Playing the devil's advocate

I had a really hard time when thinking about this assignment and I don't think I really understood it at first. I'm a very opinionated person and that's putting it lightly! I wasn't sure what to write about because I kind of sat exactly in the middle. I believe in science, but I don't think that it can explain away everything. I also believe in karma so that if you do good, good will eventually happen to you and vice versa. Clearly, science cannot, or has not yet proven everything. The more that I thought about it, the more I realized that I was just as likely to be at odds people on either side of the spectrum. I thought about a specific claim that I get most argumentative about and I ended up thinking about abortion, yes how cliche. I thought about how abortion is truly the biggest conflict between science and faith right now. I thought about the subject position that I most frequently end up arguing against and it ends up being those people being pro-life.

First, I want to talk about why and how abortion seems to be incapable of finding a "settlement" between science and faith. Unfortunately, abortion is one of those issues where there, almost literally, is no way to find a middle ground. There are two sides to this, which are either abortion continues to be legalized or abortion becomes illegal. The only option for middle ground seems to be the way in which abortion is regulated, but we don't seem to be getting anywhere with it. It seems that our biggest problem is that people are taking their individual beliefs and applying them to the greater population, regardless of whether or not it may be. It seems to be that no one can figure out a good way to make a decision about this topic because it affects people's personal lives and their beliefs directly and people generally don't like that on either side. It seems that the only way for us to come to a settlement about this topic is for us to figure out a way to either do what the greater population wants or to be able to find a middle ground that is acceptable to both parties.

Second, I wanted to talk about the inherent conflict within this topic. Abortion is clearly something that resulted from science. That being the case, science has a very real stake in abortion. On the other side of this topic, people of faith believe that a fetus is product of God and is a child from inception. Therefore, abortion is murder. Science, on the other hand, believes that abortion is an advancement that can help society and think it is offensive to consider it murder. The action that is being done is inherently full of conflict, even if you don't take into account the two opposing view points that are arguing about it.

Finally, I just wanted to talk about how pro-life people could see things the way that they do with such unwavering certainty. I thought about it because to me the answer to this problem seems simple; keep abortion legal. It seems so simple to me because it is not as if abortion being legal means that you have to have one, but it give women the option. It seems so simple to me because this way it's not forcing anything on anyone. The more that I thought about it the more I began to understand why those who oppose abortion feel the way they do. While I might think that allowing those who would like to/or have to have an abortion to do that is not forcing anything on anyone, it is in the eyes of those who are pro-life. They view the allowing of abortion to be just as invasive in their lives, as people who are pro-choice view making abortion illegal see that as invasive. This is why there isn't an settlement available for this topic.

It seems as though abortion is a topic that puts science and faith clearly at odds. I don't believe that they have to be, but, unfortunately, they will be until be can find a way to separate the science and the faith from this argument and look at it from an objective point of view. Unless, people can see that their social constructions cause their positions when it comes to this, I don't think that will ever happen.