Richard Dawkins stripped of 1996 Humanist of the Year Award...

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

When one spews claptrap one should not get upset at those who point it out.

Oh I leave spewing claptrap to the experts in that field.

[rogue06]

When one spews claptrap one should not get upset at those who point it out.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

The only emotions I display are contempt and disdain, for which you have worked studiously for.

Anyone who has to resort to the language you have employed is clearly emotional and has lost the argument and therefore resorts to personal abuse.

As well of course, your tendency to include puerile gifs and emoticons.

[rogue06]

You display your emotions like a badge of honour.

The only emotions I display are contempt and disdain, for which you have worked studiously for.

[Sparko]

Odd then that my replies look perfectly legible when I open them.

Try hitting the "quote" button and replying to one of your long formatted posts instead.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

What you offered was baseless speculation unsupported by evidence. You just made an assertion and then demand that it be accepted unquestioningly. When your claim was dismantled piecemeal this is your reaction.

I cited extracts from available articles which you apparently consider to be "baseless speculation unsupported by evidence" .

What you offer is more opinion and some baseless assertions of your own.

What you really means is that you do not agree with me. And that is another matter entirely.

Oh and incidentally I never mentioned Jesus and nor have I ever contended that " ancient Jews thought that abortion was a swell idea".

Perhaps you should learn to write in a dispassionate and more rational manner.

You display your emotions like a badge of honour.

[rogue06]

Hypatia, this is what your text looks like when someone tries to respond to you:

hypatiacode.jpg

Please stop using Word or whatever word processor you are using. Just use something like notepad.

As I said 12 different coding instructions just at the end of that one short paragraph

[rogue06]

I offered a perfectly rational response. If you do not like it, there is little I can do for you.

What you offered was baseless speculation unsupported by evidence. You just made an assertion and then demand that it be accepted unquestioningly. When your claim was dismantled piecemeal this is your reaction.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Hypatia, this is what your text looks like when someone tries to respond to you:

hypatiacode.jpg

Please stop using Word or whatever word processor you are using. Just use something like notepad.

Odd then that my replies look perfectly legible when I open them.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Reduced to a desperate attempt to save face H_A frantically moves the goal posts clear out of the stadium

smiley goal posts.gif

Your original ignorance-fueled claptrap was "there is nothing in Judaism condemning abortion" and now we can see you clearly changing it to "There is nothing to be found in the Hebrew bible that specifically and categorically condemns abortion."

Just the sort of dishonest disingenuousness we have all come to expect from you

Moreover, Jesus never "specifically and categorically condemns" things like kidnapping or bestiality either. I guess in your warped view that indicates he was either ambivalent toward such acts if not okay with them.


Great. Show me an "opinion" where ancient Jews thought that abortion was a swell idea.

It just seems funny how all of the "opinions" likens it it to murder and such. I'm sure it's just a coincidence.


Instead of trying to distract attention away from your failure wouldn't you be better served by finding an "opinion" that shows that supports your contention? You know one saying that abortion is perfectly acceptable. I wish you luck considering that this overwhelming anti-abortion sentiment of the Jews carried over into Christianity and we can see it being condemned over and over just like the Jews did.

Just sayin.

[/FONT]

"The law moreover enjoins us to bring up all our offspring: and forbids women to cause abortion of what is begotten; or to destroy it afterward. And if any woman appears to have so done, she will be a murderer of her child; by destroying a living creature, and diminishing human kind."

Please regale us with your interpretation of what Josephus wrote that shows it isn't explicitly condemning abortion.

GIF gonna be good.gif

And the apocryphal sources serve more than adequately to illustrate how Jews felt about abortion. If it was just one source you might get away with hand waving it off as "opinion" but given it is multiple sources, apparently originating from different segments of Judaism (it is, for instance, highly unlikely that the school of thought that produced Enoch also produced the Sibylline Oracles).

Oh, and I guess according to H_A, Hellenized Jews aren't "True Jews"™


And this supports your belief that abortion was an accepted practice, how?

In the section Theories of Ensoulment In Judaism from Feldman's later work

Source: Birth Control in Jewish Law: Marital Relations, Contraception, and Abortion as Set Forth in the Classic Texts of Jewish Law

To begin with, the moment of soul-infusion of the embryo should, it would seem, be of similar importance for the morality of abortion in Jewish law. The extent to which this is or is not so can be gauged from the following examination of the question in the rabbinic system.

