"God gives life and only God can take it away" Discuss. This statement is probably one of the most talked about and controversial of the millennium.
Emma Partington
AO3: “God gives life and only God can take it away” Discuss.
This statement is probably one of the most talked about and controversial of the millennium. Many philosophers and professors have studied it and tried to come up with an answer, however in the end it comes down to opinion and faith. In this essay I will try and answer as fully as I can with views for and against.
Some say that because God gave life, our lives belong to him, and only he can take them away. However, in the beginning, God let us make our own decisions and use our brain to do things that we see fit. He laid down a set of moral guidelines but whether we follow these should be the decision of the individual not the government, as it is in countries like the Republic of Ireland. It is in places like these where they do not, and according to the law cannot, take into account individual circumstances, such as rape, teenage pregnancy or illness of the mother. For example, in 1982 a pregnant woman in the Republic of Ireland was told she had cancer of the womb. To save her from death the womb would have to be removed, along with the baby. The Irish government would not let the womb be removed, claiming that by the time the cancer killed the woman, the baby would be born. In the end the baby survived but the mother did not. This is a case where the church rules the government, which, in a prodomidely roman catholic country is mostly acceptable however with exceptional circumstances like the one above where the church may have empthaised with the woman, the law can not be emphatic and change to suit the individual. We don’t live in a world where we are told what religion to be so why should the government make us live by rules of a certain faith?
