On February 11th, Ken Ham posted a two-minute audio snippet entitled "What Causes Birth Pains". Labor pain is a result of sin rather than evolution, he claimed.
"The Smithsonian Institute launched a human evolution traveling exhibit last year visited libraries across America. At one library, they had a lecture on why women have pain in childbirth when chimpanzees and bonobos don't. They claim it's due to our evolutionary heritage of walking upright and having bigger heads, but the Bible gives us the real answer. God originally created everything very good. There wasn't any suffering, pain, or death in the original creation, but Adam and Eve's sin changed everything. One consequence of sin was pain in childbirth. Women have a difficult time giving birth today because of sin and the curse, not because of some evolutionary story."As always, Ham is interpreting Genesis 3:16 as a literal account of history rather than a just-so story written by ancient men. To my surprise, other fundamentalist Christians agree with his claim that labor pain for women was God's response to Eve's transgression.
Even though Ham sees labor pains as a punishment inflicted on women for Eve's sin, his organization condoned the use of anesthesia during labor. A 2011 Answers in Genesis commentary piece argues that anesthesia is permissible during childbirth. The author, Elizabeth Mitchell, encourages communication and trust between a pregnant woman and her obstetrician regarding pain management during childbirth and supports patient empowerment.
The claim that labor pain is a punishment for Eve's sin is ridiculous for several reasons. First, there is no evidence that the Garden of Eden story in Genesis is historically accurate, and copious evidence that humans came about through evolution instead. Second, if a supreme being truly wanted women to suffer during childbirth, that being wouldn't have made labor pain so easy to circumvent through anesthesia and other medical interventions. Third, if God wanted to punish all women for Eve's sin, using labor pains as punishment excludes significant numbers of women who never give birth. Fourth, it would be unfair and pointless for God to punish billions of women for one woman's actions. Finally, women experience vastly different levels of severity of labor pain and postpartum pain, so why would the Almighty arbitrarily punish some women more than others?
Ham's labor pain argument is yet another example of the absurdities that result when one takes a collection of ancient stories literally.
%^&$#@*&$%#!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI am really getting sick of having to share a planet with these revolting dimwits.
Infidel -- I feel your pain.
DeleteThe Catholic Church was against the use of anesthesia during child birth for the same reasons -- Eve sinned, so all women had to endure chid birth pains because of a fictitious woman who talked to a snake.
ReplyDeleteBut really, if religion needed an excuse for its barbarously ignorant reaction to pain-killers in child birth, it should have been NOT because Eve sinned, but because she believed in talking snakes.
Little fun fact. The Catholic Church didn't approve of the use of forks either:
"The Venetians were appalled when they saw her [a Byzantine princess] using her fork, seeing it as spiting God: one clergyman said, "God in his wisdom has provided man with natural forks — his fingers. Therefore it is an insult to him to substitute artificial metallic forks for them when eating." When the princess died two years later, the Venetian church saw it as God's punishment for the pride and vanity and "excessive delicacy" she displayed in her use of forks.
Religion: Doing all it can to stop the advancement of the human species.
Shaw -- Good point. The belief that labor pain is a punishment from God can have dangerous applications, as it did when religious sadists forbade anesthesia during childbirth.
DeleteHere's to anesthesia, forks, and reason. May they all triumph over superstition.
Accepting for the sake of argument that Eve was a real person who conversed with a talking snake, Ham's small-minded god is a nasty little $%*&, isn't he.
ReplyDeleteAgi Tater -- Oh yes. What kind of father would punish his children for seeking knowledge, THEN punish his grandchildren and great-grandchildren who weren't even around at the time?
DeleteSounds like Ken's God has a nasty streak a mile wide. But he LOVES us!
ReplyDeleteJono -- With love like that, who need hate?
DeleteI remember being taught this growing up as well- in the LDS church. Whenever I read stuff like this now- I'm soooooooo glad to be out of the narrow mindedness of religion.
ReplyDeleteHeather -- Imagine going through one's whole life believing in a wrathful, petty deity like that.
DeleteIt is the Hebrew word "etsev" that is commonly translated as either "pain" or "sorrow" in childbirth for Eve when referring to the consequences of the fall, but interestingly, this same word is rendered as "toil" or "hard work" for Adam bringing forth produce from the ground. It's somewhat understandable that the King James translators chose this interpretation as childbirth was more fraught with danger in their time, but there is no excuse to continue this fallacy. I learned this from reading several natural childbirth books, not in church! The idea that women's due is pain and sorrow in childbirth, not the natural hard work of the body that is a positive experience, is openly misogynistic. Boo to Ken Ham.
DeleteIt's also ridiculous because the Hebrew word "etsev" that is translated as "pain" or "sorrow" for the woman, is the identical word translated as "hard toil" for the man work bringing forth food through working the soil. I can understand that the King James translators saw childbirth as difficult and dangerous since maternal and infant mortality was so much higher in those days, but there is no excuse to perpetuate the fiction that women are being punished by "pain and sorrow" when the root word doesn't even mean that! I've been through labor four times,and it's a wholly different experience than what is felt when something is wrong in the body...mega intense, sure...but it's a positive thing, not a freaking punishment. Another example from Ken Ham of patriarchal misogyny. The Hebrew writers didn't say this, he did!
ReplyDeleteKate -- Ham's rigid fundamentalism and patriarchal mindset prevent him from looking at the Bible in a nuanced way, sadly.
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