True Horizon Blog

It's The Ethics AND The Economy, Stupid

2012-01-16T15:24:00.003-05:00

Pardon my snide sarcasm but this one really gets me going ...

Geron, a biotech research company based in Menlo Park, CA -- and the first to ever be approved to run trials with embryonic stem cells -- just announced that it would abandon its pursuit of embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) therapies to combat paralysis, and instead redirect its efforts toward cancer research programs.

Good.

Though it may sound insensitive to say that, especially to those who are paralyzed and have placed hope in this research, there is a very good reason to do so: Cancer research actually holds the promise of helping people. ESCR promises only to kill some people in order to help other people.

I will not go into the reasons for saying that here. I have already addressed the moral issues that come with ESCR in other places (here, here and here). I would simply like to point out the pure economics of this issue and the utter bankruptcy, both moral and financial, that accompanies the pursuit of embryonic stem cells.

Interestingly, when Geron announced its decision, the company "cited difficult economic conditions, which make it hard to raise money, as the reason for quitting its stem cell work." Now, considering the lofty claims and promises made by ESCR advocates over the years (complete with pictures of Christopher Reeve captioned to include the possibility that he would walk again), it seems hard to imagine that it would be difficult to raise money to fund the effort. Surely, some risk-taking venture capitalist would be more than willing to pony up some cash at the prospect of being rewarded beyond measure by the most exciting research on the planet. But none has done so, and the reason is simple.

It doesn't work.

When you consider the ethical issues that surround ESCR, combined with the fact that adult stem cell research has yielded nearly 80 successful therapies while embryonic stem cells have produced exactly zero, it becomes not only an ethical no-brainer but an economic one as well. The executives who run Geron are not stupid. They know when their research is headed into a black hole. It's not a lousy economy that has stymied them -- it is economic reality.

Which brings us to the federal government -- a bureaucratic and ethical black hole of its own -- for which economic reality carries no weight. As Chuck Colson points out, the issues that prompted Geron to pitch the project have had the opposite effect on the National Institutes of Health which, just before Christmas, quietly made the ethically and fiscally bankrupt decision to spend more money on ESCR by funding three more lines of research.

Sleep well America. Your tax dollars are hard at work. Consequences be damned.

Take The Christ Out Of Christmas

2011-12-15T08:00:00.009-05:00

One of the favorite Christmas decorations in our house has always been a small statue of Santa kneeling at the side of the manger. His hat is off and his head is bowed in reverence. We place the figurine in a position of prominence in our family room, hoping to remind each of us to Whom our thoughts should be directed at this time of year. Unfortunately, I think the reminder is falling on deaf ears.

The music starts in October now. In November my company puts out a memo reminding us that we are allowed to wear "Holiday Ties" with our uniforms beginning December 1st. The mayhem starts in earnest on Black Friday which this year (for the first time I have noticed) was expanded to include Monday and also extended into the following week for on-line orders. Awesome marketing, huh?!

Because this year has been especially troubling to me for many reasons, I dug through my file drawer and found a piece I wrote about in 1998 (before blogging was all the rage). The article was about a Cincinnati story that went national when a local atheist lawyer sued the federal government for violating the establishment of religion clause of the Constitution. Richard Ganulin was troubled about the "separation of church and state." Though this concept is nowhere to be found in the Constitution, Ganulin and his like-minded atheists were upset that Christmas has become a national holiday.

Said Ganulin: "Christmas is a religious holiday and the Congress of the United States is not constitutionally permitted to endorse or aid any religion, purposefully or otherwise, or [promote] entanglement between our government and religious beliefs." He sued to have it stopped and he lost his battle. But don't jingle your bells in celebration just yet.

