Birth Deformities

[Guest JP1283]

How do Christians reconcile birth deformities, such as hermaphrodite babies and conjoined twins, with the Bible's claim that God creates everyone? Did God want them to be born with the deformity? Each day babies are born with deformities and mutations: two heads, tails, missing limbs, etc. What about the baby who was born with an underdeveloped fetus attached to her head, who died when her doctors tried to surgically remove it? Why would God create her that way? It seems logical that they are errors in development, not God's creation. How do Christians refute this?

[Asimov]

The reason why Jesus is associated with purity and "white robishness" is that he was actually wearing a labcoat. Same with the angels. Jesus is a scientist, and did some genetic experiments which gave angels wings. The angels help Jesus perform experiments and create these "birth deformities". They think Lobster Boy and Incredibly Black Obese Man are funny!

[Merlinfmct87]

I imagine satan has something to do with it, or a payback for original sin. That's why childbirth hurts so much supposedly.

 

(Actually, it's because we have a fixed pelvis that doesn't react well to birth... the price for walking upright... ironic, no?)

 

Merlin

[Reach]

How do Christians reconcile birth deformities, such as hermaphrodite babies and conjoined twins, with the Bible's claim that God creates everyone? 

The Christian Answers:

1.) God created them like that. Who are we to question the Almighty?

Did God want them to be born with the deformity?  Each day babies are born with deformities and mutations: two heads, tails, missing limbs, etc.

2.) Yes, God wanted them to be born with their deformities or he would have intervened and made the necessary corrections. As creator, it logically follows that he has access to his creation, if and when he so desires.

What about the baby who was born with an underdeveloped fetus attached to her head, who died when her doctors tried to surgically remove it?  Why would God create her that way?

3.) God is strange and works in mysterious ways. His ways are beyond your understanding, so as long as you are in this world, in your earth suit, you will never be able to resolve this mystery.

It seems logical that they are errors in development, not God's creation.

4.) Well, we'll let you decide. You have a couple options here. God never makes mistakes although he sometimes has regrets over some of the things he has done, like create man, with a measure of free will, in the first place. Genetic weakness and predisposition will come to light and errors can occur in the development of anything, but in the beginning God had a plan and it was man himself who brought all this trouble upon himself when... Say... have you ever heard the story of the Garden of Eden?

How do Christians refute this?

5.) They usually sidestep scientific facts and talk about The Fall, thinking they can blame God's immorality on man's imperfection, frailty and humanness. They do not see that he who has authority is responsible. Not man and not an underling named Satan or Lucifer. The creator of the product, the manufacturer of the system, the design engineer is at fault.

 

If you have any more questions or complaints, take them to God, if you can find him.

[atheist_thinker]

Its all about the roll the dice and what genetics dispostions you cary.

[dustmouse]

I was born with six fingers on my right hand ... I was always told that it was because of a problem with the new morning sickness meds my mom was on at the time (there were several other babies born at the same time with the same problem).

 

Now I know God just wanted me like that!! Thanks for clearing that up!

 

Boy, the doctors must all be hellbound for surgically removing it the day after I was born, since God wanted me like that!!!!!!!!

 

 

[I Broke Free]

If God corrected all human abnormalities before birth, then humans would stand out from the rest of nature and His existence would then become obvious, thus there would be no need for faith.

 

We can therefore conclude that God’s desire to maintain a plan of salvation based on his “unknowability” supersedes his compassion for us.

[SOIL]

As usual, I have neither the available time, nor (more importantly) the needed wisdom - to provide a completely comprehensive and satisfactory answer to the inquiring skeptic.

 

(However, that has never kept me from responding before!) <wink>

 

So, here goes.

 

Remember that post I made awhile back where I mentioned a phrase I pulled out of the middle the Lord's prayer?

 

Here is that phrase again:

       Your kingdom come,

        your will be done,

            on earth as it is in heaven.

(I added the Bold emphasis)

 

I suspect in heaven, God's omnipotence is immediately obvious at all times. I think there is a difference between heaven and earth however - (or else why would Jesus speak of the two as he did in relationship to the will of God?)

 

Christians pray like Jesus taught us to pray. We realize that God's ultimate will is not always done on this earth (in the same way it is done in heaven) - however, we desire that it would be.

 

I think one of the evidences of God's perfect (immediate) will being done on earth, will include the absence of birth defects. However - at this time - all things have not yet been restored to the way the earth functioned prior to the entrance of evil ( see Romans 8:18-28 ).

 

-Dennis

[Lokmer]

I was born with six fingers on my right hand ...

 

You have six fingers on your right hand?

 

Someone was looking for you...

