Christians: what happens to the souls of unborn children that are aborted?

[Lion IRC]

Nobody should want to go to heaven if the price is another person's damnation.

Once again for the slow learners, if your goal is to maximise the number of people in heaven your plan cannot (logically) involve increasing the number of people in hell for the unrepentant sin of mass murder.

And you haven't even started to consider the (biblical) theology that unborn babies don't need to be murdered in order to be saved. There's a much easier way to get to heaven.

"If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved."

 

[Tom Sawyer]

There's a much easier way to get to heaven.

This is true. You can just pay an indulgence to the church and have your sins absolved with cash and get a free ticket upstairs no matter what you did.

Sure, this doesn't work so well for poor people, but they're only poor people, so it's not like that's an issue.

 

[bilby]

Nobody should want to go to heaven if the price is another person's damnation.

Once again for the slow learners, if your goal is to maximise the number of people in heaven your plan cannot (logically) involve increasing the number of people in hell for the unrepentant sin of mass murder.

And you haven't even started to consider the (biblical) theology that unborn babies don't need to be murdered in order to be saved. There's a much easier way to get to heaven.

"If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved."

Personally, I use my heart for pumping blood.

But taking the more poetic use of the phrase 'believe in your heart' to mean 'really truly believe, no kidding, not just saying it but actually believe it', this becomes an impossible hurdle. I could (and would) say under duress that I believed in whatever the person placing me under duress wanted me to believe in - It's no skin off my nose to tell him what he wants to hear. But I can't choose to believe something that is obviously nonsense. Not really and truly believe it. It's not a choice - I can believe only in things that I have evidence for (or at least, no evidence against). Of course, if better evidence comes along, and shows my earlier evidence to be wrong, I could (and do) change my belief.

But believe that God raised Jesus from the dead? I can't choose to believe that - if flies in the face of all of the evidence. It makes no sense. It is, frankly and literally, unbelievable.

Even if you put a gun to my head, I couldn't really truly believe this crap. And you reckon it's easy? You are having a laugh.

How 'easy' would it be for you to 'believe in your heart' that I can leap tall buildings with a single bound? Because that's how easy it is for me to believe that God raised Jesus from the dead.

 

[PyramidHead]

Nobody should want to go to heaven if the price is another person's damnation.

Once again for the slow learners, if your goal is to maximise the number of people in heaven your plan cannot (logically) involve increasing the number of people in hell for the unrepentant sin of mass murder.

And you haven't even started to consider the (biblical) theology that unborn babies don't need to be murdered in order to be saved. There's a much easier way to get to heaven.

"If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved."

The plan is not to maximize the number of people in heaven. There's no 'goal' behind my question. You keep dodging it, so I will ask again: why is abortion a sin if the only effect it has on the victim is to grant him everlasting life in paradise? Why would God send someone to hell for doing such a nice thing for another soul?

EDIT: And you're wrong about the second part. Compare these two situations. Vimal is born in India and raised as a Hindu. He lives an honorable life but doesn't accept Jesus into his heart, so when he dies he goes to hell. Scenario two. Vimal's mother aborts the pregnancy before Vimal is born. Vimal goes to heaven for all eternity. Clearly scenario two is much easier from Vimal's perspective because he doesn't have to do anything, compared to overcoming his cultural upbringing.

 

[blastula]

For the last time, for the sake of the theoretical argument about God and heaven and hell and souls etc.

- killing innocent babies is a sin and sinners go to hell.

You keep ignoring that sinners do go to heaven if they're Christian. Or are you saying everyone in heaven is sinless?

But according to this thought experiment we are trying to get more people into heaven. We should be preventing abortion/sin not encouraging it.

No, the point is to get the souls already on earth to heaven. But if you wanted more souls created, a single woman can get pregnant multiple times and abort all but one.

- killing unborn babies is not necessary or even desirable as a hypothetical means of 'saving' souls. I want to go to heaven but I don't want anyone to kill me as I'm walking out the confessional. The person who kills unborn babies can't plead altruism if neither God nor the abortion/murder victims want that to happen.

If you died you would go to heaven, if you are saved. That you don't want to die perhaps reveals some doubt about heaven.

