A religious footnote to the pro-life / pro-choice issue
[ by Charles Cameron — with cites from the Qur’an and Bukhari, together with a concerto by Saint-Saëns ]
.
.
Stephen Hough is a classical pianist of note recording on the Hyperion label, the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, and one of twenty living polymaths listed as “Pianist, poet, composer, writer on religion” in a 2009 survey by The Economist’s 2009 Intelligent Life blog.
Hough — a Catholic — blogs at The Telegraph, and today he wrote something that caught my eye in his post Why haven’t you written anything about Gosnell?:
I think that without religious faith it is hard to accept a zygote as equivalent in value to a fully formed child. I can understand that a non-religious person is going to see a scale of development in the nine months of pregnancy.
**
To broaden Hough’s discussion a little, I’d like to gently point out that not all religious faiths perceive these matters in the same way. Islam, for instance, has a Qur’anic passage that’s apposite in Sura 20, The Believers, 12-16:
Man We did create from a quintessence (of clay); Then We placed him as (a drop of) sperm in a place of rest, firmly fixed; Then We made the sperm into a clot of congealed blood; then of that clot We made a (foetus) lump; then we made out of that lump bones and clothed the bones with flesh; then we developed out of it another creature. So blessed be Allah, the best to create! After that, at length ye will die Again, on the Day of Judgment, will ye be raised up.
Getting into more detail, we find these ahadith — the first in Bukhari, Chapter 6, The Book of Menstruation, 312:
It is related from Anas ibn Malik that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, “Allah the Mighty and Majestic appoints an angel to every womb who says, ‘O Lord! A sperm drop! O Lord A clot! O Lord! A lump of flesh! ‘ Then if He desires to complete His creation, He does so and the angel asks, ‘Is it to be male or female? Wretched or happy? What is its provision? What is its life-span?’ This is all decreed in the mother’s womb.”
and the second in Bukhari Chapter 63, The Book of the Beginning of Creation, 3036:
It is related that ‘Abdullah said, “The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, who is the truthful confirmed one, said, ‘The way that each of you is created is that you are gathered in your mother’s womb for forty days as a sperm-drop and then for a similar length of time as a blood-clot and then for a similar length of time as a lump of flesh. Then an angel is sent and he breathes the spirit into you and is encharged with four commandments: to write down your provision, your life-span, your actions, and whether you will be wretched or happy.
*
My Sources:
Qur’an 20, in the Yusuf Ali rendition Bukhari, Book of Menstruation 312 the Aisha Bewley translation Bukhari, Book of the Beginning of Creation, 3036 also in the Bewley translation
**
Here Stephen Hough plays Camille Saint-Saëns‘ Piano Concerto 2 in G minor Op. 22 with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo conducting:
blockquote>
April 29th, 2013 at 9:53 pm
Please note: I’d originally posted this under the title, “For the record: religious views of conception” — but changed the title to one that’s more accurate (and avoids that awkward and unintended pun on “record”).
April 29th, 2013 at 11:04 pm
“I think that without religious faith it is hard to accept a zygote as equivalent in value to a fully formed child.”
I can see how a person of religion would say something like that. Not sure what you are getting at.
April 30th, 2013 at 12:26 am
My recollection, dim as it is in matters of religious scripture, is that the Hebrews of the Old Testament did not hold that ” ensoulment” began with conception but during the “quickening” of a woman’s pregnancy
April 30th, 2013 at 12:27 am
Larry:
.
I’m quoting Hough, a Catholic writer, saying “without religious faith it is hard to accept a zygote as equivalent in value to a fully formed child” so as to indicate in response that not all people of religious background see the matter as does the Catholic Catechism, III. 2. 2. 5, which tells us:
and quotes Jeremiah 1.5:
— and also:
I find the differences worth noting.
April 30th, 2013 at 12:57 am
Zen:
Hopefully someone more knowledgeable in Jewish thought can respond properly to your comment, but there are certainly traces of “gradual stages” thinking with respect to the period from conception to birth within Judaism — as suggested by this passage from the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Berakoth 60a:
Interestingly, Thomas Aquinas is quoted in On the Truth of the Catholic Faith, book II, ch. 89,as saying:
There’s more subtlety to the debate than we commonly think — but I’m not the one to research those subtleties in sufficient detail… I just want to point them out as worthy of deeper investigation and wider-spread knowledge.
April 30th, 2013 at 1:54 am
The Catholic view is beautiful, as time it self is suspended before the soul of man.
The Islamic view is eminently practical, as the tough desert conditions the religion incubated in demanded a pragmatic approach, as in there is a time and a place to conceive, when conditions are more conducive to the infant surviving.
I was born into a catholic family, although I am no longer a believer. Abortion still makes me feel uncomfortable.
As does the ambiguous. All my life I’ve tended to absolute solutions, in religious and political thought.
I consider my self a progressive and liberal man, and I fight this reactionary streak, but it seems innate.
I look at you, and see a man delighted by variety, by difference, it shames me.
April 30th, 2013 at 12:48 pm
David, In Psalm 139 seemed to believe he was known in the womb.
April 30th, 2013 at 5:11 pm
RE: “I think that without religious faith it is hard to accept a zygote as equivalent in value to a fully formed child.”
.
What lies at the crux of the question implied in the above is the manner in which values are created and the purpose put to them. [Note: Yes, there is a double entendre in my sentence.]
.
I think a more interesting question — or one that would enhance the entertainment value of any discussion of this matter — would be, “What makes it so easy for one with religious faith to accept a zygote as equivalent in value to a fully formed child?”
.
In any case, I expect the answer to this second question would approximately match the answer some atheist might give who also values a zygote as highly as he values a fully formed human.
April 30th, 2013 at 5:26 pm
Incidentally, I noticed that in my last sentence above that I used “fully formed human” rather than “fully formed child.”
.
This little discrepancy introduces a much broader argument. For instance, why are some humans valued less than children once they reach a certain stage or development in life? Not all tasked with answering that question value adults less than children, of course; but some do, even some who favor capital punishment, war, and so forth. Is this because life has introduced corruption to the pristine Life that is so otherwise valued?
.
Of course, I’m not going to make much of “fully formed” at this point; but I could!
May 2nd, 2013 at 3:41 am
Hi Joey —
Thank you for your insightful comment — I suspect the reason I’ve always worked so hard at poetry, metaphor and associative thinking is that otherwise I’d be painfully literal-minded!