Typical of Fred the Atheist, he ignores the details of my answer to his poorly argued explanation of Exodus 21:22–24 (see here) and moves to a different passage of Scripture and an unrelated case. (You can read his comment here. Scroll down.) To add insult to injury, he references the Talmud, which is not Scripture. He did not offer a single rebuttal to the material I presented in my article. Why didn’t he? Because he was beaten to an exegetical pulp and he doesn’t want you to see the extensive bruising. So he attempts a play at misdirection. “He guys, he went that-a-way.”
To divert your attention away from the fact that I pummeled him on his rendering of Exodus 21:22–24, Fred the Atheist goes to Numbers 5:11–22. He assumes the woman being accused of adultery by her husband is pregnant. There is nothing that indicates that she is. R. J. Rushdoony writes the following in his commentary on Numbers: “Some have read v. 22 as describing also a miscarriage, but there is no evidence for this reading” (42, emphasis in original). In Exodus 21, we’re told the “children [yeled] come” out of the pregnant women who is injured when caught between two men fighting. Nothing is said in Numbers 5 of a child [yeled] coming out. The most likely explanation, if it is determined that she is guilty of adultery, is that her womb will dry up, that is, she will never be able to have children. One final point, the Trial of Jealousy, as the Number’s passage is called, is God’s judgment, since God and not a human court acts (cf. Ex. 21:22: “as the judges decide”). Rushdoony comments:
It is God’s providential intervention which establishes the guilt. . . . Only God’s supernatural intervention provides a verdict. Justice has one source, God. . . . This trial was also the vindication of God as the source of justice as against nature and man (42–43).
For another helpful commentary on the Ordeal of Jealousy, see Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., Toward Old Testament Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1991), 229–231. There’s a lot of biblical theological symbolism related to this section of Scripture that’s going to be lost on an atheist, and I suspect on some Christians (e.g., 1 Cor. 10:21–22).
Exodus 21:22–24 does not support pro-preborn child killing. That’s why Fred the Atheist tried to divert the attention of AV’s readers to a different passage. Some of you fell for it. One of you wrote, “he might have you on the Numbers 5:11–21 argument Gary.” When Fred couldn’t make his case from the Bible, he turns to the man-made Talmud and its pro-death message. It reminded me of Proverbs 8:36: “[H]e who sins against [wisdom] injures himself; all those who hate [wisdom] love death.” Fred writes the following, quoting an abortionist’s favorite Talmudic verse:
“Jewish law does indeed define when a fetus becomes a person: ‘… a baby…becomes a full-fledged human being when the head emerges from the womb.’”
Fred the Atheist thinks that this is a higher moral precept than the Bible, being able to kill a preborn baby right up to the time of full term! The fact that anyone would appeal to the Talmud and its horrendous abortion view is shocking (Keep in mind that Fred appeals to the Talmud. It is his support for his pro-abortion view.) Fred, who is Jewish, should be ashamed that any Jew at any time in history would take such a position.
According to Fred the Atheist and the Talmud, a preborn baby can be killed anytime within the nine-month period as long as the baby’s head is still in his mother’s womb. Let’s take two scenarios. A baby goes full term minus a day, and the mother decides she doesn’t want the “fetus” and gets an abortion. This is perfectly OK for Fred the Atheist and the Talmud. Another woman delivers her baby prematurely, say, at eight months. For one full month outside the woman the premature baby is considered a human being and given full protection by the law, but the woman who carries her baby to nearly full term is free within that last month to kill her preborn baby. This is Fred’s moral world and that of the Talmud.
Bernard Nathanson, who helped to found the National Abortion Rights Action League, has written that he was responsible for more than 75,000 abortions throughout his pro-abortion career. He is now an outspoken advocate of the anti-abortion, pro-life position. He is often quoted as saying abortion is “the most atrocious holocaust in the history of the United States.” That’s right, Fred, “the most atrocious holocaust.” Nathanson grew up Jewish and described himself as a “Jewish atheist.” He is no longer an atheist. You can read his rejection of atheism here. In his book Aborting America (1979), Nathanson, citing a statement by the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, gives the other side of the Talmudic foolishness quoted by Fred the Atheist:
Judaism regards all life—including fetal life—as inviolate. Abortion is not a private matter between a woman and her physician. It infringes upon the most fundamental right of a third party—that of the unborn child (Aborting America, 297).
Once again, Fred the Atheist has been hammered. Will it change him? No. Will he deal with the facts? No. He will try to divert the attention of AV readers to some other argument. This is the tactic of all cultists. And, yes, atheism is a cult that has serious consequences.