But I get a sense that the atheists in this thread arguing in favor of killing unborn babies and trying to win the support of Christians have a disingenuous motive. They happily argue about salvation while ignoring God's plan for salvation - which certainly does not include depriving unborn babies of the life He created.

No, we're highlighting the holes and absurdities that logically result from Christian theology. A big one is that God could have just created souls in heaven without the earth stopover.

And you haven't even started to consider the (biblical) theology that unborn babies don't need to be murdered in order to be saved. There's a much easier way to get to heaven.

"If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved."

That's not easier for the fetus soul, and there's much more room for failure by that method.

 

[angelo]

There's a much easier way to get to heaven.

This is true. You can just pay an indulgence to the church and have your sins absolved with cash and get a free ticket upstairs no matter what you did.

Sure, this doesn't work so well for poor people, but they're only poor people, so it's not like that's an issue.

 

[angelo]

Let's take this a little further into the modern era.
Science is finding new, perhaps earth like planets every second day almost. Let's take a wild guess and say that there may be extraterrestrial life out there.
Would they also go to heaven when they croak it? Or is this heaven just reserved for earthlings?

 

[Tigers!]

There are 3 persons involved in the abortion process - the unborn person, the mother and the abortionist. For one it is most probably a good deal but for the 2 adults not so good. tragically they have taken a life. I think of more than just the fetus.

Why is it tragic when a soul is painlessly sent to an eternity of bliss?

You can't have it both ways by acknowledging it's a good deal for the fetus while simultaneously calling it tragic. A tragedy has to befall someone who is worse off as a result of it, much worse off. Nobody on the receiving end of a good deal has ever been the victim of a tragedy!

There are 3 persons involved in the abortion process - the unborn person, the mother and the abortionist.
Its not just only about the fetus.

The fetus is deliberately denied the opportunity to experience what you and I are experiencing - life outside the womb.

 

[Tigers!]

When people ask that question, they do it in order to point out that even though the end result is a good thing for someone, the way of getting that good result may be a bad thing for someone else. In this case, the end result is that someone gets to go to heaven without needing to earn their place there. Under the theology we are assuming for the sake of argument, this is the only thing that happens to the soul of the aborted fetus; it is created, and then it begins an everlasting life in paradise. Those are the 'ends' We are talking about. The 'means' are the termination of a pregnancy by removing the fetus before it is ready to be born, killing it in the process.

The ends do not justify the means if something bad happens because of how you made something good happen. But in this case, it's hard to see what bad things happen as a result of abortion. The only thing that happens to the fetus is something good--it goes straight to heaven and doesn't have to worry about hell. The person who has the abortion, and presumably the person who assists her, have committed an act whose result is a net benefit for the recipient. In the process, they haven't hurt anybody else (assume anesthesia has been properly used). So, what is bad about the means? It's not enough to say it's bad because killing is bad, because killing isn't always bad. The Bible includes many examples of justified killing that are arguably harder to defend than abortion.

I cannot be as flippant as you about a human murdering another human whose only 'crime' was to be unwanted.
We do not allow the murdering of those outside the womb who are unwanted. Why do we allow it for those inside the womb?

 

[PyramidHead]

Why is it tragic when a soul is painlessly sent to an eternity of bliss?

You can't have it both ways by acknowledging it's a good deal for the fetus while simultaneously calling it tragic. A tragedy has to befall someone who is worse off as a result of it, much worse off. Nobody on the receiving end of a good deal has ever been the victim of a tragedy!

There are 3 persons involved in the abortion process - the unborn person, the mother and the abortionist.
Its not just only about the fetus.

The fetus is deliberately denied the opportunity to experience what you and I are experiencing - life outside the womb.

I will focus on this last point, because it is the first time it has come up.

