Regarding Velora's comments, I totally agree. People are notoriously (sometimes outrageously) inconsistent with beliefs that they associate with or draw from religion. There are two logical poles wrt abortion that I can identify (with gradations).

1) There is some point at which we can agree a cluster of cells becomes a person. From that point on, any action against that person (especially abortion) should be considered as against any other person. In case of rape or incest, the life of the unborn person carries identical weight to the life of the mother and nine months of physical and emotional pain of the mother must be balanced against the death of another person. Hard to see any abortion except life-for-life as justified with that perspective. (obviously there is another world of debate as to where exactly that line falls, which is where the abortion = morning after pill = birth control pill discussion lives)

2) There is no point before viability that we can agree to at which a cluster of cells becomes a person. The person hosting the cluster of cells must decide based on her understanding of biology and morality, as well as her personal desires, whether it is a person and she is a mother or it is just a cluster of cells that she is (briefly) hosting.

Thus if a person decides she is a mother-to-be and gets in a car accident and the baby-to-be is killed, it's murder. If a woman decides to have a non-viable cluster of cells removed from her body, it's not a person yet. Totally consistent.

According to the cia factbook online, the money we've spent at war with Iraq is about 10 times their annual cash gdp per year, or about 3 times their cash gdp for the 3 years we've been there. I wonder if we'd have been better off if we'd figured out a way to pump huge slabs of cash directly into the local economy.

One of the early posters on this thread (An Jiaoshi) says that this article makes her rethink her position of "civil unions for everyone". For me, it fits right in. Civil unions should be legal relationships available thru the government. They should be more in the nature of a contract than to imply any sort of religious, moral, or relationship element.

They should assign certain contractual rights and responsibilities such as default power of attorney (get to say what medical treatment the partner gets), default inheritance and child trusteeship, insurance receivers, pension inheritance. There should be certain rights about co-ownership, etc. I'm not a lawyer, I don't know what all this would entail, but it would be specific and limited.

There would have to be 2 key conditions: 1) one to a customer (at a time). You can't have 2 legal default power of attorneys, insurance companies won't accept two 100% covered adults just because I want to, etc. If you decide to dissolve the contract, all these elements are negotiated and/or legislated.

2) No coercive relationships. This is hard to police - how does a brainwashed 19 year old cultie recognize that she's being coerced? Minors should clearly be protected from civil unions or coerced sexual relationships, but beyond that you'd need a lot of evidence to prove coercion.

Otherwise, the government should have no interest whatsoever in what you do with your genitalia or with whom. The government shouldn't care if you celebrate your civil union as a marriage within your church or call it a moon-tryst and celebrate it by killing a chicken at midnight with your coven.

If you choose to have multiple sex partners and convince them to live together as a mega-family, the government has no more say than if you decide to join a community of swingers or join a monastery or put your genitals in a non-standard configuration with someone elses. (see note on coercion above)

In Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut invented the religion of Bokononism, whose sacred texts were calypsos (yes there's a lot more than that). My all time favorite is:

Tiger gotta hunt

Birds gotta fly

Man gotta sit and wonder, why, why, why.

Tiger gott sleep

Bird gotta land

Man gotta tell himself he understand.

Lots of comments on this topic are people wondering why this desire to explain the universe in natural or supernatural terms seems so central to human nature.

I think our big brains evolved to find and solve patterns. Patterns help us predict the future. Is it likely to rain tomorrow? Where can I find game? When will the grain grow? Predicting the future helps our species to thrive.

(We also use pattern finding to navigate social structures, but that's a whole 'nother topic)

(Our restless brains also crave patterns and create them for entertainment (music, art, etc) )

As we seek patterns to explain our world, we often map parts we can't explain (yet) to something we understand - a person or persons doing this for their own reasons. Or, a supernatural spirit of love guiding us benignly. Or a malignant Matrix. Whatever. But the desire to find the ultimate pattern is a very deep part of human nature and there's a darwinian explanation of why we have this pattern matching/creating drive.