A dialogue between the Roman Emperor Antoninus and Rabbi [Judah, compiler of the Mishnah, known simply as "Rabbi"] is recorded in the Talmud:

Antoninus said to Rabbi: "From when is the soul (n'shamah) endowed in man, from the time of conception or from the time of [the embryo's] formation?" Rabbi replied: "From the time of formation." The emperor demurred: "Can meat remain three days without salt and not putrefy? You must concede that the soul enters at conception." Rabbi [later] said, "Antoninus taught me this, and Scripture supports him, as it is said (Job 10:12): 'and Thy visitation hath preserved my spirit (ruhi).'"

"Visitation" being identified with "ensoulment," the view of Rabbi thus teaches entry of the soul into the body at the very beginning of gestation, at the time of conception. This conclusion is affirmed in the parallel Midrashic version of the dialogue, except that here Rabbi's original view, before his concession to Antoninus, placed ensoulment even later than "formation"--at the time of birth itself:

". . . From when is the soul endowed in man; from the time he leaves his mother's womb or from before that time?" Rabbi replied: "From the time he leaves his mother's womb." [Antoninus demurred, etc., and Rabbi agreed: from the time of conception.]

The bearing of these passages on the question of abortion has been debated among modern scholars. Julius Preuss declared at the beginning of this century that such theoretical musings have no relationship to the Talmud's attitude towards the juristic problem of foeticide. Prof. V. Aptowitzer disputes him; Rabbi's juristic decision that the foetus is to be regarded as "part of the mother" is, he claims, a consequences of Rabbi's (original) theological view that the soul enters at a later stage. He further argues for the greater authenticity of the Midrashic version and, accordingly, holds that Rabbi's original view, taken from the Stoics, was that the soul enters at birth. R. Immanuel Jakobovitz discounts the essential relationship, arguing correctly that there is no basis in the Talmud for a connection between views of ensoulment and the legal status of the embryo. W. Hirsch of London, in his recent volume on rabbinic concepts of the soul, rejects Aptowitzer's second point, that of the Midrashic version's relative authenticity. Rabbi, he feels, could never have believed that ensoulment takes place as late as birth. To believe so would have placed him at odds with the various Aggadic teachings about "life" in the embryo: that Jacob and Esau "struggled" with different inclinations in Rebecca's womb; that the child is instructed in Torah and adjured to be righteous before leaving his mother's womb, etc.

© Copyright Original Source

My God woman, can you not write a single sentence without having to put font and color codes around nearly every word? You literally ended that bit with 12 different coding instructions!

And again, what is conspicuous by its absence is anything indicating that abortion was acceptable to the early Jews.


Well, now there's a scholarly source. I believe at this point you'd be demanding that I show their credentials as historians if I had cited them.

Hypocrite.


Feldman covers Jakobvits' views and interestingly notes that he holds that "there is no basis in the Talmud for a connection between views of ensoulment and the legal status of the embryo," which kind of kicks the legs out from your attempts here.



Okay. I gotta stop here. It's like trying to translate Sanskrit^[1] what with all these superfluous code instructions every couple of words.

Let me know when you can write like a normal person






1. and no, I'm not saying I read Sanskrit.

I offered a perfectly rational response. If you do not like it, there is little I can do for you. The fact remains that there is a plethora of opinion within Judaism but the Hebrew scriptures do not condemn abortion.

However, given your previous personal comments about me and those again found here, we all know what the old saying says about people who have to resort to that line "When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser".

[Sparko]

Hypatia, this is what your text looks like when someone tries to respond to you:

hypatiacode.jpg

Please stop using Word or whatever word processor you are using. Just use something like notepad.

[rogue06]

That remark rather amusingly demonstrates just how little you know about the impact of Hellenism on Judaism.

Likewise you could hand wave off the views of the ancient Hebrews because of the impact that the Egyptians and Canaanites had on them.

Likewise you could hand wave off their views roughly half a millennia later because of the impact that the Assyrians had on them.

Likewise you could hand wave off their views a couple of centuries after that because of the impact that the Babylonians had on them.

Etc. etc. etc.

In the view of H_A the only "True Jews"™ are those who agree with her




Now, something I really would like for you to explain.

You seem to want us to believe that Hellenism impacted the Jews beliefs views on abortion. Apparently, you believe they must have made them less accepting of it -- although you offer not a scrap of support for this speculation. But, correct me if I'm wrong here, weren't the ancient Greeks pretty tolerant of abortion? That it was largely accepted. So if Hellenism was influencing Judaism on this matter, shouldn't that have influenced them to be more accepting of it? Shouldn't all those sources I cited be telling us abortion is okay?

[rogue06]

No my comment is not "balderdash". There is nothing to be found in the Hebrew bible that specifically and categorically condemns abortion, unlike, for example adultery or perjury.

