Police officers now considered offensive

[Jon Miller]

She moved from 'safe, legal and rare' to 'save and legal'. There was also a push (at least in the liberal magazines that I read) to ostracise Tim and others for seeing anything wrong with abortion or seeing abortion as anything other than a normal medical procedure to be used for any reason a woman might desire.

Since Hillary moved at the same time as the push from the liberal magazines/etc, I am going to guess they are correlated and she at least wanted to appear as entirely pro-abortion.

JM
(I can think that 'safe, legal and rare' with an emphasis on the 'rare' is the best we can get... 'safe and legal' strongly pushes me away.)

[Kidlicious]

Sin is an issue of faith and not an issue of law? That is the founding principle in the US. And a principle that most of the rest of the world (other than a few Muslim ones) has followed for the last 300 years.

JM
(I am pro life, but that is because I don't see the issue as one of sin but rather of scientifically demonstrable murder. Which is against the law for other reasons than that it is sin.)

But when you vote or run for office as a candidate it is about law. If you don't care about the law then don't vote or make yourself a candidate. It comes down to the question of whether it is better for abortion to be legal or illegal. If you believe that it's a sin because it takes a human life then I don't see how you can vote for it to be legal.

This is what it looks like, you want to pander to both feminists and Christians so that you can get more votes.

[giblets]

She moved from 'safe, legal and rare' to 'save and legal'. There was also a push (at least in the liberal magazines that I read) to ostracise Tim and others for seeing anything wrong with abortion or seeing abortion as anything other than a normal medical procedure to be used for any reason a woman might desire.

Since Hillary moved at the same time as the push from the liberal magazines/etc, I am going to guess they are correlated and she at least wanted to appear as entirely pro-abortion.

JM
(I can think that 'safe, legal and rare' with an emphasis on the 'rare' is the best we can get... 'safe and legal' strongly pushes me away.)

I thought you were only against late term abortions? Which Clinton said she was fine with regulating. I'm confused.

[Kidlicious]

When you separate your faith from your political beliefs then there is no point to anyone voting for you because of your faith. (Honestly you can't separate the two.)

[giblets]

Great, let's stop voting for people based on which version of an ancient storm god they believe in.

[Kidlicious]

There is a general sense which basically is based on how much tradition is a guide and how willing the church is to allow non-traditional views or ones that were heretical.

I can point to a couple of different important points and that can help give a sense.

One of the points is what happens after death. I have recently been reading a scholarly book about this ( https://www.amazon.com/Fire-That-Con.../dp/1504029348 ) which is excellent and I very much recommend. There are three commonly held views, all found in the early church, but Augustine basically defined the view as the traditional hellfire and burning forever. That would be the conservative view, is continued from Augustine to the protestant fathers. But recently there have been groups that don't hold those (Adventists have believed in Conditional Immortality (those who reject God cease to exist while only those who accept God live forever) since their beginning in the 1850s, Universalists have generally became so liberal that they are even hesitant to call themselves Christians but they got their name from holding the other commonly held view of Universalism (that everyone ends up in heaven) and in the last twenty years many members of mainline and evangelical and even charismatic churches have also taken the Conditional Immortality or Universalist views). The other liberal view is to combine other belief systems views (reincarnation/etc) with Christianity's original interpretations (described above).

Another of the points is about Christ. The early church had a number of different opinions, although the leaders (That we have the most papers/etc from) generally held something similar to the traditional view there were some that thought Christ was all God or all Man or became God and Man but started as just a Man. Here for example Jehova Witnesses, Mormons and Adventists all were at least OK with nontraditional views. Adventists officially moved to the traditional view 100 years ago but still could be considered as a liberal (in this area) denomination because there are many members that still hold to Arianism. I think that Mormons and JWs still do not hold to the traditional views of Christ and so should be considered liberal.

I have just hit some of the liberal denominations of the 19th century. Many of the older protestant denominations, and a portion of the Catholics, also have become very liberal.

A third example is about what to consider Christianity from the beginning and not just between Paul and Augustine. My Bible professor from college (a Lutheran Pastor) flat out said he didn't agree with Paul and I think that is fairly common among the liberal side of protestantism (Methodists, Lutherans, Angelicans, Universalists who are still Christian). The liberals disagree with Paul about Christ (is the importance of Christ that He died as an atoning sacrifice or his preaching), about women (Should women be pastors?), about homosexuality and so on. Obviously some of these have overlap with the current political liberal/conservative divide but not all of them.

I don't think abortion plays a role in theologically conservative versus liberal. Adventists have been moving from theological liberal to conservative in the last 100 years.

JM
(A fairly high percentage of pastors in the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden are atheists. They believe that Christ was the first step to atheism and that the end development of the Christian religion in particular is atheism.)

I think one general difference is that conservatives tend to think in terms of good and evil , but liberals tend to think everything is good or that actual evil doesn't exit.

I agree that abortion has no real theological basis, but the difference is believing that it's evil or just something that women decide.

[Kidlicious]

Great, let's stop voting for people based on which version of an ancient storm god they believe in.

You start by not voting for any atheists.

[giblets]

It's not like atheists have any chance of winning elections anyway (unless they lie and claim to worship an ancient storm god).

[Kidlicious]

It's not like atheists have any chance of winning elections anyway (unless they lie and claim to worship an ancient storm god).

I certainly would vote for any liar, especially one that is nuts.

[Jon Miller]

I thought you were only against late term abortions? Which Clinton said she was fine with regulating. I'm confused.

I think that reasonable scientific points are brainwaves or conception (I usually only say brainwaves). I think that a reasonable political point is viability. All points are earlier then the current point in the US (which is late). To my knowledge no Democrat supports banning abortion after viability (where banning means except in cases of medical necessity, to be judged in a similar manner as separating conjoined twins/etc). I still support Democrats but then desire a push to make abortion rare, which was a compromise most Democrats (and many still) found acceptable.

JM
(Actually, one of my problems with Republicans is that they don't seem to really support making abortion rare.)

[Jon Miller]

I think one general difference is that conservatives tend to think in terms of good and evil , but liberals tend to think everything is good or that actual evil doesn't exit.

I agree that abortion has no real theological basis, but the difference is believing that it's evil or just something that women decide.

Some theological liberals (and to be clear, only some political liberals).

JM
(We have actually seen recently that more political liberals believe in good/evil then one might have previously supposed, just that their good is LBGTQ? rights and so on.)

[Kidlicious]

Some theological liberals (and to be clear, only some political liberals).

JM
(We have actually seen recently that more political liberals believe in good/evil then one might have previously supposed, just that their good is LBGTQ? rights and so on.)

That's where they say conservatives aren't Christians. But from my experience they tend to otherwise have a tendency to not believe in Satan etc...