Religious explanation for spontaneous abortion?

robindch

...just out of interest, does anybody have any religious explanations for why spontaneous abortions occur, or why a perfect god would design a system which seems to fail so regularly? Spontaneous abortions, btw, happen for a variety of biological reasons, and account for around half of all fertilizations:

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001488.htm
http://www.5mcc.com/Assets/SUMMARY/TP0001.html

samb

that's a lot of souls in limbo, how cruel

Excelsior

I am glad you brought this up. It is one of the pressing reasons people give me for not believing in God.

Seriously though, I think that the same question is expressed differently in the various forms of "How can a good God let...?" It is a theodicy problem where the solution is to be found in the Christian concept of the Fall. (that concept you seem to hate the most Robin)

robindch

> I am glad you brought this up. It is one of the pressing reasons
> people give me for not believing in God.

Hardly!

> I think that the same question is expressed differently...

Erm...

> ...in the various forms of "How can a good God let...?"

...I asked this question because it's precisely not a question of "a good god letting" something happen, but one of a god (allegedly) creating, or allowing-to-be-created, something with a frightful design flaw and a consequent 50% failure rate. I picked this because it seems to indicate that god is a trifle inconsistent in applying his "infinite love" for "his" creations.

> the solution is to be found in the Christian concept of the Fall

Which states, roughly, that we were once perfect, but became imperfect upon this world, prior to a later exit back to the perfect world again -- how wonderfully Platonic! -- and one manifestation of this worldly imperfection is a 50% natural abortion rate.

Doesn't it strike you as being a rather tenuous post-hoc rationalization?

Excelsior

Not at all. In deed, it only becomes a problem if you think that fertilized eggs are more than a clump of cells. Something that would be difficult to argue if you did not believe in a Creator infusing them with "LIFE"!

Does it not seem a little like atheistic proselytising (sp?) for you to create these dilemmas to which you don't hold?

I don't see how you can argue that the Christian God letting a tsunami wipe out 200000 people poses a different problem to the Christian God creating humans through a process that sees up to 50% of pregnancies falter. Did this conception of God not know when he set the world in motion that the outcome would include devastating tsunamis?

He allows both but causes neither. Google DA Carson and his articulate expression of the asymmetrical nature of evil.

robindch

> I don't see how you can argue that the Christian God letting
> a tsunami wipe out 200000 people poses a different problem
> to the Christian God creating humans through a process that
> sees up to 50% of pregnancies falter.

A fair point, but one which then begs some reasonable response to the concept of predestination; the choice above was made purely to reflect an internal threat to life, indicating both god's faulty design and his inconsiderate nature.

> Does it not seem a little like atheistic proselytising (sp?) for you
> to create these dilemmas to which you don't hold?

They're not dilemmas, for me at least, but things which look (to me) like fairly clear and simple cases in which god acts contrary to the way in which religious people say that he acts. It's the contradiction which I'm seeking to have addressed.

> He allows both but causes neither.

So if he doesn't cause this, then what does he cause? Where does nature stop and god take over the running of things? Or do do you believe that he set the universe in motion, then retired to a viewing platform?

> DA Carson and his articulate expression of the asymmetrical nature of evil.

Do you have any links? A quick google doesn't turn up anything likely looking.

athena 2000

robindch wrote:

> DA Carson and his articulate expression of the asymmetrical nature of evil.

Do you have any links? A quick google doesn't turn up anything likely looking.

To help move the discussion along...

Carson helps explain how the doctrine of God's sovereignty, as understood in the Reformed, monergistic tradition, is compatible with his holy character and the blameworthiness of moral agents who commit evil that falls within the scope of his plan:

”God does not stand behind good and evil in exactly the same way. There are two positions to avoid: (1) Some suppose that God does not stand in any sense behind evil and (2) others think that God stands behind good and evil in exactly the same way.

In the first case, the thinking is that certain things take place in the universe, namely, every evil event, that are entirely outside God's control. That would mean there is another power, apart from God and outside the domain of God's sovereignty, that challenges him. In philosophy, such a viewpoint is called dualism. In such a universe, it is hard to be sure which side, good or evil, will ultimately win. We have already taken notice of enough texts to be certain that the Bible does not sanction this view of God.

The second view maintains that what God ordains takes place, what he does not ordain does not take place. If both good and evil take place, it can only be because God ordains them both. But if he stands behind good and evil in exactly the same way, that is, if he stands behind them symmetrically, he is entirely amoral. He may be powerful, but he is not good.

The Bible's witness will not let us accept either of these positions. The Bible insists God is sovereign, so sovereign that nothing that takes place in the universe can escape the outermost boundary of his control; yet the Bible insists that God is good, unreservedly good, the very standard of goodness. We are driven to conclude that God does not stand behind good and evil in exactly the same way. In other words, he stands behind good and evil asymmetrically. He stands behind good in such a way that the good can ultimately be credited to him; he stands behind evil in such a way that what is evil is inevitably credited to secondary agents and all their malignant effects. They cannot escape his sway, in exactly the same way that Satan has no power over Job without God's sanction; yet God remains mysteriously distant from the evil itself.”

- Excerpt from Dr. D.A. Carson’s A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers, p. 158.

[Thanks to A. O’Kelley’s blog for the excerpt ]


Links of interest:

http://www.tiu.edu/people/faculty/carson.htm

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week845/interview2.html

An MP3 lecture (not free, unfortunately)
Suffering and Evil: Christian Reflections After a Tsunami

samb

So who created evil and the devil.

The Bible insists God is sovereign, so sovereign that nothing that takes place in the universe can escape the outermost boundary of his control

........and why?