The fetus is denied life outside the womb, but in exchange, it gets to experience something that is not just slightly better than life outside the womb, but infinitely better. In addition, the place they will go is literally devoid of even the smallest tinge of suffering. Deprivation is a problem because the deprived lament their loss and wish they were able to get what they were denied. But in heaven, nobody laments anything and nobody desires anything. In fact, it would be trivially easy to simply provide souls in heaven with the opportunity to experience what life on earth would have been like, down to every detail. This may sound outlandish, but that's what happens when you accept that a place of eternal bliss and infinite possibilities exists beyond death for the aborted fetus. It just follows logically that nothing they would have experienced as a mortal would be preferable; otherwise, there would be a flaw in heaven, a gap in its capacity to reward, and that's impossible unless you give up God's omnipotence or the perfection of heaven.

 

[PyramidHead]

When people ask that question, they do it in order to point out that even though the end result is a good thing for someone, the way of getting that good result may be a bad thing for someone else. In this case, the end result is that someone gets to go to heaven without needing to earn their place there. Under the theology we are assuming for the sake of argument, this is the only thing that happens to the soul of the aborted fetus; it is created, and then it begins an everlasting life in paradise. Those are the 'ends' We are talking about. The 'means' are the termination of a pregnancy by removing the fetus before it is ready to be born, killing it in the process.

The ends do not justify the means if something bad happens because of how you made something good happen. But in this case, it's hard to see what bad things happen as a result of abortion. The only thing that happens to the fetus is something good--it goes straight to heaven and doesn't have to worry about hell. The person who has the abortion, and presumably the person who assists her, have committed an act whose result is a net benefit for the recipient. In the process, they haven't hurt anybody else (assume anesthesia has been properly used). So, what is bad about the means? It's not enough to say it's bad because killing is bad, because killing isn't always bad. The Bible includes many examples of justified killing that are arguably harder to defend than abortion.

I cannot be as flippant as you about a human murdering another human whose only 'crime' was to be unwanted.
We do not allow the murdering of those outside the womb who are unwanted. Why do we allow it for those inside the womb?

How am I being flippant? I'm asking you to examine the underlying assumptions for the things you believe. The murder of people who are already born has many negative effects, but the one most relevant to this discussion is that the soul's destination is uncertain. By murdering someone who has sinned and not repented, or not yet accepted Jesus into their hearts, you could be committing an act that results in their eternal pain. That's a pretty big risk to take, putting aside all the other things that might be wrong about killing someone who doesn't want to die. This problem does not exist for the fetus, unless you are willing to concede that it is not innocent and will therefore go to hell.

Again, looking only at the consequences for the 3 souls involved, it seems like 2 of them are doing something for the 3rd one that not only provides an immeasurable positive benefit, but also has no negative side effects. It removes the possibility of the most negative outcome conceivable for a soul (hell). And any potential deprivation can be effortlessly remedied in paradise an infinite number of times. Tell me specifically which of the 3 souls is worse off, and why?

 

[Sarpedon]

Nobody should want to go to heaven if the price is another person's damnation.

And if God were just, that wouldn't be a possibility.

The inescapable conclusion of christian theology is that life is just a farce. It is supposedly a series of tests to separate the sheep from the goats, but God, being omniscient, already knows anyway. So the purpose of life is...nothing.

 

[funinspace]

When people ask that question, they do it in order to point out that even though the end result is a good thing for someone, the way of getting that good result may be a bad thing for someone else. In this case, the end result is that someone gets to go to heaven without needing to earn their place there. Under the theology we are assuming for the sake of argument, this is the only thing that happens to the soul of the aborted fetus; it is created, and then it begins an everlasting life in paradise. Those are the 'ends' We are talking about. The 'means' are the termination of a pregnancy by removing the fetus before it is ready to be born, killing it in the process.

The ends do not justify the means if something bad happens because of how you made something good happen. But in this case, it's hard to see what bad things happen as a result of abortion. The only thing that happens to the fetus is something good--it goes straight to heaven and doesn't have to worry about hell. The person who has the abortion, and presumably the person who assists her, have committed an act whose result is a net benefit for the recipient. In the process, they haven't hurt anybody else (assume anesthesia has been properly used). So, what is bad about the means? It's not enough to say it's bad because killing is bad, because killing isn't always bad. The Bible includes many examples of justified killing that are arguably harder to defend than abortion.

I cannot be as flippant as you about a human murdering another human whose only 'crime' was to be unwanted.
We do not allow the murdering of those outside the womb who are unwanted. Why do we allow it for those inside the womb?

