Do we sacrifice our children to Molek? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
When we get to this verse in Leviticus, many in our society would think that this is not applicable to us. After all, we no longer sacrifice our children to pagan gods, and I’d say for the most part, this is true, but do we sacrifice them to secular gods? I contend we obviously do.
These are gods such as convenience, autonomy, sexual freedom, etc.
For us, we call it abortion today. It is one of the sacraments of our culture. It is one of the rare places where the science is ignored entirely and everyone becomes philosophical all of a sudden.
So what science is ignored exactly?
“Although life is a continuous process, fertilization (which, incidentally, is not a ‘moment’) is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new genetically distinct human organism is formed when the chromosomes of the male and female pronuclei blend in the oocyte.” — Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Müller, Human Embryology and Teratology, 3rd edition. New York: Wiley-Liss, 2001. p. 8
“Human development begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.” –Keith L. Moore and T.V.N. Persaud, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 7th edition, Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 2003. p. 16.
“Human embryos begin development following the fusion of definitive male and female gametes during fertilization… This moment of zygote formation may be taken as the beginning or zero time point of embryonic development.” –William J. Larsen, Essentials of Human Embryology, New York: Churchill Livingstone, 1998. pp. 1, 14.
“Every time a sperm cell and ovum unite, a new being is created which is alive and will continue to live unless its death is brought about by some specific condition.” — E.L. Potter, M.D., and J.M. Craig, M.D. Pathology of the Fetus and the Infant (3rd Edition). Chicago: Year Book Medical Publishers, 1975, page vii.
“It is the penetration of the ovum by a spermatozoan and the resultant mingling of the nuclear material each brings to the union that constitutes the culmination of the process of fertilization and marks the initiation of life of a new individual.” –Bradley M. Patton, Human Embryology, 3rd Ed., (New York: McGraw Hill, 1968), p. 43.
“It is possible to give ‘human being’ a precise meaning. We can use it as equivalent to ‘member of the species Homo sapiens’. Whether a being is a member of a given species is something that can be determined scientifically, by an examination of the nature of the chromosomes in the cells of living organisms. In this sense there is no doubt that from the first moments of its existence an embryo conceived from human sperm and eggs is a human being.” –Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 85-86.
“Perhaps the most straightforward relation between you and me on the one hand and every human fetus on the other is this: All are living members of the same species, homo sapiens. A human fetus after all is simply a human being at a very early stage in his or her development.” –David Boonin, A Defense of Abortion. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003) 20.
“A human fetus is not a nonhuman animal; it is a stage of a human being.” –Wayne L. Sumner, Abortion and Moral Theory, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 10.
Actually, our age is worse than the pagan ages. They did a great evil in sacrificing their children, but they often did it for the good of the community thinking they would have a great harvest and saw it as a real sacrifice. When our children are sacrificed today, they are sacrificed more for individual goods than anything else.
Sometimes, I wonder if a future culture will look back on us and wonder what we were thinking by allowing abortion. How many lives have been lost due to this great evil? We have a modern-day holocaust going on and I look forward to when we realize that is happening.
So yes, we do sacrifice our children today, except we don’t consider it a sacrifice and it is not to a pagan deity, but secular ones.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
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