It’s a cold and stunning effort to use the Nazis’ systematic murder of millions of Jews before and during World War II to promote a political agenda today. We just saw a press release in which a Texas-based right-wing litigation group peddles the argument that the Holocaust, abortion and evolution are all connected. Check out this excerpt from the press release from The Justice Foundation in San Antonio and other anti-abortion groups:
Millions of innocent unborn children have died and women have been hurt throughout the world through abortion. Millions of men, woman and children died in the Holocaust. Is there a connection between these evils and evolution? … We will examine today the pictures, the stories, the evidence, and the horrors in the concentration camps and abortion clinics.
The release goes on to announce a Friday press conference in the nation’s capital to promote a DVD about “the relationship between Evolution — Auschwitz — Abortion.”
Genocide and abortion are both sinful and will be judged by the Lord not the religious zealots.
Abortion, the holocaust & Evolution have nothing in common with each other, as evolution does not play into either. As for judgement, if there is a god he will also judge the zealots for perverting, him.
I’m sorry but a God who says one sin is equal to another (e.g. genocide and abortion, as rtreverend says) is not a God I choose to follow. Regardless, there is no relationship between abortion, evolution and the Holocaust; to give this group recognition at all, other than to say they are insane, is ridiculous.
This is nothing new. Anti-abortion protesters have long equated the Holocaust with abortions in America since Roe v. Wade. Actively throwing in evolution, however, is a new bit of seasoning, for me at least, but I know the anti’s hate it as much as medical care for women. As a long time escort at a Planned Parenthood clinic I see signs equating the Holocaust and abortion weekly, And one day when I wore an evolution pin on my lapel, just to see their reaction, the anti’s went berserk.
Randy Balmer said:
Although various Roman Catholic groups denounced the ruling, and Christianity Today complained that the Roe decision “runs counter to the moral teachings of Christianity through the ages but also to the moral sense of the
American people,” the vast majority of evangelical leaders said virtually nothing about it; many of those who did comment actually applauded the decision. W. Barry Garrett of Baptist Press wrote, “Religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision.” Indeed, even before the Roe decision, the messengers (delegates) to the 1971 Southern Baptist Convention gathering in St. Louis, Missouri, adopted a resolution that stated, “we call upon Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.” W.A. Criswell, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention and pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, expressed his satisfaction with the Roe v. Wade ruling. “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,” the redoubtable fundamentalist declared, “and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.”
That was not the entire quote from Criswell, He also said that Adam did not become a real person until God did this:
7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
Criswell interpreted that to mean “the moment of soul injection.” Therefore, neither Adam nor some fetus became a human being until the moment of soul injection. The body was there and already formed, but the soul that made it truly human had not arrived yet.
One can say human life begins at the moment of conception. Does soul injection begin at the moment of conception? I don’t know.
“Soul injection.” Heh. There’s a joke lurking in there, but I haven’t found it yet……
The funny thing is that many religious conservatives were pro-Hitler before we entered the War. He was a “good Christian”, did not drink or smoke, and promoted family values. This was in stark contrast to FDR and Churchill both of whom smoke and drank.
“Soul injection” was popularized by the great Wilt Chamberlain.
While the philosophical connections are logically fallacious, there are valid historical connections of eugenics to evolution, to the history of abortion and Planned Parenthood, and to Nazi Germany. The main factual error here is conflating the one to the other — with a possible additional moral error (depending on your is-ought bridge) of doing so dishonestly or fatuously for furtherance of political objectives.
Actually the soul injection theory in combination with the philosophy of Aristotle is the basis for what later became the ‘first trimester exception’ that is law in many countries. According to that a male fetus is ensouled at day 40 and a female at day 80 in the pregnancy. To abort a fetus before that was only a venial sin while after that it was a mortal one (and often punishable by death). The church did drop that only after it came into conflict with (unbiblical) Mariological dogma and a revival of St.Augustine’s theory that original sin is transmitted through sexual intercourse*. To simplify it: original sin infects the soul and cannot exist apart from it. If the soul is not present during conecption, original sin would not have a host to attach to. In case of Mary God prevented the infection at the moment of her conception, so she stayed clean (=> immaculate conception). By not having sex with her husband she avoided potential secondary infection. So Fetus Jesus found a sterile environment to be grown in before he beamed out at the appropriate time (thus leaving Mary’s seal of purity intact). By her not having sex with Joseph even afterwards she stayed clean for the rest of her natural life and could thus ascend to heaven directly without need for decontamination (purgatory). Please ignore that the Bible states explictly that she had at least 6 other children (4 named boys and more than 1 unnamed girl) or that Jesus is referred to as the first born (not the only) or that a connection to king David through Joseph makes no sense, if he was not the biological father etc.
*ironically he prayed for a day when conception could happen without dirty sex involved and condemned the calendar method of family planning (which had failed him personally) while the RCC today allows only the latter and condems the former (test tube babies)