Tony Miano is a bombastic, arrogant street evangelist associated with John MacArthur and Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California. Miano’s direct oversight pastors are Mike Riccardi and a former friend of mine, Phil Johnson . Miano, a retired police officer and best buds with Ray Comfort, believes God has called him to be an open- air evangelist and itinerant preacher. A hardcore Calvinist, Miano makes no bones about the fact he considers the Arminianism preached in many Evangelical churches to be a false gospel. Miano, like his pastors John MacArthur and Ray Comfort, thinks he has the corner on the truth market. Those who believe differently are ignorant, poorly taught, or wicked, vile, unregenerate, reprobate atheists such as myself.
Last week, Miano took a group of 20 students from MacArthur’s The Master’s College to “minister” to women at Family Planning Associates in Mission Hills, California, a women’s health facility that performs abortions. Miano calls his abortuary work a ‘ministry of presence’. That’s right, a ministry of presence. In truth, it is a ministry of harassment, a ministry of forcing one’s religious beliefs on another. Miano, hoping to corrupt the minds of another generation of young Evangelicals, spent the day training The Master’s College students in the fine art of harassing women who came to the Family Planning Associates (FPA) for service and care. Here’s what Miano had to say:
The Lord has allowed a wonderful team of Christian men and women to form and to engage in loving people in action and truth, outside the Family Planning Associates abortuary, in Mission Hills, CA. Today the team and I were blessed beyond words to be joined by more than 20 students from The Master’s College.
This group of young adults was exceptional. Mature; submissive; teachable; respectful; servant-minded–and the list goes on. The students held signs and prayed. They effectively engaged in a ministry of presence.
A number of students, as well as regular members of the team, testified at the end of the morning of seeing people in cars, fitting the profile of those seeking to abort a child, making repeated passes by the abortuary, but never entering the parking lot. While tragically babies were murdered at the abortuary this morning, we left confident that the Lord used us to turn several abortive parents away–allowing unborn children to live for at least another day.
Note carefully what Miano said: the students were submissive, respectful, and teachable, Evangelical lingo for easily persuadable. Force-fed the pro-life lie and anti-Planned Parenthood talking points, these students were perfect candidates for Miano’s abortuary ministry. The students were taught by Miano the fine art of profiling a woman seeking an abortion and, applying their learning, succeeded in turning women away from getting needed health care. While Miano calls this a ministry of presence, it really is a legal means of harassing women under the guise of doing the Lord’s work. While Miano can report to his supporters that several babies got to live another day, numerous women turned away from FPA out of fear, not wanting to be accosted by the religious crazies in front of the facility.
Only in America do we allow fundamentalist religious zealots to stand between patients and their doctors when receiving medical care. Pro-life groups have carved out special legal exceptions that allow them to harass women and doctors, the same legal exceptions used by Westboro Baptist Church to harass the families of fallen soldiers. Whatever a person might believe about abortion, a woman should have the right to seek medical care without being harassed by God’s appointed agents of righteousness. If a person thinks abortion is murder, fine don’t have an abortion, but don’t impede those who think differently. Unfortunately, while abortion through the second trimester is still legal in every state, Republicans and Christian fundamentalists have worked to enact state laws that have made it increasingly hard to get an abortion, while at the same time refusing to support methods and practices that would drastically reduce the need for abortion. They will not rest until Roe v. Wade is overturned and women are once again forced to seek out illegal abortions. For those of us who think every woman has a right to control her own body and have an abortion if she desires one, we must continue to push back at laws and regulations that we know will only result in increased suffering and death.
People like Miano aren’t really as interested in saving life as much they are interested in being right. For pro-life Evangelicals, the most important issue is what the Bible supposedly says about life, death, and abortion and making sure that everyone, Evangelical or not, is forced to play by their interpretation of an ancient religious text written by unknown authors thousands of years ago. In what other medical realm do we allow such a text to hold weight? Its antiquity alone invalidates its message and medical worth. Since 88% of all abortions occur within the first trimester and 98.8% of abortions occur before viability, the issue is not really about the life of fetus as much as it is the continued attempt to control women and their reproduction. I wish more Americans would understand that the difference between zealots like Tony Miano and the Muslim fundamentalist in the Middle East is quite small. While in many places the Muslim has the force of the law and is able to regulate everything from what a woman wears to when she can and can’t have sex, the Mianos of the Christian world lack the force of law to compel women to live according to their puritanical laws and regulations. They continue to chip at the edges of the establishment clause and the separation of church and state, but make no mistake about it they’ll not rest until the Christian flag flies over the White House. This is why we must continue to expose, fight, and push back. We must not rest until people understand that freedom of religion also means the freedom FROM religion, and a woman seeking an abortion has every right not to be harassed by a fundamentalist Christian abortuary ministry team and students from a fundamentalist Christian college. Perhaps, it is time to recognize that the first amendment needs some tweaking; that just like a person can’t shout FIRE in a crowded theater, neither should religious zealots be permitted to harass women seeking out medical care.