 

-Lokmer (with apologies to William Goldman)

[SOIL]

How do Christians reconcile birth deformities, such as hermaphrodite babies and conjoined twins, with the Bible's claim that God creates everyone?  Did God want them to be born with the deformity?  Each day babies are born with deformities and mutations: two heads, tails, missing limbs, etc.  What about the baby who was born with an underdeveloped fetus attached to her head, who died when her doctors tried to surgically remove it?  Why would God create her that way?  It seems logical that they are errors in development, not God's creation.  How do Christians refute this?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

JP1283,

 

You deserve a better answer than I can give. Also you deserve a better answer than I did try to give. Maybe I should try harder?

 

One of the things that we Christians like about God (in this world where God's absolutely "perfect" and very best will is seldom actually seen) is that God can take something that looks very bad indeed (on the surface) and use it in order to produce something good out of it - by the time everything is said and done.

 

An evidence (or example) of this is seen in the violent death of Jesus of Nazareth.

 

I wouldn't be surprised even if there were some people here who could tell you that caring for a handicapped child (either mentally or physically) had been a wonderful experience for them - and also that the child seemed to show even more love and compassion than other apparently more "normal" siblings. I don't understand why this is often the case, but I have seen it before.

 

On this planet (after man started using free will to choose evil), a lot of stuff happens which is not up to God's top-notch perfect standards (especially on the outside of the physical veneer) - but God can (and often does) help to arrange things so that "good comes out in the end".

 

One of my daughters sees God as being somewhat of a mathematician - who takes into consideration all things in order to make equations work out - so that justice and mercy are balanced appropriately. But while we are alive in these earth-suits (to use a term I think I noticed Reach using) we can't see all of the factors that are eventually included in the grand formula.

 

Bad stuff happens on this planet.

 

God can make it turn out good - but that is in the long run.

 

We don't see everything while we are alive in these physical bodies.

 

Faith is associated with feeling OK about that.

 

I usually don't seem to be able to find enough faith (in order to be able to completely stop taking my anti-depression pills anyway).

 

Maybe someday I will find more faith.

 

I haven't given up looking for it.

 

 

-Dennis

 

(maybe this is not all that good of a response - but I'm just trying to be honest and not blow off your reasonable question)

[Cerise]

Friend from School: God, why did you make me have Treacher-Collins Syndrome and go through many many horribly painful surgeries so I could have an almost as close to normal life (or at least breathe on my own...through a stoma and reconstruct some ears so I could have 50% hearing) and then live for 18 years and then die from a malfunction in my breathing apparatus during a cast party while all my friends helplessly watched me asphixiate before the paramedics could get there?

 

God: It was for your own good my child.

 

Friend from School: ...really?

 

God: Well, actually it was for the good of your parents. They needed to be better people so I arranged it for them to have a handicapped kid.

 

Friend from School: uh huh...

 

God: Well and all your friends are so much more understanding and loving and compassionate now.

 

Friend: You mean after watching me die horribly they really came out better?

 

God: ...yeah.

 

Friend: So, it balances out then? My life for a bunch of other people's supposed benefits?

 

God: well...

 

Friend: For my own good?

 

Me: Exactly. Fuckin sadist.

[SOIL]

Cerise,

 

If I were to know for certain that there is no eternity (and each human is gone forever after death on this planet) - then I would probably try to learn how to write things here on this site, which might eventually earn me some "real respect.

 

I don't think this physical life is "all there is" though.

 

-Dennis

[Reach]

How do Christians reconcile birth deformities, such as hermaphrodite babies and conjoined twins, with the Bible's claim that God creates everyone? 

These two particular cases have troubled me more than most other cases.

 

For the hermaphrodite, according to a few of them that I have spoken with, the struggle boils down to living with the feeling that one is a kind of monster, a sub-human, a person who should never have existed in the first place. I don't have any idea of what the weight of that feels like and the cost it demands of the one who goes on living in that skin.

 

For conjoined twins, with entirely different life issues at stake, I always wondered, if hell were real, and I used to believe it was, what would happen to these twins if one was a believer and the other a non-believer? The fact that the Bible overlooked addressing these kinds of rare, but real, physically aberrational situations furthered my realization that it could not have been authored by a loving Creator/Designer god.

[Merlinfmct87]

I think you hit that one on the head Reach... This is going to sound very geeky of me, but Christianity has a lot of bugs. It seems that salvation crashes under exceptional circumstances.. If a person fails to receive last rights before death or dies before baptism, they are damned, aren't they?

 

How am I to believe in a God that can't even debug his own code, so to speak? Why is it there are Divine "Cheat Codes" in this belief system?

 

I could also make a really cute point about God needing to return to an older version of the Program, but I won't...*giggle*

 

Merlin

[Lokmer]

For conjoined twins, with entirely different life issues at stake, I always wondered, if hell were real, and I used to believe it was, what would happen to these twins if one was a believer and the other a non-believer?

