“The Bible is silent on the issue of abortion.”
Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Texas James Talarico, in response to a questioner (a Catholic theology professor) during CNN’s “town hall” featuring the Texas House member and divinity school student (he has yet to graduate despite starting at the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in 2018.
The answer was appropriately contradicted by the questioner, Jody Hunt, who shot back, “I just want to add that the Bible is not silent on abortion. There is the 10 Commandments: ‘Thou shall not kill.” She added, “And as Catholics, we take great insult, I guess sometimes, when [the Bible is] described that way.”
It didn’t take a theology professor to come up with that response: a relatively astute 12-year-old who has seen “The Ten Commandments” should be able to do it. Talarico’s answer is not only a lie, it’s offensive. This is the “invisible baby” dodge again. No one, nothing, is being killed! Abortion just involves the woman. It’s a choice, not a killing!
Talarico lied and flip-flopped throughout the session, with no push-back from the moderators. (“This is CNN!”) He denied saying that he wanted to abolish ICE, but Talarico is on video saying “It is time to tear down this secret police force.” Asked about the SAVE America Act, he said that he didn’t know enough about the bill to have a firm opinion about it. In August, he said, again on video, “With the SAVE Act, they are trying to rob our neighbors, strictly our black neighbors, of those God given rights.”
That’s a lie too. Just as Bernie Sanders assured radical progressives that Kamala Harris was just pretending to be moderate to get elected and then would show her true colors (you know, like “moderate” Abigail Spanberger in Virginia), Talarico’s woke pastor has said of her devout flock-member, “I can guarantee you that once he gets elected, he’ll change his tune back to where he was.” Have I mentioned that Democrats cheat?
Talarico isn’t even good at lying. I bet Bill Clinton is embarrassed for him.
The Bible is silent on running people over with your car.
The Bible is silent on vandalizing someone’s home with a can of spray paint.
The Bible is silent on stealing $20,000,000 from the bank.
The Bible is silent on kicking dogs.
The Bible is silent on wearing a clown suit while pushing old ladies down the stairs.
The Bible is silent on using a fully automatic machine gun to shoot up your neighbor’s house.
Only the Bible isn’t silent on any of those things.
Just like it isn’t silent on “don’t kill your children”
Exactly. And you know when God got really angry with Israel in the Old Testament?…when He put his foot down and pronounced irrevocable judgment on them?…
When they started, as the Bible says, “making their children pass through the fire.” That’s code for taking babies and burning them to death as a sacrifice to the god Molech. The shrines were usually just outside of town and there were drummers between the shrine and town who would beat their drums to drown out the screams of the babies being roasted.
It’s about the closest thing to abortion today….and God loathed it. The Bible isn’t silent on abortion…I’m pretty sure God hates it.
An early Christian writing which included a section on basic ethics, called “The Didache” or “the teaching” clearly condemns abortion. Which demonstrates early Christians understood scripture to condemn killing the unborn.
Like I read someone else write.
Talarico is what you get if a bunch of drunk interns at RNC headquarters decided to design a stereotypical Dem candidate.
Just a counterpoint here. Evangelical Christians overly rely on appeals to the Bible for moral argumentation against abortion, and Catholics tend to rely on church doctrine on this matter. In other words, there is a tendency to preach to the choir, and this is a problem when you want to convince non-Christians of the wrongs of abortion. Evangelicals and Catholics also open themselves up to the counterargument that all opposition to abortion is based on church doctrine and Biblical interpretation; these arguments therefore can be dismissed as irrelevant to nonbelievers. Talerico is now pulling a Voltaire by claiming that Christians are reading their Bibles wrong.
On the topic of the legalization of prostitution, to name an example, Christians have adopted a completely different argumentation strategy. In stead of appeals to the Bible, modern arguments derived from feminist are applied (against sex trafficking, abuse etc.). This is way more effective, plus you have allies to work with. As somebody who is on record in favor of legalization of prostitution I have questions about the truthfulness of these arguments, however in politics truthfulness and effectiveness are not the same thing.
Political debates are not decided based on truth, facts, and logic. A politician can win a debate with falsehoods and fallacies, as long as he is able to connect with the voters; the voters tend to decide on what they prefer to hear. That is why calling out a politician on using unethical arguments has little relevance; all that matters is whether his arguments help him win the election. The only criteria on which political arguments should be evaluated is effectiveness; based on how the political game is played. Politics is ethics bizarro world.