You can read my thoughts on abortion:
Abortion Facts, Lies, and Contradictions
25 Questions for Those Who Say Abortion is Murder
A Few Thoughts on Abortion and The Planned Parenthood Videos
I’ve written about Miano previously when he sent out the following tweet after the Nepal earthquake:
See Tony Miano Rejoices Over Earthquake in Nepal
121615
[signoff]
Were there no escorts? I didn’t follow the link — I didn’t want to give the jerk a page hit. Of course, even with escorts, some women are intimidated, and I don’t blame them. First trimester abortion is an easy decision for some; they can’t deal with being pregnant or having a child for reasons that are very clear to them. For others, it is a difficult decision. Perhaps needs conflict with desires, or their lives are already full of other people who don’t respect their boundaries and their right to control their own reproduction. Imagine a long, difficult path to deciding on abortion, you go to a clinic, and these goons are there! Gah.
Imagine being a woman with a very complicated medical history from a rare genetic disorder. Her doctors have told her not to get pregnant under any circumstances, due to an excellent chance of becoming more disabled than she already is, or of dying. She is raped, and becomes pregnant…imagine having to walk through a gauntlet of people who think they know better than she and her doctors what medical decisions she should make, and she is there to end the pregnancy so that it doesn’t kill her…I have never been raped, but I could have been. I lived in terror of that possibility for years. Between religious influences and then medical circumstances, I have never been sexually active otherwise; any “love life” I might have had died before birth…Some of them, and their numbers are increasing, believe I should carry that pregnancy even if it kills me…after all, THEY won’t be doing the dying…coming to that realization helped me to understand why I could no longer be anti-choice. I will never understand why these people find a need to mind other peoples’ business the way they do. Our city, for some reason attracts Flip Benham and Rusty Thomas’ goons, and when they were in town in 2011, they picketed the UU church of which I am a member. THAT is suppose to drive people screaming into the arms of Jesus??? We have some cool and very brave escorts here locally…
What actual “harassment” took place? Surely the self-confessed “wicked, vile, unregenerate, reprobate atheist” who wrote this pience doesn’t actually believe that all this standing around and “praying” silently to what he thinks of as an imaginary being, actually interfered in any active way with anybody else. So, if not this, then what interference, or harassment was there? Standing still, in public, saying nothing? Who in his or her right mind would find that harassing?
This wasn’t even a protest against the abortion industry, though if it had been, it is hard to imagine a better location for such a protest than near one of the industry’s retail outlets.
Abortion is as elitist as Calvinism, and opposing it is as egalitarian as Arminianism. There aren’t “elect” foetal humans who are equal with their parents, and “non-elect” foetal humans whom their mothers are morally entitled to predestine to destruction, without blame. The apostle Paul’s potter and clay analogy doesn’t work, either for those who interpret it as Tony Miano does, coming up with Calvin’s TULIP systematic theology, or for the maternal supremacists who apply it to mothers with murder in their hearts, and those who exploit their fear and self-centredness.
Evidently, you’ve never seen Miano at work. They were doing more than praying. While the article is sparse on detail, the group totaled 40, they were holding signs, preaching, and they were individually accosting people attempting to access the medical facility.
Go to Miano’s website and view the videos attached to the post. Listen to Miano’s lies, pay careful attention to what is going on, and ask yourself in what world is what they are doing NOT harassment. Miano’s goal is to impede, and as the article makes clear he succeeded.
“Listen to Miano’s lies”
How will listening to lies get me truthful answers to my questions?
What is Miano’s website?
Not sure what your point is. His site is referenced several times in my post. Seek and ye shall find.
I’d better have a look at Miano’s website.
My point is that mere presence isn’t harassment, and, as you said, the article was sparse on details.
I suppose you’d be fine with a group of people outside of your doctor’s office the next time you need to see a cardiologist. Would like them showing signs that you should have worked out more or had a better diet?
