The Bible is dogma and not philosophy

DONALD Gale’s idea that the essentials of philosophy are contained in the Bible (Write Back, June 18) is quite different from mine.

The Bible’s commandments are delivered in ‘divine’ judgments and parables. I’m afraid this is dogma, not philosophy.

The writers of the 10 commandments and the sermon on the mount made claims far beyond any that a true philosopher would have made. He would not presume to know the mind of a God and he would never demand blind faith in him.

As for abortion, the Bible offers no simple answer. Genesis 2:7 states that the first human became a living being when God blew into its nostrils and it started to breathe.

Biblical writers generally suggest that, as a seed becomes a plant when it emerges from the ground, so too a man’s planted seed becomes another human when it emerges from the womb.

Most humanists wouldn’t go that far. The principle of viability is not entirely arbitrary, but is based on the notion that the foetus becomes a person when it is capable of existing outside the mother.

It is also sound because it is a reasonable compromise between the two extreme positions of conception and full term.

BRIAN McCLINTON Editor, Irish Freethinker