Reduced to a desperate attempt to save face H_A frantically moves the goal posts clear out of the stadium

smiley goal posts.gif

Your original ignorance-fueled claptrap was "there is nothing in Judaism condemning abortion" and now we can see you clearly changing it to "There is nothing to be found in the Hebrew bible that specifically and categorically condemns abortion."

Just the sort of dishonest disingenuousness we have all come to expect from you

Moreover, Jesus never "specifically and categorically condemns" things like kidnapping or bestiality either. I guess in your warped view that indicates he was either ambivalent toward such acts if not okay with them.

What we are discussing is opinion. And in any religion [especially Judaism] a wide variety of opinion is available.

Great. Show me an "opinion" where ancient Jews thought that abortion was a swell idea.

It just seems funny how all of the "opinions" likens it it to murder and such. I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

In your own faith the views on [for example female clergy] will differ widely between a conservative Catholic and a liberal Lutheran; likewise on gay clergy where the views of a conservative evangelical will clash with those of a liberal Episcopalian. Which of those individuals holds the “correct” view on either issue? And what about all the other shades of opinion found on both sides of each issue?

Instead of trying to distract attention away from your failure wouldn't you be better served by finding an "opinion" that shows that supports your contention? You know one saying that abortion is perfectly acceptable. I wish you luck considering that this overwhelming anti-abortion sentiment of the Jews carried over into Christianity and we can see it being condemned over and over just like the Jews did.

Just sayin.

I do not think you actually read what I wrote. The verse in Josephus is open to interpretation and nor do I consider a verse from the Jewish Apocrypha a valid justification for demonstrating an anti-abortion stance within the religion anymore than verse IV from the Greek text A of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas should be taken as a valid representation of the Christ as a child. In that verse Jesus kills another child because the child bumped into him. As for Philo of Alexandria he associated abortion with infanticide. And of course this was [again] a Hellenised Jew expressing his opinion.

"The law moreover enjoins us to bring up all our offspring: and forbids women to cause abortion of what is begotten; or to destroy it afterward. And if any woman appears to have so done, she will be a murderer of her child; by destroying a living creature, and diminishing human kind."

Please regale us with your interpretation of what Josephus wrote that shows it isn't explicitly condemning abortion.

GIF gonna be good.gif

And the apocryphal sources serve more than adequately to illustrate how Jews felt about abortion. If it was just one source you might get away with hand waving it off as "opinion" but given it is multiple sources, apparently originating from different segments of Judaism (it is, for instance, highly unlikely that the school of thought that produced Enoch also produced the Sibylline Oracles).

Oh, and I guess according to H_A, Hellenized Jews aren't "True Jews"™

Even your own cited David M Feldman wrote in a paper for The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly in 1983:[/FONT]

Implicit in the Mishnah above is the teaching that the rights of the fetus are secondary to the rights of the mother all the way up until the moment of birth. This principle is obscured by the current phrase, "right to life." In the context of abortion questions, the issue is not the right to life, which is very clear in Jewish law, but the right to be born, which is not as clear. The right to be born is relative; the right to life for existing persons is absolute. "Life" may begin before birth, but it is not the life of a human person; animal life, plant life or even pre-human life are not the same as human life. Rabbinic law has determined that human life begins with birth. This is neither a medical nor a court judgment, but a metaphysical one. In the Jewish system, human life in this sense begins with birth. Of course, potential life already partakes of the potential sacredness of actual life, since the latter can have its inception only through the former.”[/I][My emphasis]

And this supports your belief that abortion was an accepted practice, how?

In the section Theories of Ensoulment In Judaism from Feldman's later work

Source: Birth Control in Jewish Law: Marital Relations, Contraception, and Abortion as Set Forth in the Classic Texts of Jewish Law

To begin with, the moment of soul-infusion of the embryo should, it would seem, be of similar importance for the morality of abortion in Jewish law. The extent to which this is or is not so can be gauged from the following examination of the question in the rabbinic system.

A dialogue between the Roman Emperor Antoninus and Rabbi [Judah, compiler of the Mishnah, known simply as "Rabbi"] is recorded in the Talmud:

Antoninus said to Rabbi: "From when is the soul (n'shamah) endowed in man, from the time of conception or from the time of [the embryo's] formation?" Rabbi replied: "From the time of formation." The emperor demurred: "Can meat remain three days without salt and not putrefy? You must concede that the soul enters at conception." Rabbi [later] said, "Antoninus taught me this, and Scripture supports him, as it is said (Job 10:12): 'and Thy visitation hath preserved my spirit (ruhi).'"