 

 

I didn't realize it at the time, but one of the big shoes that dropped as far as pushing me out of the faith was meeting one of my creative partners. He's a very gifted man - well, actually, he's 17 very gifted men and two very gifted women. Due to severe identity-based abuse when he was three or four, his brain learned to split its personalities. Not talking about "Sybil" or the popular "MPD" thing where personalities just keep forming all the time, unaware of each other, etc. His brain has actually localized certain types of knowledge and memories in different areas, and each personality has a particular strength, both emotionally and talent-wise. They have different names, different identities, different eyeglass perscriptions - they are different people in every way but sharing the same body.

 

Well, this was all fine and good for a while, until I figured out that different people in that body (he's a Star Trek fan so he affectionately calls himself "the collective") hold differing philosophical and religious beliefs. While most are materialists, some are Taoists and a couple are pantheists. It didn't take much to realize that it was entirely possible that one of them could be a Christian (and, indeed, I found out later that one of them was a Christian for a number of years). Now, these are people sharing the same BRAIN - the seat of their consciousness is organically divided (shows up on brain scans). If one of them were a Christian, how would God deal with that? After all, Christianity is **supposed** to be a physicalist religion - with bodily resurrection/recreation.

 

Like I said, I didn't realize it at the time, but like pebbles for the avalanche....

-Lokmer

[Panther]

These two particular cases have troubled me more than most other cases.

 

For the hermaphrodite, according to a few of them that I have spoken with, the struggle boils down to living with the feeling that one is a kind of monster, a sub-human, a person who should never have existed in the first place. I don't have any idea of what the weight of that feels like and the cost it demands of the one who goes on living in that skin.

 

For conjoined twins, with entirely different life issues at stake, I always wondered, if hell were real, and I used to believe it was, what would happen to these twins if one was a believer and the other a non-believer? The fact that the Bible overlooked addressing these kinds of rare, but real, physically aberrational situations furthered my realization that it could not have been authored by a loving Creator/Designer god.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Hiya Reach!

I am not sure what a hermaphrodite is.....*blush*....may I ask?

(or whoever knows)

 

What you said about the cojoined twins is very compelling...I had never thought of that!

[Panther]

I didn't realize it at the time, but one of the big shoes that dropped as far as pushing me out of the faith was meeting one of my creative partners.  He's a very gifted man - well, actually, he's 17 very gifted men and two very gifted women.  Due to severe identity-based abuse when he was three or four, his brain learned to split its personalities.  Not talking about "Sybil" or the popular "MPD" thing where personalities just keep forming all the time, unaware of each other, etc.  His brain has actually localized certain types of knowledge and memories in different areas, and each personality has a particular strength, both emotionally and talent-wise.  They have different names, different identities, different eyeglass perscriptions - they are different people in every way but sharing the same body.

 

Well, this was all fine and good for a while, until I figured out that different people in that body (he's a Star Trek fan so he affectionately calls himself "the collective") hold differing philosophical and religious beliefs.  While most are materialists, some are Taoists and a couple are pantheists.  It didn't take much to realize that it was entirely possible that one of them could be a Christian (and, indeed, I found out later that one of them was a Christian for a number of years).  Now, these are people sharing the same BRAIN - the seat of their consciousness is organically divided (shows up on brain scans).  If one of them were a Christian, how would God deal with that?  After all, Christianity is **supposed** to be a physicalist religion - with bodily resurrection/recreation.

 

Like I said, I didn't realize it at the time, but like pebbles for the avalanche....

-Lokmer

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

WOW Lokmer!!

That is SO damn fascinating! Please, tell us more!!!

[LloydDobler]

Hiya Reach!

I am not sure what a hermaphrodite is.....*blush*....may I ask?

(or whoever knows)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

One having both male and female sexual characteristics and organs; at birth an unambiguous assignment of male or female cannot be made.

[dustmouse]

I've often wondered about conjoined twins, too. Of course I have wondered what one must be thinking when the other is having sex with their spouse (since there have been married conjoined twins who have children, after all). But that's probably just better left alone

 

And Lokmer.. that's really fascinating about your friend. And that 'The Collective' business.. that's really endearing :aww:

[Reach]

Dustmouse, you would not be alone in your speculation and discomfort.

 

The "Siamese Twins," Chang and Eng (from Siam, which we know as Thailand today), were something of a cultural metaphor in several ways. The following is quoted from a link you may find interesting: A Social History of Conjoined Twins

 

Born in Siam in 1811, after a long career as a public exhibition, the twins retired to a small town in North Carolina at the age of 28.

 

"During the early 1840s, they became naturalized citizens of the United States, adopted the last name Bunker, and began a search for "a couple of nice wives." In April, 1843, the search was ended when Chang married Adelaide Yates, and Eng married Sarah Anne, her sister. Over the next thirty-one years the brothers fathered a total of twenty-one children.[...]