Most the Pro-life argumentation I see actually leans heavily away from using scripture to argue against abortion. The science, as they say, is settled: It’s alive, it’s a human, it’s unique. All from the moment of conception. It fails the Kantian tests, and most the social/moral/philosophical reasonings put forward are tattered and easily disputed with even a precursory appeal to any kind of consistent application. The Bible is also rather staunchly against abortion – which really should be a surprise to no one. The only reason it’s being brought up here is because Talarico is the one who brought it up. 100% wrongly. Either he’s trying to lie, in which case, shame on him, or he’s really, really uninformed about the basic tenets of his faith, in which case, shame on him. Either way, he’d have been far better off to keep his mouth shut.
I have a lot of trouble with these kinds of arguments, notwithstanding that there is a lot of emotion in politics and your assessment of how it works is more right than wrong.
That said, everyone is making a moral argument. What it’s based on is the only question.
Anybody with two brain cells to rub together can take a look at human history and realize that people are wrong far more often than they are right when left to their own devices. Religions do generally serve to curb the worst of humanity, but some of them are pure sophistry – Islam’s spokesman had sex with a 9 year old, and don’t you dare criticize him. One of the eastern religions proclaims, in essence, that there really is no such thing as evil. Um… hello?
So everybody makes excuses, and, well, let’s not get started on the Jews or Christians. Except….
The Bible is remarkably consistent, old and new testaments, that not even good works are good enough if your attitude is focused primarily on yourself. From Cain & Abel to “depart from me I never knew you.”
And therein lies the fallacy of the arguments for abortion, especially, and also the prostitution you’re in favor of. It all starts with selfishness, and goes downhill from there. I’ll do what I want, and bad consequences are not my problem. It’s not really human. It’s only sex.
To ignore the hell practitioners of both bring to everyone in pursuit of their selfish goals is willful blindness, and it doesn’t depend on “morality” (Except that it does, ultimately) – the awfulness women who have abortions suffer from lasts decades. The STDs, the broken relationships when partners find out, and yes, there is a lot of forced sex trafficking even in places where prostitution is legal, all are terrible consequences.
All because “nobody is going to tell me how to live MY life.” I’m going to do what * I * want. Except that we are all in this thing together, and what we do affects others. The whole point of government is to manage that, and in this great republic we get to vote on that. Do we organize our society to be a free for all, or do we agree to set certain limits?
Is it worse to outlaw abortions, or to pass laws that allow schools to trans gradeschool kids without the parents knowledge? Both sides make a “moral” judgment, right? Choose well.
The Bible is the only book that tells you that you’ll never be righteous no matter what you do, it’s why people hate it so much. It tells you pick up your cross daily – the trade for which is you’ll be given the desires of your heart. The problem is we don’t believe it.
I think you miss my main point. How successful are Christians in convincing non-Christians on the evils of abortion? In your argument I see you invoke the Bible quite often. That is not going to work on non-Christians. I am already part of the choir you are preaching too, seeing abortion as an evil.
In order to achieve results in politics you have to find allies; this requires using successful arguments not dependent on religious argumentation. How many non-Christians does the pro-life movement count?
The point is “morals” are what everyone appeals to, faith or not. My arguments about the ill effects of abortion and prostitution are outside of a Christian worldview – that’s pain felt by human beings regardless of their worldview, and are facts.
You’re a liar if you say otherwise. But people still won’t give it up.
The rest of it shows why people reject the Bible in particular. If you’re honest, you know it calls us all out. People don’t reject the Bible because it doesn’t make sense, they reject it because it puts a mirror on all of us, and it’s not flattering.
Short story long, non Christians aren’t going to take an anti abortion position because it requires they sacrifice their own selfish ways, and there’s no value to them in doing that.
While the bible is pretty obviously against killing your children and babies, I don’t see a lot of anti-abortionists relying on the bible’s pretty obvious stance against abortion to make their arguments outside of church circles.
They do, but neither do they ignore the Bible.
And no matter what argument is used, people aren’t giving up their “free” sex.
As soon as you open the door to accept any part of the anti-abortion argument, you’re forced to look at all the circumstances that precipitate the need for an abortion – i.e. you then must consider the need for self sacrifice, self control, accountability, responsibility, etc, and people aren’t giving up their “free sex”.
