It's Almost As If You Could Read Cynical Motivations Into This

Great piece a friend passed along to me this morning on the changing nature of biblical views. Specifically, the "biblical view" that life begins at conception, which you'll find out if you read the article (you should, it's short and interesting) is actually a more recent conception than the Happy Meal.

In addition to the interesting story of how life beginning at conception went from laughable to orthodox in the span of a few years, it's also a great example of cynical religious exploitation. Not to be too radical, but it's hard to believe that religious scholars somehow made an amazing discovery that a Bible that is completely silent on the subject suddenly has all sorts of guidelines for a medical procedure not invented until thousands of years after the Bible was written.

I'm certainly not saying anything new in claiming religious fundamentalists often cynically exploit the religion they claim to love so they can make political points. Though I guess I'm still naive enough to be somewhat surprised when such cynical exploitation is done in such an obvious manner. But what really gets me is the silence on such issues from rationally-thinking religious people.

Maybe it's just another good example of how the loudest and craziest always seem to dominate the narrative in American politics. So...uh...nothing new there, either.