I suspect that you already know the counter argument, but...it always seems worth repeating when such language is chosen. A few cells is hardly a 'human' to be 'murdered'. Until regular brain wave activity starts there is no place for thoughts or feelings. So somewhere between 20 and 25 weeks, a fetus has a chance outside of the womb. Within this window, then your language starts to have some merit. Note: None of my comments should be construed to suggest that abortions are a good method of birth control.

To argue that a few cells is a human that can be murdered, then you might as well as jump into the RCC pool of 'Every Sperm Is Sacred' song. Though at least the RCC is about the most consistent major Christian sect out there regarding human life; considering feti, death penalties and war mongering. Why isn't each unfertilized egg being denied its opportunity? And it should be noted that your purported God is the biggest abortionist of all by its purported 'design'.

 

[PyramidHead]

I cannot be as flippant as you about a human murdering another human whose only 'crime' was to be unwanted.
We do not allow the murdering of those outside the womb who are unwanted. Why do we allow it for those inside the womb?

I suspect that you already know the counter argument, but...it always seems worth repeating when such language is chosen. A few cells is hardly a 'human' to be 'murdered'. Until regular brain wave activity starts there is no place for thoughts or feelings. So somewhere between 20 and 25 weeks, a fetus has a chance outside of the womb. Within this window, then your language starts to have some merit. Note: None of my comments should be construed to suggest that abortions are a good method of birth control.

To argue that a few cells is a human that can be murdered, then you might as well as jump into the RCC pool of 'Every Sperm Is Sacred' song. Though at least the RCC is about the most consistent major Christian sect out there regarding human life; considering feti, death penalties and war mongering. Why isn't each unfertilized egg being denied its opportunity? And it should be noted that your purported God is the biggest abortionist of all by its purported 'design'.

That's all true, but not really germane to this discussion, because of the unique conditions stipulated by Christians: that death is just a gateway to either the best possible experience forever or the worst possible experience forever, and unborn babies don't have to worry about the second option. Given those conditions, it wouldn't matter if the fetus were fully conscious and self-aware. It would STILL be a good thing to send it through the gateway while it can avoid the risk of eternal damnation. From a purely pragmatic standpoint, there is no earthly experience that is worth the possibility of hell, and no mortal pleasure that is not infinitely outweighed by the happiness of heaven. If Christians were consistent with these beliefs about the afterlife, they would wish to be among the aborted. There is really no getting around it.

 

[abaddon]

... From a purely pragmatic standpoint, there is no earthly experience that is worth the possibility of hell, and no mortal pleasure that is not infinitely outweighed by the happiness of heaven. If Christians were consistent with these beliefs...

But is that their beliefs?

Isn't the fuller telling of the Christian tale that life is a testing-ground?

If so, then wouldn't it be a truer telling of their tale to include that and not just skip to the "death is a gateway" bit?

You have to have their story right first, with none of your values inserted into it, before the criticism. Your posting history indicates that you believe a life with no suffering is a good thing and a life with suffering is a bad thing. So "no earthly experience [is] worth the possibility of hell" looks like a PyramidHead value to me. And this retelling includes that value in it, when (I think) it's not there in their version of the tale.

"End justifies the means" might be yet another insertion.

 

[PyramidHead]

... From a purely pragmatic standpoint, there is no earthly experience that is worth the possibility of hell, and no mortal pleasure that is not infinitely outweighed by the happiness of heaven. If Christians were consistent with these beliefs...

But is that their beliefs?

Isn't the fuller telling of the Christian tale that life is a testing-ground?

If so, then wouldn't it be a truer telling of their tale to include that and not just skip to the "death is a gateway" bit?

The testing ground aspect is central to my point. It's the very notion that the unborn do not have to take the test, while everybody else does (and thus has a chance of ending up in the worst place imaginable for all eternity), that makes the act of abortion a net good for those who believe this.

You have to have their story right first, with none of your values inserted into it, before the criticism. Your posting history indicates that you believe a life with no suffering is a good thing and a life with suffering is a bad thing. So "no earthly experience [is] worth the possibility of hell" looks like a PyramidHead value to me. And this retelling includes that value in it, when (I think) it's not there in their version of the tale.