I mean, seriously, be honest.
Talarico like so many politicians is a boneheaded liar and a cheat. But in one of his discussions about the Bible he did say something true, that God is beyond our imagination and we should not try to bind him to an earthly description. Of course he was tying this to the ‘God is non-binary’ opinion, but there is a kernel of truth in the underlying premise that God is beyond our reach.
If his mouth is open he’s lying, but twice a day clock and all …
Jeremiah 1:5 New International Version
Obviously, Jeramiah believed God would have been OK with his mother aborting him, if she believed the pregnancy were inconvenient. God clearly did not value Jeramiah as a mere clump of cells.
Luke 1:41-44
Obviously, Luke would have approved of Elizabeth aborting her fetus versus of John (the Baptist). It should be equally obvious that Luke would have approved of Mary aborting the fetus version of Jesus she bore, if she changed her mind.
Maybe, just maybe, you could make an argument that Elizabeth prayed fervently for a son, and Mary consented bearing Jesus (Be it done to me according to thy will). Thus, they chose these pregnancies, and women cursed with unwanted pregnancies are free to destroy the soulless clumps of cells in their wombs. (But then how do you explain the unwanted (King) David, bastard son of Jesse, becoming the great, great grandfather of our Lord and Savior?)
On the otherhand, Rahab the Harlot from the book of Joshua is also in the genealogy of Jesus.
Spoiler alert, she doesn’t remain a harlot… does speak to God’s forgiveness, though.
I think your arguments may do well within a church community. For non-Christians your argument may be proof that all objection to abortion is based on how you read the Bible.
In order to debate a liberal like Talerico, you also need to consider the following:
Way OBE at this point, but, my argument is that non-Christians don’t oppose abortion (hell, there are probably not a few Christian who buy into – “it’s ok up to a certain point”) and are not swayed by any argument at all.
Find on YouTube an outfit called Abolitionists Rising – watch them argue from the scientific point of when life begins, and they do it well.
Nobody cares.
It therefore seems absurd to me to argue that if only anti-abortionists used a more secular, logic based approach, they’d be more successful and less hated.
I guess I’d buy in to the “use a secular approach” argument a little more if you showed me a non-Christian group that was out there actively fighting for the right to life.
Well, Jimmiepoo clearly does not remember Moses and the 15 . . . erm . . . 10 Commandments:
jvb
Gonna say it again because it bears reminding:
There is something about Talarico’s demeanor and countenance that is menacing. His facade just oozes disingenuity. It’s almost uncanny valley territory. But the guy just gives off “I’m hiding a kind of malice you can’t imagine” vibes.
Funny story about that. I was watching a video about words from other languages that don’t have a direct English translation. About a third of the way through, an ad came on for a language-learning software. Fair enough; the ad is relevant to the video content. Then later on, immediately after the video host finished explaining a German word that means “punchable face”, guess whose campaign ad popped on?
I guess they gave up on trying to teach him to make less smarmy facial expressions.
I chuckled.
He gives me the creeps.
Just a random thought. Why is Talerico running on abortion? The Supreme Court has rendered the Dobbs decision in 2022, rendering this issue to be decided by the various State legislatures. So this is not something for Congress to decide upon.
My guess is that the Democrats are trying to the rally the women vote; especially the hysterical leftwing female vote. Abortion is one way to do this as especially young women in college have a vested interest in sex with no strings attached (a.k.a. hookup culture). Other events that arrived in the news cycle on cue to rally this constituency are a) the Lindsey Clancy trial b) the Cornell-7 gangbang c) the brouhaha about the Shawn Gillis joke.
The Democrats may still have a young male problem. The majority of them are not at all interested in the abortion issue as most of them are on the sideline in the hookup culture, as this benefits only 5% of the alpha males; these are the men who benefit from abortion as it allows them to skip responsibility for their exploits. The men who fanatically defend abortion rights are often effeminate beta males, male feminists, and “nice guys” who ride in as white knights to argue on women’s behalf in their quest to be liked and rewarded.
Interesting take on what’s going on in France: I Come From Your Future Brivael Le Pogom
MONEY QUOTE: “Where THE DREAM Meets THE INVOICE.”
MONEY QUOTE, 2.0: “France Didn’t Fall Off A Cliff. It Walked Down A Staircase, One Polite Step At A Time.“
PWS