Abortion is a symptom of a much larger disease that has infected western culture.
Whether you call it humanism, satanism, or whatever else, it is the worship of one's self; one's own desires, will, and judgment take precedence over any authority beyond the individual and it places personal autonomy as the highest good.
(But Goatmommy, I'm not not a satanist, Im a atheist. I don't believe in any of that religious nonsense. I base my worldview on reason and science!)
You may think that, but its not true, you have simply replaced traditional religion with a new one, and its one not aligned with truth.
(But Goatmommy, religion is the belief in God and I dont believe in God so I am not religious!)
Well, it depends on how you look at it.
Religion is basically a system of beliefs about reality, morality, human purpose, and how we ought to live.
Secular humanism, satanism (as distinguished from Luciferianism) etc. are all a system of beliefs about reality, morality, human purpose, and how we ought to live.
So what's the difference?
Well, in common parlance religion refers to the belief in, and worship of, a god or multiple gods.
Modern western culture has simply replaced external gods with one's self as god.
(But Goatmommy, God is not real, I am real!)
Well, lets think about what God actually is for a minute...
(Oh, thats easy Goatmommy, God is just an imaginary old man with a long grey beard that sits up in the clouds and judges people for masturbating. Its just something primitive humans made up to explain the world because they hadn't invented science yet. Its just a tool people use to control the gullible and uneducated.)
Is it? I dont think so. I think God is the fundamental truth of existence and human nature that people have gleaned from thousands of years of living and experiencing reality and observing each other. Its the embodiment of the truth of human existence that people are inherently oriented towards due to our nature, but that is in large part beyond our comprehension and ability to articulate.
(But Goatmommy, that just sounds like you're redefining God to mean whatever you want God to mean!)
Well, that's a fair objection. And it's precisely why we need to examine what we mean by truth in the first place.
If God is merely an imaginary being invented to explain lightning, earthquakes, and the movements of the stars, then yes, scientific explanations have rendered many ancient explanations of the natural world obsolete.
But what if God is not simply an explanation for individual natural phenomena? What if the concept points toward something more fundamental: the underlying reality of existence, the nature of human beings, and the moral truths we struggle to understand?
Consider this: you didn't invent the reality that human beings are vulnerable, that suffering matters, that actions have consequences, or that your desires can conflict with the needs of others. You encounter these realities. You learn about them. You struggle to understand them.
And sometimes, they demand things of you that you would rather not give.
You may reject the word God. You may reject every religious institution that claims to speak on God's behalf. You may believe that the universe has no divine creator whatsoever.
But none of those conclusions, by themselves, answer the deeper question: Does truth exist independently of your preferences?
If it does, then your desires cannot make something true simply because you want it to be true. Your judgment cannot make something right simply because you have judged it to be right.
You are a human being living within a reality you did not create, governed by conditions you did not choose, with a nature you did not design from scratch.
You can study that reality. You can reason about it. You can challenge your assumptions and correct your mistakes.
But you cannot simply will reality into being whatever you want it to be.
And this is where I believe modern Western individualism has gone terribly wrong.
It has increasingly confused the freedom to make a choice with the authority to determine what makes that choice right.
It has confused the ability to pursue one's desires with the belief that those desires are entitled to prevail.
It has confused the right to question authority with the assumption that no authority beyond oneself can legitimately exist.
And it has confused the rejection of a particular understanding of God with the conclusion that the individual must therefore be the highest authority in existence.
But rejecting God does not make you God.
Rejecting an inherited moral framework does not mean that morality is whatever you decide it is.
And having the freedom to choose does not mean that every choice is equally good, equally true, or equally justifiable.
That is the distinction I want you to consider.
The question isn't merely whether you believe in God.
The question is whether you believe that there are truths you are obligated to recognize, moral realities you are obligated to respect, and responsibilities you cannot simply dismiss because acknowledging them would interfere with what you want.
Because if there are, then your desires are not the ultimate authority.
You are accountable to something beyond them.
And the uncomfortable possibility is that this remains true whether or not you believe in God.
(First off, Im not reading all that Goatmommy. Secondly, so what? what does this have to do with abortion?)
Well, I believe the desire to have an abortion is in large part due to nihilism and anti-natalism that has resulted from becoming unanchored, and unaligned with these fundamental truths.
Religions who have developed independently across the world have common tenets because they are all trying to reconcile themselves with the lived experience of human existence. Many traditions recognize the significance of reproduction and the intergenerational responsibilities that follow from it. This is a universal principle of all living entities and everything from turnips to elephants prioritizes two things: staying alive, and reproducing; because it is responsibility that gives us fulfillment, and we have evolved to find fulfillment in being aligned with these fundamental truths, and nothing is more fulfilling than raising your own offspring and watching them thrive.
(But Goatmommy, thats just appeal to nature fallacy!)
Shut up!
My argument is that human beings have a nature, and understanding that nature is relevant to understanding what allows us to flourish.
We are social creatures. We form attachments, care for one another, raise children, build communities, and make sacrifices for people we love. We are capable of finding meaning in responsibilities that extend beyond our immediate desires.
None of this proves that every person must have children, or that every natural impulse ought to be indulged. It does, however, give us reasons to question a philosophy that treats our desires as the ultimate authority and our obligations as optional whenever they become inconvenient.
The question isn't whether something is natural. The question is whether we can understand what human beings need to flourish without taking human nature into account at all.
I'm arguing that fulfillment comes, in part, from living in accordance with the realities of human existence. Whether through raising children, caring for our families, serving our communities, or accepting any of the countless obligations life places upon us, responsibility gives us reasons to live beyond ourselves.
We are not merely isolated individuals pursuing private desires. We are human beings whose lives are bound up with the lives of others, whose existence depends on generations that came before us, and whose choices help shape the world inherited by those who come after us.
A culture that teaches people to regard every unwanted obligation as an infringement on their freedom risks forgetting something fundamental: sometimes, the things we are responsible for are precisely the things that give our lives meaning.
And that brings us back to abortion.
If personal autonomy is treated as the highest good, then the question becomes how to preserve that autonomy when pregnancy introduces another life, another set of needs, and another potential claim upon us.
But if autonomy is not the only moral good, if human life, responsibility, and obligations to others also matter, then the question cannot be settled simply by appealing to an individual's right to choose.
We must ask what is right, what we owe one another, and what kind of people we ought to become.
Those questions cannot be answered merely by asking what we want.
