Who's Killing More Babies, Us or Catholics

We argue that the Catholic Church's stance against IVF is counter to both scriptural interpretations and human biology, which imply life begins before conception. We explain how prominent Catholic figures and the Bible itself points to life starting in the womb, not at conception. We also highlight how identical twins and chimeras reveal flaws around the conception argument. Ultimately, we predict the existential threat of declining fertility will push the Catholic Church to accept IVF, allowing many potential lives to come into existence.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Biblical quotes do do a fairly good job of arguing that abortion is murder, but they actually also do a fairly good job at arguing that talking somebody out of IVF is also murder.

So the Jeremiah 1 5 says before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, which implies life begins before. For conception, just as we say, we also believe we can determine truth through investigations of nature and reality. After a sperm fertilizes an egg, that can split. And that's where identical twins come from.

, that would mean the human soul splits. But even more damning than that, human chimeras can also form. This is when two fertilized eggs end up combining together into a single human being if you look historically you look at people like Augustine of Hippo, . Said that the soul enters a developing [00:01:00] fetus, 40 days after it begins developing . Thomas Aquinas had the same view. I didn't realize how recently the Catholic church had made a switch on this issue, I think a lot of Americans, I did know how recently regular Protestants had made a switch on this issue, this was seen as like a weird Catholic thing,

Simone Collins: it's a weird Catholic thing that had only been around for about a hundred years. .

Malcolm Collins: When you look at studies that show that half of all men could be infertile without IVF by 2060, this is really important when you're talking about the future of the Catholic church.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I am so excited to be joining you for today's very, very spicy topic. And it is one that we have avoided going into detail on, mostly because I was like, let's just like not engage with it.

I don't want to create a fight within the pronatalist community or anything like that. And the group that we would be arguing the most against [00:02:00] within this episode are Catholics. And we love, don't worry. We love it. That's actually difficult for me because every religion, I have never. There's, there's no other religion where I have literally, really liked every single person I have ever met from that cultural group, except Catholics.

Catholics, I've literally liked every Catholic I have ever met. And

Simone Collins: yet

have you met an unpleasant Mormon? I'm sorry, but like I doubt that this is

Malcolm Collins: possible. , I, I have met unpleasant Mormons. Oh, that's too bad. Bad. There are some more progressive Mormons, which are really sort of statusy in a way that I find kind of annoying and cringe.

Oh. But generally I like Mormons a lot too. I, I, I'm giving you that. Okay. Okay. But, I've just never personally, and I think it's because I've met less Catholics than I've met Mormons, and that's why maybe I have this perception. Fewer. If you can

Simone Collins: count it, it's fewer, and if you can't, then it's more or less.

Of course, of course. Sorry, I

Malcolm Collins: gotta, you know. [00:03:00] So, so, I am starting that episode, this episode with that, because the other thing I need to admit going into this is I approach Catholicism with a lot of bias against it as a religious group, specifically for, it's an aesthetic bias. It's a bit like if I went to someone and I liked all of these people, but they all had like, Runes carved in their head and stuff and like, Oh, that sounds kind of cool.

If they looked like heretics from Warhammer 40k. So you might be being like, come on, Catholics don't come off that way. Unironically, the Catholic aesthetic and perspective is like somebody went in to Indiana Jones and the last crusade and they're just like, yes, grab the big golden mug. That's the right one.

Which one is it? You must choose. [00:04:00] But choose wisely. For as the true grail will bring you life, the false grail will take it from you.

I'm not a historian. I have no idea what it looks like. Which one is it? Let me choose.

It's more beautiful than I'd ever imagined.

This certainly is the cup of the king of kings. Is happening to me? He chose poor.

Be made out of gold. That's the cup of a carpenter.[00:05:00]

you have chosen wisely.

Malcolm Collins: Because my perception, like when I read the Bible is like, Jesus is not about like a guy on a giant.

Throne framed in, like, golden outlays telling people what's true and what's not true. yoU know, I, I look at something like the Pope Stephen VI and the cadaver syndrome. You know, he put a dead pope on trial and had him hung, and I'm like, Come on, this is not like, this system for deciding who God is talking through does not seem like it's working to me.

It's not selecting very well. It's not selecting very well. Well, so then, then people will be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But not all Catholic churches are like these big ostentatious displays. And it's like, yeah, you know. Sometimes, they do big displays of human corpses and bones.[00:06:00]

There's something I'd like to show you, something you might enjoy, as one animal lover to another.

Something wrong, Mr. Ventura? course not! This is a lovely room of death! Take care now, bye bye then.

Malcolm Collins: It's like, you know, you're in this. Why human bones? Why the corpse cathedrals?

you looked at our caps recently? Our caps? The badges on our caps. Have you looked at them? What? No. A bit. They've got skulls on them. Have you noticed that our caps have actually got little pictures of skulls on them? I don't, uh[00:07:00]

Are we the baddies? We should be able to hold them at this point here, at least for a few hours. Then why skulls then? What? Why skulls? I mean, what do skulls make you think of? Death, cannibals, beheading. Um, pirates. Oh, you haven't been listening to ally propaganda. Of course they're gonna say we're the bad guys.

But they didn't get to design our uniforms.

Malcolm Collins: I need to say here it's actually kind of cool, in like a 40k, like, grimdark way. Like, it appeals to my young, goth self, and it appeals to my, like, historian self.

But there's another part of me that is like, yeah, but You know, this person, he's like, you know, it's like a person comes up to me, but he looks like a 40k like Warhammer cultist, and he's like, hi, I'm Father Frank, the bloodthirster[00:08:00] and I have very pleasant things to say to you, and I'm like, yeah, but you know, all the ornateness, because from our perspective, right?

Any wealth, especially unearned wealth is a sign of sin, like indulging in unearned aesthetic pleasures within our reality is a sign of sin and to indulge in that within a religious center is like marking it as a house of sin,

I say all this because I think it's really important to note when I am approaching a topic with an extreme amount of personal bias, which in this case I feel I am.

Malcolm Collins: Let's get back to the topic at hand because this is really interesting to me.

So first, it's important to understand our perspective on when life begins in relation to IVF and perspective and the history of the Catholic perspective, as well as the mainstream cons