3. The Sanctity of Life

"I have always been against abortion; it's not possible for me in my own concept of Christ to believe that Jesus would favor abortion." - J Carter

"What part of "my body, my business" does your invisible friend not understand?" - S Noma

Presumably the part where you assume "my body" equals "my life". From a religious perspective life can be seen as flowing due to ongoing grace from the divine.

Think of the metaphor of a self-replicating machine that is initially designed and then set in motion by an external inventor, however that is fed energy from an external source during it's operational life. If the machine does what it is intended to and a new machine is constructed in it's replication module, and that new machine is connected to the external energy source, then disconnecting this new machine is not just about the host machine but is also an interaction with the external energy provider. There are three parties involved, not two (host and client) and definitely not just one (host).

If the connection is only for feeding energy into the system, then all you are taking from the divine is an outlet. If the connection also provides something in return, e.g. information in the form of experiential sensations, which incidentally also becomes a much more interesting basis for discussion of the 'why are we here' question, then you are affecting that source in a different and more important way.

At the moment we can't show technologically whether such a connection exists or is two way. In my experience through meditation it does.

You can assume that religions started only to control the masses, in which case they weren't based on mystic experience, or you can assume that they were based on such experiences and that the teachings are based on a deeper understanding, and that most people just haven't put the work in to reach those states themselves. The early and more introspective sacred texts seem to imply that meditation and mystic experience was key to religion's origins.

You can also take the move by the religious from broader issues to that of the origin of life as a clever retreat to 'those bits which science hasn't definitively shown yet', or you can take science's pursuit towards explaining abiogenesis as closing in on a key mystery. Some religious people have no problem with that.

I can't make a statement on abortion in general, either for or against. Everyone's life, and that includes the mothers, is unique. However I think that the way in which we understand the divine should have an impact on how we would make such a decision. If the divine isn't involved in questions of life and death, where is it relevant? And speaking purely from my own experiences, I think an important thing is to clarify the experience of life before we commit to a viewpoint of materialism.