No one either can or will address this issue?:
1. If the spirit joins the fetus at the point of conception then isn't all abortion murder?
2. If the spirit doesn't join the body until birth then isn't all abortion irrelevant?
The only thing I am taught for sure is that we all lived in the "Spirit World" before life on earth.

please demonstrate the spirit exists at all at any point, and then we can consider your other questions.

Like many other concepts of any religion it appears this can't be proved.
Don't I have to go on the basis of faith.
Can you help those who do believe in this existence by now considering issues 1 and 2?

If you are going on the basis of faith then you can choose anything you want to be true. Pick option 1. Pick option 2.
Anything you want to be true can be true with faith!

Un-knowable. No one can address it so no one should. Doesn't stop them though and they are sure they are right.

If there were a spirit world for god's billions of children it would be the equivalent of a fish hatchery. Farmed spirits. I like to think I was "wild caught".

And this spirit "war in heaven" thing is just too absurd to even fathom. Every story needs a good guy and bad guy to be viable and the ancient story tellers figured that out right from the beginning. It's Lucifer that makes the Bible stories work, not Jesus.

People have different beliefs about that, including if a spirit exists at all.

Here is an interesting discussion of various Jewish beliefs on this matter. There is a wide range of opinion even in their faith system.

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/5678558/jewish/When-Does-the-Soul-Enter-the-Body.htm

If you think about infant mortality rates through history,

and

you think about the doctrine of salvation for children under 8

(The King Follet Discourse is the source of the infants on thrones of glory statement) There will be many billions more guaranteed celestial glory through early death than will ever have lived to adulthood.

God is the greatest abortionist ever. 3/4 of conceptions do not achieve term just through natural losses without humans getting involved in abortion.

There must be a divine reason.

I was taught one third of pregnancies are spontaneously aborted, but whatever the number, it's a huge amount.

My mother had an ectopic pregnancy that had to be aborted in order to save her life. But I suppose the religious whack-a-doodles would have denied her that.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1970983/

73% fail in first 6 weeks, the rest later

So not one third. There goes my hypothesis that the War in Heaven is a metaphor for zygote development.

Benji123, you make a good point. It is a good gotcha question for the churches that are trying to pretend they know when some invisible spirit is supposed to zip into someone's uterus.

(I wonder if the zygote's spirit says hi to the mom's spirit. LOL)

If they are making stuff up about a spirit world, it's no surprise they would have pretzel logic about abortions too.

I like how the church says people are punished for their own sins, and not the sins of their father. Then, they had to ignore that and say abortion is OK if due to a rape or incest (definitely a sin of the father).

I don't think many here are likely to respond to your demand to answer your question seriously. If part of your premise involves made up stuff, it's all hypothetical gymnastics. Anyone can make up stuff "that can't be proved."

It's like asking if all Forest Fairies have pink hair or if some of them are blonds.

ka-Ching!

Brigham Young taught that when a baby kicks that is a sign the spirit entered the body.

Not sure about today, but in the past, the church did not consider still born infants to have been alive as the never drew breath.

Thus still born children could be placed on genealogy sheets, but no sealing was ever done for them.

Therefore, Heartless, following Brigham Young's teaching so you proclaim, abortion of the fetus is just fine and of no consequence.

But see 3Ne. 1:13-14.

Was Jesus talking from Mary's uterus?

Or was it Harry Potter talking from the womb under the stairs?

I Agree with everyone here. Even since leaving, my views have changed (somewhat) on birth. I was a preemie, and I was born relatively early when kids were not supposed to be born, because of lack of health equipment.

My opinion, is that of the church, the spirit enters the body upon first breath. Of course, it can't be proven.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/22/2025 11:21AM by lousyleper.

Here's an interesting addition to the topic at hand.

Laminin. The cross-shaped molecule that is essential for life, because it is what holds the body together. Without it, you cannot exist.

Is there a Lemuelin?

As far as I am concerned, it's all unproven except for the glycoproteins that stuck all cells together. Like glue.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/22/2025 12:52PM by lousyleper.

As far as science can tell, there’s no Lemuelin, nephilin, or even a lehilin. Try saying all three of those names quickly! :)

>> 1. If the spirit joins the fetus at the point of conception then isn't all abortion murder?

>>2. If the spirit doesn't join the body until birth then isn't all abortion irrelevant?

Abortion has nothing to do with a spirit...whatever that may be.

It has to do with when life begins. Religious folks like to say that life starts at conception. Lets see what their favorite books says shall we?

Genesis 2:7

"The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being"

So, first god created Adams body, at that point Adam wasn't "alive".

Then god breaths into Adams nose and he becomes alive....I hope god didn't have bad breath!

Seems pretty clear to me.... If you take gods word for it, humans are only alive when they start breathing. If god would have decided to scrap his plan of creating humans, he could have just left Adams body in dust he created it from and he wouldn't have "killed" Adam because Adam was not alive at that point.

Same for abortions IMO.

So did Adam once reside in this spirit world?