"Visitation" being identified with "ensoulment," the view of Rabbi thus teaches entry of the soul into the body at the very beginning of gestation, at the time of conception. This conclusion is affirmed in the parallel Midrashic version of the dialogue, except that here Rabbi's original view, before his concession to Antoninus, placed ensoulment even later than "formation"--at the time of birth itself:

". . . From when is the soul endowed in man; from the time he leaves his mother's womb or from before that time?" Rabbi replied: "From the time he leaves his mother's womb." [Antoninus demurred, etc., and Rabbi agreed: from the time of conception.]

The bearing of these passages on the question of abortion has been debated among modern scholars. Julius Preuss declared at the beginning of this century that such theoretical musings have no relationship to the Talmud's attitude towards the juristic problem of foeticide. Prof. V. Aptowitzer disputes him; Rabbi's juristic decision that the foetus is to be regarded as "part of the mother" is, he claims, a consequences of Rabbi's (original) theological view that the soul enters at a later stage. He further argues for the greater authenticity of the Midrashic version and, accordingly, holds that Rabbi's original view, taken from the Stoics, was that the soul enters at birth. R. Immanuel Jakobovitz discounts the essential relationship, arguing correctly that there is no basis in the Talmud for a connection between views of ensoulment and the legal status of the embryo. W. Hirsch of London, in his recent volume on rabbinic concepts of the soul, rejects Aptowitzer's second point, that of the Midrashic version's relative authenticity. Rabbi, he feels, could never have believed that ensoulment takes place as late as birth. To believe so would have placed him at odds with the various Aggadic teachings about "life" in the embryo: that Jacob and Esau "struggled" with different inclinations in Rebecca's womb; that the child is instructed in Torah and adjured to be righteous before leaving his mother's womb, etc.

© Copyright Original Source

Tomas J Silber writing in a 1980 paper entitled “Abortion: A Jewish View” and published in Journal of Religion and Health noted that “The law of homicide in the Torah refers to nefesh adam: any living man. This excludes the fetus in the womb which is law nefesh hu (not a person) until it is born. The basis for denying capital crime status to feticide in Jewish law is scriptural.” [My emphasis]

My God woman, can you not write a single sentence without having to put font and color codes around nearly every word? You literally ended that bit with 12 different coding instructions!

And again, what is conspicuous by its absence is anything indicating that abortion was acceptable to the early Jews.

And this likewise from the National Council of Jewish Women

Well, now there's a scholarly source. I believe at this point you'd be demanding that I show their credentials as historians if I had cited them.

Hypocrite.

Likewise in an even earlier paper [1965] “Jewish Views on Abortion” 17 W. Res. L. Rev. 480 (1965) Rabbi Immanuel Jakobvits explains the confusion between the Jewish interpretation and that of the Christians. He notes that "The legislation of the Bible makes only one reference to our subject, and this is by implication: And if men strive together, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart, and yet no harm follow, he shall be surely fined, according as the woman's husband shall lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if any harm follow, then shalt thou give life for life.[/FONT]

Feldman covers Jakobvits' views and interestingly notes that he holds that "there is no basis in the Talmud for a connection between views of ensoulment and the legal status of the embryo," which kind of kicks the legs out from your attempts here.



Okay. I gotta stop here. It's like trying to translate Sanskrit^[1] what with all these superfluous code instructions every couple of words.

Let me know when you can write like a normal person






1. and no, I'm not saying I read Sanskrit.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

She actually seeks to dismiss them because they come from the Hellenistic period

That remark rather amusingly demonstrates just how little you know about the impact of Hellenism on Judaism.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Oh, spare us.

Why does the religious right always come across as a scam regarding abortion – like some sort of religious Ponzi Scheme? The sanctimonious hypocrisy knows no bounds. This ‘anguish’ for the trillions of innocent prenatal “babies” being brutally slaughtered in the womb by wicked leftists is of recent origin.

“According to the Christian’s “Holy Bible,” and the unerring word of the Christian’s almighty god, there is no “living being” until it takes “the breath of life.” That concept is repeated throughout the Christian bible.
“The Southern Baptist Convention’s president at the time of the Roe ruling, Dallas First Baptist Church preacher W. A. Criswell, celebrated the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling by taking the time to write that he was pleased.

“I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person, and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.””.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/6/8/1863445/-When-the-religious-right-was-pro-choice-evangelicals-applauded-Roe-v-Wade

AND:

“Jewish law does not share the belief common among abortion opponents that life begins at conception, nor does it legally consider the fetus to be a full person deserving of protections equal those accorded to human beings. In Jewish law, a fetus attains the status of a full person only at birth”.

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/abortion-in-jewish-thought/

Oh I missed that. Some of them do seem rather partial to having online chats with one another about me!

I am sure you knew about this - but here is a link [for information] anyway! https://www.politico.com/magazine/st...origins-107133