Sorry, but women should NOT be harassed by ANYONE for needing health care. You use of language indicates to me that you are one of those non-uterus owners who thinks he can dictate to the uterus owners how to operate and care for said organ. Reproductive health is NOT the business of anyone but the woman and those she chooses to involve.
What guys like Miano and MacArthur want to do is have the church control a woman’s sexuality. This is what’s wrong with the “pro-life” movement, it’s totally about control of women. One can see that in the continued attack on Planned Parenthood, comprehensive sex education programs and contraception.
You are exactly on target. The uterus belongs to the uterus owner. She should be making decisions on how to use it based on her physical and mental health, the needs of her existing family, etc. Her decision belongs to her with help from her doctor, and nobody else.
In the same vein, what the uterus owner does to prevent pregnancy in the first place is also her business. Too many “pro-life” people are opposed to birth control, which is so totally out of line as to make me want to whack them all upside the head hard with my cane; it was Kipling who suggested a small hole might let in some wisdom. Her body. Her business. Keep your noses out of it. You think it’s a sin, don’t use it. Full stop.
People often make that value judgment, but they don’t seem able to explain why without appealing to primitive superstitions about some mythical ensoulment, or enpersonment, event, in the life of a human. Would you like to be the first to try?
You wrote, “I wish more Americans would understand that the difference between zealots like Tony Miano and the Muslim fundamentalist in the Middle East is quite small…the Miano’s of the Christian world lack the force of law to compel women to live according to their puritanical laws and regulations. They continue to chip at the edges..”
That’s for sure. Part of the reason is that both Calvinists and Muslims are hard determinists. And neither hold to strong separation of church and state. (I know there are exceptions, but usually those Calvinists and Muslims aren’t orthodox ones.)
I don’t even actually understand why Calvinists such as MacArthur, Miano, etc. even oppose abortion since they think every infant at conception is evil. And, besides, since they think that every single human action has been foreordained, well, then so have the millions of abortions been planned by God.
So again we agree.:-) Well, not completely. I think abortion-on-demand is wrong. Abortion ought to be for therapeutic reasons and only between a doctor and the woman.
Don’t understand why Calvinists oppose abortion? Oh well, never mind. It was bound to happen.
Hi John,
I’ve had a quick look at at a couple of your websites. You are an evangelical Christian who is opposed to abortion. I am not sure whether you oppose abortion under all circumstances are whether you allow abortion in some circumstances such as the mother’s life being at risk or when a woman is raped and chooses to abort the unborn fetus.
Do you believe in political action to eliminate abortion or not? Do you believe in the right of women to have an abortion should they so choose, but simply want women to choose voluntarily not to abort, so as to reduce the number of abortions, or not?
Do you accept that compassion should be our guide in these matters and the women’s right to choose to abort or nor is their business (possibly in conjunction with their partner, if they have one and after consultation with their doctor on the possible health risks,if any )and not the business of politics?
How is your action to oppose abortion different from this preacher, or from those Christians who favour the application of God’s law?
Shalom,
John Arthur
Hi John
To some extent, I do not think that Christianity is particularly helpful in informing society’s consensus (when society has consensus) about what behaviours are right and which are wrong. Christianity, rather, asserts that right and wrong are important, encouraging us to use our reason to work that out.
An exception to this is the “golden rule” found in many different faiths, and expressed in the second great commandment of Christianity (and Judaism), to love one’s neighbour as oneself, and in the thought experiment used by those who don’t want to use ethical montheism even as a thought experiment, the veil of ignorance in the original position. This equality of love (or “compassion”) leads to the principle of equality and therefore non-discrimination that underpins much of the world’s modern jurisprudence. Abortion is simply not an egalitarian practice. It is an extreme example of elitism. To paraphrase Orwell in Animal Farm, all humans are equal, but mothers are held to be “more equal” than their foetuses. Abortion is the most extreme example of age discrimination imaginable.
The best arguments for a public policy (necessarily arrived at with the help of politicians) against abortion are secular arguments based upon the equality principle, whereas the arguments for making abortion a private decision of the victim’s mother alone tend to invoke the religious, superstitious, metaphysical, dualistic doctrine of ensoulment that is found in many different worldviews, both theistic and atheistic, but which have played little or no part in Christian thought for the past two thousand years, and none at all in scientific thought, because ensoulment is not a scientific hypothesis, or the postulated process of ensoulment observable in a laboratory.