Sure, until he quit drinking.

In Old Testament times, if you beat up a woman and she dies, you are sentenced to death.

If she survives, you pay a fine.

If she is pregnant, and the fetus inside her dies, you pay a fine. Whether the fetus is 1 or 9 months, it doesn’t specify.

Does this help with your question?

To maxmonson
No, not one bit. You need to reread my first post.

"The only thing I am taught for sure is that we all lived in the "Spirit World" before life on earth."

I was taught that Santa delivered presents in a flying sleigh pulled by flying reindeer.

Isn't being taught your problem? What if someone else from teaches you something different? The answers are inside you, so look there.

Suppose you reframe the question in terms of reincarnation. It's a remapping of the same story from linear time to cyclical time.

The legalistic distinction between abortion and murder is academic in a culture that pays lip service to human rights but treats its humans worse than animals.

Do you think there were meetings in the Pre-Existence?

When your time was coming did you have a Farewell meeting - like Missionary farewells?

If do, did the audience sit on chairs, stand or float around?

Probably there were assignments to set up chairs and the women had to bring refreshments like angel cake.

When I was active, I taught an EQ meeting from one of the prophets manuals of that time. It was one the early prophets, probably number 4 or 5. But he said, and the manual quoted him that the next life is just like this life.

So yes, celestial mormons will still set up and take down chairs. And teach repetitive lessons.

Kind of sorry I ever asked this question.
Apparently you ex's are of no help. Never had the nerve to ever bring up this topic with the brethren. Of course the brethren must have hoped it would never come up either.
Guess I'll look for a sight with more TBMs.
Thanks for your efforts.

Never goes well when you already have an answer in mind that you want to hear. Most of us like to be surprised with new things to consider.

I thought a number of the posts were helpful.

You have a lot of assumptions on the topic that you hold on to.

You can't justify those assumptions. You accept them on faith.

The soul/spirit is an assumption with no actual supporting evidence. Sure, there are lots of stories that people impute to mean a soul, but those too are packed with assumptions that their faith leads them to interpret the event as a soul. But stories like that aren't evidence.

You want us to construct a doctrinal argument to support one or the other based on assumptions we don't share.

Hinkley said we don't know when the soul enters the body. So we err on the side of caution. Does that satisfy your reasoning? That's as doctrinal as it gets on the topic.

Your question, Benji123, is naive. You are looking for doctrine in a church that has none.

The Bible says spirit/life was breathed into the body at birth, but in Jeremiah God says he knew the eventual prophet in the womb, implying that an embryo is a spiritual as well as physical entity. The scripture can be read as supporting either position.

The LDS church had no stance on abortion until the late 1930s. Since then it has had a "doctrine" based on the same scriptures that previously supported no doctrine.

You can bring up any argument you want with church leaders and none of it will matter at all. You are to do what the church tells you to do and not worry your pretty little head about doctrine.

That's why at least some of us did not engage. Where there is no doctrine other than obedience to the teachings of the moment, there is no purpose in arguing about how many angels fit on the head of a needle.

They won't even engage on your topic.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/28/2025 03:10PM by Lot's Wife.

The problem Benji is that your question has either no answer or many, many answers.

If you are looking for an answer based on objective evidence, there is no answer. If you are looking for answers based on belief or opinion, there are many, many answers.

Even limiting the question just to mormonism has the same problem.

If you are looking for the official church position, they don't have one. If you are looking for the opinions of individual mormons, you will get many, many different answers.

>>>Apparently you ex's are of no help.

Were we supposed to make up something specific that you had in mind?
If you already have your answer, why ask here?

Shrug

"Your question, Benji123, is naive."

Those are the best kind. Asking metaphysical questions here is like asking about chastity at a strip club.

The original post came across to me as a text Rorschach inkblot. You can answer it any way you want.

His question failed to elicit the response he sought and he was disappointed by that. Is it not presumptuous of you to tell him he is wrong to feel let down?

And yes, your metaphysical queries are indeed like a strip club. You want to discuss the color of the overalls you insist the pole dancers are wearing and everyone else just rolls their eyes.

But by all means, keep doing your truth.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/28/2025 06:25PM by Lot's Wife.

Another thing to consider, as possible evidence that the spirit enters the baby at birth, is post-partum psychosis which affects 0.1% of mothers.

Suppose psychosis is a form of demonic possession. At birth, maybe an interdimensional portal opens along with the birth canal, allowing the spirit to enter the baby. You could get an interloping demon along for the ride, sneaking into mama and causing all kinds of havoc.

I may be spreading my jam a bit thin on this one, but for the sufficiently open-minded or Mormonly credulous, it just might do.

Ah, unicorns on top of unicorns.

I see possibilities here. Perhaps strobe lights that trigger seizures are really portals to the underworld. This could develop into a pretty good side hustle for Father Damien.

Just keep your unicorns away from my Fairies! They always pester them to go out for a ride. Just give them some purple carrots and they will settle right down.