destroys it in its sleep. Finally he corners the five Pandava brothers in a forest glade, where they are under the protection of Krishna and the great brahmin Narada. By the magic of Shiva, Ashwatthaman turns a blade of grass into a weapon of ultimate annihilation, intended to destroy the Pandavas. Putting forth all their own power, Narada and Krishna stop it half-way. There is stalemate; and to break it, Ashwatthaman unleashes the weapon against the babies that the Pandavas' five wives are carrying.
This is his mistake. At that point, Krishna, who until then had barely managed to avert death from his proteges the Pandavas, and could not save the army, suddenly becomes all-powerful. He resurrects the embryos by a mere word of command, and by the same command condemns Ashwatthaman to wander away from any human being, like a wild animal, for three thousand years. Even God incarnate, with all the power of God's own left hand at his command, loses all power and suffers terrible punishment once he has committed abortion.
And as you may be aware, the Mahabharata is the central text of Hinduism. A Hindi proverb claims that "if it's not in the Bharat, it doesn't exist."

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

'A Hindi proverb claims that "if it's not in the Bharat, it doesn't exist."'

Sounds like a fundamentalist Muslim statement about the Koran.A Hindi proverb claims that "if it's not in the Bharat, it doesn't exist."

But I think you inflate the role of the Mahabharata. The central texts of Hinduism are the Vedas, especially the Upanishads. The epics come next, but within the Mahabharata the Bhagavad Gita has an elevated role.

And of course there are multiple streams of Hinduism, which have changed over time.

But I'm being picky; I have nothing to say about Hinduism and abortion.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As a matter of fact, the Hindus are exactcly like the Muslims in that they both feel that that their holy texts are direct revelations of the Divine taken down from Heaven, and that when they touch one of their sacred books, they are touching the verbal substance of God. We think differently: http://fpb-de-fide.livejournal.com/6240.html . And yes, in textbooks the Vedas have higher dignity than the epics, although the epics come directly after and the Mbh itself is often called "the fifth Veda", But in Hindu practice matters are very different. For one person who is familiar with the Vedas, let alone who can expound them correctly, a hundred are familiar with the Bharat. Its name means simply "The great [book] of the Indians", and the name is deserved. I don't suppose you have ever even seen a copy of the full Mahabharata, but it is the size of an encyclopedia, and I feel fairly sure hat every Indian heroic or religious tradition may be found at least hinted at somewhere in its immense depths. Finally, the Gita is part of the Mahabharata, not only as an insertion but as an organic part; it represents itself one of the climaxes of the narrative, and its teachings are rerlected and repeated across the epic. It is more integral to the Mbh than Book Six is to the Aeneid.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

"If you support abortion, you aren't a Christian. You only delude yourself you are."

Strong statement given that the New Testament has even less to say about abortion than the Old, which prescribed a much lesser penalty for accidentally causing a miscarriage through violence than for accidentally killing someone.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

One of the damning features of literalism and Bible-alone obstinacy is that, given worlds enough and time, pretty much anything can be found and justified by Biblical text of some sort. Today we have this method used to justify "gay marriage", just as yesterday it served to support Nazism, and the day before slavery. That is why Catholics and Orthodox believe in the importance of Holy Tradition. And Holy Tradition is univocal; indeed, it begins long before the Church. We have the best possible evidence that the Jews enacted an absolute prohibition on abortion and infanticide - the word of an enemy. Tacitus says as much, and places it among their most execrable traits, although it admits that it is responsible for their having multiplied across the Empire. We also know that the prohibition of abortion and infanticide was early and universal in the Church. This doctrine has never changed. Some remarks to the purpose: http://fpb.livejournal.com/69029.html

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

I think I would listen to Jews themselves over Tacitus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism_and_abortion

Judaism isn't abortion-friendly overall, but *mandating* abortion to save a mother is hardly an absolute prohibition. It's also the sort of nuance an outsider would easily miss.

'In Talmudic law, an embryo is not deemed a fully viable person (bar kayyama), but rather a being of "doubtful viability" (Niddah 44b). Hence, for instance, Jewish mourning rites do not apply to an unborn child. The status of the embryo is also indicated by its treatment as "an appendage of its mother" (ubar yerekh 'imo Hullin 58a) for such matters as ownership, maternal conversion and purity law.[8] In even more evocative language, the Talmud states in a passage on priestly rules that the fetus "is considered to be mere water" until its 40th day.[9]'

I figured you might invoke something like Holy Tradition, but not all Christians believe that to the same degree. Unless you're going to say Protestants aren't true Christians, just as some of them say Catholics aren't true Christians...

[fpb.livejournal.com]

What you describe is a sort of lawyerly quibble, or rather qualification, to make sure that a mother who miscarries for some reason or other shouldn't feel that she is in the same condition as a child-killer. The Talmudic tradition is rich in those. It hardly affects the core issue. At any rate, Talmudic Judaism is not like Septuagint Judaism, and it is the latter that is relevant to Christian origins. Both the enormous interpretative apparatus of Talmudic literature and the Masoretic text are later products, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, among other things, have confirmed that the Septuagint is closer to the Hebrew text of the first century than the Masoretic text is. Hence the Protestants are wrong for a start, since their Bible is calqued on the Masoretic text, and the Masoretic text is a reformed text that Jesus never used. And that being the case, I would rather trust Tacitus, who was a contemporary, over rabbis who lived centuries later.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Indeed, if Margaret Barker is right - and I am firmly convinced that she is, although the issue is very controversial - early Judaism was even more unlike Talmudic and Rabbinic Judaism than we imagine. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Margaret-Barker/e/B001IQWG34/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1