The ancient and non-scientific ensoulment doctrine that pro-choicers have revived in modern times, asserts that certain humans, namely those in the womb of less than an arbitrary number of weeks gestation, have not yet acquired a “soul”, because the acquisition of a soul is an event that only only happens to humans when they are a few weeks older than when they are typically killed in abortions. The argument for abortion based upon the doctrine of ensoulment tends to be disguised, by paraphrasing the word “soul”, with the word “person”, so that the myth peddled by pro-choice advocates is (I suppose) enpersonment rather than ensoulment, but it is no less mumbo jumbo to my ears for this nomenclature change.
I hope that this helps you to understand my position. It is that the entire ensoulment doctrine, with which admittedly Solomon flirts in one verse in Ecclesiates, is suspect. There is nothing exceptional about a foetus that justifies a “uterus-owner’s” privilege, to commission his or her homicide, any more than anybody else has the privilege to decide to put to death an older innocent fellow human.
There are Utilitarian arguments for abortion solely to save a mother’s life, which is usually only a theoretical necessity in a thought experiment, rather than an everyday, real-life scenario. Those Utilitarian do not apply to children conceived as a result of non-consensual sex. Abortion of such children does more harm to them than letting them live is ever likely to do to their once raped mothers.
John
Hi John,
Thanks for your detailed response. I am baffled by your claim that pro-choicers have revived the ancient doctrine of ensoulment. i don’t know of any pro-choicers that believe that a fetus is a ‘soul’, though there might be some. Atheists don’t believe in ‘souls’.
Nor can I cannot fathom how a pro-choice position is logically based on the doctrine of ‘ensoulment’. Sure, some people may claim that the soul exists and that a fetus in the early stages of pregnancy does not yet have a ‘soul’ so that early termination is not murder. Such people are usually religious.
If a fetus, in its early stages, is not fully human but only potentially human, there may be parallels with the ‘ensoulment’ doctrine, but that seems hardly an endorsement of such a doctrine. The basis of the argument seems to be different.
Could you clarify your view more, as I am baffled by it. I am not sure if I have understood you properly and don’t want to misrepresent your views?
Shalom,
John Arthur
@ John Arthur
The doctrine that the foetus is “not fully human”, but only “potentially human”, is just the doctrine of ensoulment paraphrased for modern ears. It is a dualistic doctrine. The transition from mere potential humanity to full (or, more accurately, actual) humanity is none other than the mythical transition from foetus without a soul to foetus with a soul. There is no such scientifically observable or measurable transition. The potential to actual transition you teach is just your empty doctrine, without any basis in hard, biological science. It is your mumbo jumbo of choice.
Link deleted
I imagine getting an abortion is a tough choice already, so being harassed about it must not make things any easier for these women. It’s definitely all about control over womsn, just read the Bible! It’s all over the place: wives are to always be submissive. Unfortunately, it has taken a long time for women to finally get the influence and equality they deserve. Now they have to deal with these guys trying to take away their freedom of choice.
They can call it LOVE all they want, but if they really loved these women and the unborn, they would let it happen. At least then the little ones would be guaranteed a spot in heaven and they’d never have to worry about going to hell, right?
Imagine the fun you could have with the protesters if you were going in to get a pap smear or something.
(Protestor:) Don’t kill your baaaaybee!
(Patient:)Nah the sonogram showed blue eyes, and also a girl–ICK.
(Protestor:) But Jesus thinks it’s M-M-MURDER!
(Patient:) Well I’m a moderate on abortion, it’s ok as long as the fetus is baptized afterwards.
” There is nothing exceptional about a foetus that justifies a “uterus-owner’s” privilege, to commission his or her homicide, any more than anybody else has the privilege to decide to put to death an older innocent fellow human.”
JohnAllmanUK, a uterus-owner (you asshole-owner) is a human being capable of hosting a sperm and egg from the most minute original cells joining, to full-term birth. You will never be a uterus-owner and your pronouncements on owners is not your business. If an owner of a uterus believes that the cells being hosted are not a person and have not had the royal insertion of a soul, then stopping the progress of that growth in their bodies is not your business, regardless your FEELINGS. What this matter has to do with murdering the elderly escapes me. Are you buzzing around the issue of assisted-suicide?
To echo a thought of John Donne’s in his poem, “No man is an island”, the killing of my fellow humans is my business, whether I have a uterus or not. I used to be a foetus myself (or, as you put it, a “growth”). So were seven sons and daughters of mine when they were younger. All eight of us were as human then as you are or I am now, in any worldview that isn’t based upon mumbo jumbo.