 

"But at that time, these United States were not so united, and in Chang and Eng, Americans saw their own political struggle embodied. Alison Pingree (1996) has documented the tensions surrounding the 'Siamese Twins.' As 'America struggled with its configurations of government (divided states within a united nation) and domesticity (marriage, in particular),' the twins continually raised the question: Are they two or one? The twin's bond was seen as an argument for union and the fusion of the states, while the alternative explanation was that such a connection was "monstrous" and unnatural. Similarly, while the story of the twins' marriages was seen as the triumph of domesticity, these 'marriages raised the specters of homosexuality, incest, adultery, and exotic orgies of flesh which profoundly confronted the heterosexual marital norms of Victorian America.'[...]

 

"[T]he sexual tension was explicitely commented on also. Before their marriages, speculation was rife as to how such unions could be made. They had 'each found his other half,' and even though unmarried, could never be single men. Pamphlets written about the twins' marriages showed only one home (when they actually lived in two) and compared their domesticity with that of their homeland. But in pointing out that they were now 'superior' to the polygamous customs of Siam, they also invited speculation that a piece of that exotic culture was alive and thriving in North Carolina."

 

And this was also interesting, from this link: How did the Original Siamese Twins Have Sex?

 

 

 

How did the Original Siamese Twins Have Sex?

Sal Reyn

 

I was absolutely fascinated by BizArre's mention of the earliest known Siamese twin brothers who performed in a circus for many years and fathered [twenty-one] children. Their sex life must have been very curious if not a bit bizarre. One wonders how to find out which one is the father, if both are participating??!! Any knowledge or insights?

 

DR MIKE: Chang and Eng Butler, the original Siamese twins, married sisters named Adelaide and Sarah Yates in April 1843, some 14 years after their retirement from showbusiness. By then the brothers were reasonably prosperous farmers in the rural Wilkes and Surrey counties area of North Carolina and, while contemporary illustrations show that the sisters were no oil paintings, there are certainly no hints of kinky sex.

 

The girls certainly had no inhibitions about getting down to it, though, and you actually under-estimate the number of children Chang and Eng managed to produce. Over the thirty-one years of their marriage, the brothers fathered a total of twenty-one children, none of whom were freaks (though two were deaf and dumb); in a 1953 survey, in excess of 1,000 living descendents were traced, including a president of the Union Pacific Railroad and a Major General in the US Air Force.

 

As for the details of their unconventional sex lives... well, like all Siamese twins, Chang and Eng had to learn to co-operate in order to survive, and they and their wives soon developed a workable modus vivendi, living for three days at one brother's house, and then three at the other's. If it was, say, Chang's turn to be at home, then he alone would enjoy sexual relations with his wife during this time.

 

Although the two were joined at the chest by a cylinder of skin which contained vital arteries, long practice enabled them to stand or lie side by side rather than chest to chest and it was not necessary for them both to be 'present' during coitus. In order to preserve a veneer of Victorian decency, it appears the brothers draped a blanket between them so that one could make love without the other seeing exactly what was going on. The two had separate nervous systems too, so there's no reason to think that the non-participating twin would have experienced any significant level of arousal during sex; indeed all the evidence suggests the pair were generally very different, Chang liking spicy oriental food and booze, while Eng ate a bland vegetarian diet did not drink (nor, oddly enough, did he get drunk when Chang was sozzled).

 

That's all the conventional sources tell us about the sex lives of the Siamese twins, but a little consideration suggests that while the missionary position and girl on top would have been perfectly practicable propositions, sex 'doggy style' would have required the non-participating brother to assume a position that rather humiliatingly aped what was happening on the other side of the curtain, and spoons would have been right out.

[dustmouse]

Very interesting read! Thanks, Reach!

[Guest Peyton]

I was watching a programme the other night about (funnily enough) Treacher Collins Syndrome and I just knew the couple featured were Christians, I don't know how but I just did. Afterwards, I went across to their website and sure enough, there they were, talking about being Christians. I am getting very good with spotting them now, I don't even have to hear them speak and there was no mention of their faith on the programme. I could tell by looking at them. Sorry for going off the point!

[Lokmer]

WOW Lokmer!!

That is SO damn fascinating! Please, tell us more!!!

 

 

Sure, Lisa, what would you like to know?

 

And Reach - very interesting article - Thanks!

-Lokmer

[Guest Challenger]

This book is interesting. It has some information on the Eng brothers and others:

 

Born Different: Amazing Stories of Very Special People by Frederick Drimmer

[lalli]

Madame M, I think I mentioned it before on earlier forums, but it really bears repeating again: those are some of the most brainless words of "comfort" I've ever heard. I know it's horrible of me to say this, but I can't help wishing, just a little, that those people (especially the one that suggested it was a "trial to refine you") could go through the same thing with a little girl of their own, and see how well they take this "special" blessing from God.