I'm happy to be challenged on any of the values I inserted into the question, which for the record are pretty common ones. If you want to say that abortion is bad because it deprives the unborn of the chance to suffer, let's talk about that and see if your reasoning holds. Let's see if it's consistent with the picture painted by Christian opponents of abortion, which is that it CAUSES suffering. Let's see if it makes sense in light of the idea that God could theoretically achieve whatever outcome the suffering would have achieved, without the suffering itself. Let's see if you can name an experience that can only be had on earth, that God in his infinite power could never replicate for you in heaven, and would be worth the risk of eternal torment.

"End justifies the means" might be yet another insertion.

See my reply to Tigers.

 

[angelo]

When people ask that question, they do it in order to point out that even though the end result is a good thing for someone, the way of getting that good result may be a bad thing for someone else. In this case, the end result is that someone gets to go to heaven without needing to earn their place there. Under the theology we are assuming for the sake of argument, this is the only thing that happens to the soul of the aborted fetus; it is created, and then it begins an everlasting life in paradise. Those are the 'ends' We are talking about. The 'means' are the termination of a pregnancy by removing the fetus before it is ready to be born, killing it in the process.

The ends do not justify the means if something bad happens because of how you made something good happen. But in this case, it's hard to see what bad things happen as a result of abortion. The only thing that happens to the fetus is something good--it goes straight to heaven and doesn't have to worry about hell. The person who has the abortion, and presumably the person who assists her, have committed an act whose result is a net benefit for the recipient. In the process, they haven't hurt anybody else (assume anesthesia has been properly used). So, what is bad about the means? It's not enough to say it's bad because killing is bad, because killing isn't always bad. The Bible includes many examples of justified killing that are arguably harder to defend than abortion.

I cannot be as flippant as you about a human murdering another human whose only 'crime' was to be unwanted.
We do not allow the murdering of those outside the womb who are unwanted. Why do we allow it for those inside the womb?

In other words, the mother has no say. Even if the pregnancy resulted from rape?

 

[Malintent]

If unborn babies go to heaven anyway why do they need to be murdered?

So here is the core of my issue with anti-choice folks...

"Unborn" and "baby" is an oxymoron... it is not a baby until it is born. It is an unborn FETUS, or a born baby.
"murder" is something that only applies to people. you can't "murder" a doorknob. You can't "murder" an ameba. You can't "murder" a fetus. You can (but shouldn't) murder a "baby".

The only reasonable and perfectly fair line one can draw between something being a person or not being a person is the act of being BORN from a person.

Most pregnancies end in miscarriage, and the majority of those are not ever detected by the potential mother... they miscarry before they have any idea they were pregnant, and it looks just like any other menstruation. So, God is the ultimate abortionist, apparently.

Potentials are slippery slope... alluded to here with this idea that it is good (or bad) to murder a baby because of some potential future outcome that is not guaranteed.

the vast majority of willful abortions take place when the thing is not even a fetus yet... just a microscopic cluster of a few cells. As "human" or "baby-like" as something you sneezed out of your nose. The propaganda that shows dismembered fetuses that look like babies is complete bullshit. That simply does not happen in modern cultures. No one wants to (and no one does) abort nearly fully developed fetuses. It is a lie to get people emotionally invested in controlling women like the "good ol days" when they weren't allowed to vote and were pretty much property to be traded by their parents... yo know, when America apparently was "great".

 

[Tigers!]

That simply does not happen in modern cultures. No one wants to (and no one does) abort nearly fully developed fetuses.

Kermit Gosnell would disagree with you

 

[Tigers!]

Again, looking only at the consequences for the 3 souls involved, it seems like 2 of them are doing something for the 3rd one that not only provides an immeasurable positive benefit, but also has no negative side effects. It removes the possibility of the most negative outcome conceivable for a soul (hell). And any potential deprivation can be effortlessly remedied in paradise an infinite number of times. Tell me specifically which of the 3 souls is worse off, and why?

Two of the three are worst off - the mother & the doctor. Both are guilty of wilfully taking life or abetting the taking of a life.