The wrongness of abortion isn’t about anybody’s “feelings”, least of all mine. Anybody can work out *intellectually*, without whipping up any emotion at all, that abortion must be wrong for the same reason that murder is wrong, other than in extremis, simply by acquainting themselves with the indisputable scientific facts of the matter, and applying just about any ethical thought experiment ever suggested, for working out right from wrong, to the known facts.
Wearing the vale of ignorance, in the original position, I am as much a foetus as I am a grandfather of eight. Ask not for whom the bell tolls when another foetus is homicided. It tolls for thee. That is humane egalitarianism. Your rant is inhumane elitism. It is nothing less than maternal supremacism. You can assert that cock-eyed value judgment till you’re blue in the face. You haven’t got a rational argument for it. You will never be able to craft one that cannot be dismantled immediately. Nobody else has succeeded. Instead, pro-choicers report to verbally abusing pro-lifers, because they haven’t got any real arguments for their blood-thirsty aspiration that the abortion industry should carry on killing small humans, without being brought to justice.
Prove me wrong, if you can. (You can’t.)
Wow John, I’m so glad you’ve provided an unassailable argument against abortion. *sigh*
As an atheist, I don’t think humans have a soul or a spirit, so there goes that argument.
Since 88% of abortions occur in the first trimester, are you saying that women who have an abortion during this time frame are murderers? If they have an abortion should they be prosecuted for murder? If yes, then should the doctor, nurse, and anyone else who helped facilitate the abortion be prosecuted?
Hang on, Bruce, you’ve misstated my position, as though to make out that my argument depends upon my having a dualistic belief that I’ve explicitly rejected, in humans “having” a “soul” or a “spirit”. But I make no such claim. I’m not the one who is invoking the doctrine of ensoulment in the first place. I don’t need to.
I am not saying that the basic argument from equality is “unassailable” either. I am saying that everybody that I’ve come across who has ever argued for making an exception when the victims are foetuses, to the general prohibition on killing innocent humans avoidably, atheists included, has resorted to appeals to the doctrine of ensoulment in their arguments.
If you don’t believe in souls, then you cannot be using that false argument, to exempt foetuses from the protection that others enjoy from being homicided.
The legal position in the UK is that homicide other than in a legal abortion is charged as “child destruction” when the victim is a foetus, rather than as “murder”, even if the mens rea of murder is present. I don’t have any problem with our practice of using different names on the indictment, for the homicides of foetuses and of humans who have started to breath using their lungs, rather than via placentae.
I’m trying to avoid using the emotive language that you are inviting me to use, “saying that women … are murderers”, as you invited me to say. Keeping it neutral, an abortion is one type of homicide, because it kills a human. I don’t see that it’s unpleasant trolling to ask why this type of homicide isn’t a criminal offence, *especially* if humans haven’t got “souls” or “spirits” as you believe.
What I am trying to do is cut through your excessive verbiage and get down to the core issues. If you believe abortion=murder, then it fair to ask if our laws concerning murder apply. If the fetus, at the moment of conception is human, then certainly our laws concerning the murder of a human should apply. We don’t make a distinction between murdering a 5 year old and a 50 years old, so I would think the murder laws should apply to all who are human. And that’s the essence of my argument…that whatever the fetus might be, until they are able to live outside they womb, they are not, in a legal sense, human. Since 88% of abortions take place in the first trimester, I don’t see these abortions as murder. At best, it is the killing of potential human life and I am fine with that. A living, self sustaining human has more intrinsic value and worth than a potential human being. Attempting to grant the fetus, before viability, legal rights is fraught with problems that will result in a legal nightmare. All Im doing is taking the life begins at conception, abortion=murder to its logical conclusion.
@ Bruce
I think that what you mean, when you refer to my “excess verbiage”, is my saying anything different from what you wish I’d said, because that would have been something you had a prepared response to.
The “core issue” is whether abortion is right or wrong, surely?
There isn’t any scope to deny that the human foetus is clearly a human by the time the lethal assault begins, and that abortion is therefore a type of homicide. That’s just objective fact, an unemotional description of the actual process of abortion. Somebody gets killed. Whether a crime has been committed, in the eyes of the law, varies according to jurisdiction and circumstances, but the homicide of a pre-natal human is not charged as “murder” in any jurisdiction that I know about, and I have certainly not said that it should be.
