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In reply to the discussion: Carl Sagan the prophet. [View all]idwiyo
(5,113 posts)68. K&R and one more quote.
Neither St. Augustine nor St. Thomas Aquinas considered early-term abortion to be homicide (the latter on the grounds that the embryo doesn't look human). This view was embraced by the Church in the Council of Vienne in 1312, and has never been repudiated. The Catholic Church's first and long-standing collection of canon law (according to the leading historian of the Church's teaching on abortion, John Connery, S.J.) held that abortion was homicide only after the fetus was already "formed"--roughly, the end of the first trimester.
But when sperm cells were examined in the seventeenth century by the first microscopes, they were thought to show a fully formed human being. An old idea of the homunculus was resuscitated--in which within each sperm cell was a fully formed tiny human, within whose testes were innumerable other homunculi, etc., ad infinitum. In part through this misinterpretation of scientific data, in 1869 abortion at any time for any reason became grounds for excommunication. It is surprising to most Catholics and others to discover that the date was not much earlier.
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Sagan is a prime example of the kind of mind and guiding philosophy we should have long ago
TheKentuckian
Sep 2012
#13
You are absolutely correct, and it just as absolutely not going to happen for many
Egalitarian Thug
Sep 2012
#71
One of my favorite books. The reason, though, that he was able to predict it so well is
NYC Liberal
Sep 2012
#19
There are a suprising number of people who believe swearing can cause a lightning strike.
Spitfire of ATJ
Sep 2012
#27
I read that book on exiting the fundamentalist cult that I had been raised in
Schema Thing
Sep 2012
#44