I am talking about biological science and basic ethics. You are talking about the law. Laws can change, so one must infer that a law can be wrong. Either a law that has been changed was wrong before it was changed, or it was wrong after it was changed, or perhaps both. That is why talking about law is a always a distraction from talking directly about ethics, which informs how the law should be, rather than how it is.
If everybody always tried to deflect a discussion of whether the law itself was right, by laying down the law about what was what in “a legal sense”, laws would never be changed. It is pointless to discuss whether (as you say) I was a human “in a legal sense” in my mother’s womb, when my opposition to abortion is based upon the scientific fact that I was a human then in the biological sense. The same tongue was in my mouth then, and the same lungs in my chest, even though I hadn’t yet spoken a word, or taken a breath. That was me back then, as now.
No need to put words in my mouth. I meant what I said about your wordiness. I weary of those who can’t quickly get to the point when there is no reason not to.
I do not accept your premise the fetus is surely human life. As I stated, until viability it is potential life. It is through the law we decide where that line is. But, let’s suppose the fetus is considered human, the law establishes the superiority of the woman’s rights over that of her fetus. Is there a point where the life of the fetus must be given more consideration? Sure, but most abortions occur long before this point. This is one of the reason I consider most pro life groups to be liars. When trying to inflame the public or raise funds, they always show photographs from late term abortions. Why is this? Simple, a blob of cells doesn’t elicit the emotional response pro life groups need to keep the coffers full.
If at some point in your word assault you are going to make sort of appeal to natural law, wink, wink, the law God gives to every human, please don’t bother. I have zero interest in such discussions. Humans are the final authority when it comes to what is legal or illegal. Yes, laws can and do change, and they should. As our society evolves and matures, so should our laws. In democratic societies, it is we the people who determine what laws we will be governed by. As a citizen, I can decide to obey, disobey, or work to change the law. (As pro lifers are doing at the state level)
@ Bruce
“I do not accept your premise the fetus is surely human life.”
Then you are living in a world of your own, not the real world that even Ann Furedi acknowledges. We cannot even begin to discuss the rights and wrongs of abortion together, because we don’t agree about what abortion is, and does, to whom. I used to be a foetus. You seem to believe that your human began some other way.
“ We can accept that the embryo is a living thing in the fact that it has a beating heart, that it has its own genetic system within it, it’s clearly human in the sense that it’s not a gerbil and we can recognise that it is human life… but the point is not when does life begin but when does it begin to matter. ”
–
[ Ann Furedi, Chief Executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, major abortion service provider ]
I can’t make things any clearer, John. You seem to demand everyone accept your presuppositions, but I don’t and neither do many of the atheists/humanists I know. Appealing to someone I don’t know carries no weight with me.
Let me be blunt, saying that from the moment a human egg is fertilized the fetus/clump of cells is a human is absurd. It’s akin to saying that because I ate a fried fertilized chicken egg for breakfast that I had a grill chicken sandwich. Yes, the egg was fertilized, no it wasn’t a chicken.
“Christianity, rather, asserts that right and wrong are important, encouraging us to use our reason to work that out.”
Ha! Christianity does the opposite! What a joker. It encourages, no, demands that we NOT use our reason to work that out. Should we employ reason, Christianity becomes one reference point.
I find it so laughable that you say things about Christianity as if you know something. You are like a dull preacher saying something rather dumb about one thing because his real feeling and wish is to disparage another thing. Your idea of Christianity asserting that right and wrong are important, immediately dumps all else into the convenient sewer. If not CHRISTIANITY, then right and wrong don’t matter, possibly don’t even exist? Oh dear, nevermind you wind-bag. I just want to call you names now so I shall retire to tea.
“Your idea of Christianity asserting that right and wrong are important, immediately dumps all else into the convenient sewer.”
Not at all. You are attacking an argument that I didn’t make, a technique well-known as “straw man”. I didn’t say that ONLY Christianity presents right and wrong as important. I was saying that in many situations Christianity tells us ONLY that right and wrong are important, rather than spelling out WHAT is right and WHAT is wrong. There are also reasons for (say) atheists to oppose abortion. My reasons for opposing abortion are more akin to those an atheist pro-lifer has, than any reasons that (say) a Christian pro-lifer might voice.
So Bruce do you know what is going on with Miano right now?
I do not. Was he caught coming out of a gay bath house ?
Ah okay just curious because his presence on social media has shrunk a bit and I don’t have an idea what absurd thing he is doing, though he still puts videos of him being a pompous ass on YouTube.