In that case, U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott did rule against Ganulin. According to Religion Today (December 8, 1999), Judge Dlott decided "that Christmas can be observed as a federal holiday because non-Christians also mark the holiday by celebrating the arrival of Santa Claus. Since non-religious people also observe the holiday, giving federal workers a day off for Christmas does not elevate one religion over another." In her ruling, Judge Dlott invoked a cool, witty, original verse to show that the Christmas holiday does not amount to government establishment of religion:

“Christmas is about joy and giving and sharing.
It is about the child within us; it is mostly about caring.
There is room in this country and in all our hearts, too,
for different convictions and a day off, too.”

Now ain't that sweet. When Judge Dlott dismissed the case the local paper reported that "Santa Claus has at least temporarily saved Christmas, both for Christians and for others."

Really?

The actual goal in this case was to remove the religious nature of Christmas from our culture. Thirteen years later, I think the plaintiff's motives have been wholly met and then some. Judge Dlott justified her ruling with the spine-tingling claim that no reasonable person would see the federal holiday as an endorsement of Christianity in particular or religion in general. Did you get that? No reasonable person would see Christmas as an endorsement of Christianity. Ganulin may have lost his battle in 1998, but in 2011 his side has the war completely in hand.

Santa has crawled into the crib.

So that's why I say we let him have it. I say we take the Christ out of Christmas.

Let them have the pepper spray in the Walmarts and the stampedes through the shopping malls. Let them have the little lights that work when you test them but not when you plug them in. Let them have the frustration and the dramatically higher suicide rate. Let them have their "celebrity advent calendars." Let them have the pressure to get "the right gift." Let them have the stress. Let them have the the unprecedented level of debt that skyrockets during the "holiday season." Let them have the marketing mayhem. Let them have their "Happy Holidays."

I don't want Christ to win this battle.

Christmas is about the miracle of a God so big, He chose to shrink Himself to save us. It's not about "Peace on Earth;" it's about Peace with Earthlings. It's not about us being "happy;" it's about us being treated unfairly -- we deserve wrath but we get forgiveness. Christmas is not about "the child within us;" it's about rebel that is us. Christmas is not about us being cheerful givers of gifts; it's about the God of the Universe coming to die on a splintered cross.

Christmas doesn't want Christ because a God who demands repentance isn't marketable. Christmas doesn't deserve Him ...

... and I don't want Christ in what Christmas has become.

The Man From Pluto Goes To The Moon

2011-12-09T09:00:00.000-05:00

Curt and those blinds he was playing with (along with the "confidence" displayed in the video) go back a long way ... back to a day many years ago when Mary was crazy enough to leave me at home alone with our three boys. As always, I was overwhelmed with trying to do what she did every day -- keep up with them. As I remember, Robby was about 5, Steve 3, and Curt 15 months or so. At one point the chaos had subsided enough that I had generated an unwarranted confidence that everything was under control. Robby and Steve were entertaining each other and Curt was quiet and therefore uncharacteristically not the object of my attention.

I had been so lured into complacency that I was actually sitting at the kitchen table reading a magazine. That's when Robby walked up next to the table and, in a detached kind of way, asked me a weird question, "Daddy, what's the most wrecked up planet?"

I gave Robby a quick glance and realized he wasn't even looking at me. He seemed lost in a thought, staring out the bay window of our eating area. I turned back to my magazine. "I don't know what you mean, Rob."

"I mean, of all the planets, which one is the most wrecked up?"

Noting that he hadn't actually changed his question at all, and buried deep in the article I was reading, I didn't even look up again. I responded with an absent dismissal. "Robby, I have no idea what you mean by 'wrecked up' but, maybe Pluto."

Robby paused for a second and said, "Oh ... then Curt must be from Pluto."

I shot a glance at Robby, wondering what in the world he was talking about. It was at that point I realized that he wasn't just looking out the window -- he was looking at the window, down near the floor. I also realized that there was background noise, and that it was metallic. I leaned forward in my chair to see what had Robby's attention and suddenly it all made sense.

Curt was sitting in front of the window and, with peanut butter and jelly-covered hands, methodically bending and twisting each slat in our brand new, custom-made, aluminum mini-blinds. Curt was a one-man wrecking crew. In Robby's mind, he had to be from Pluto.

Today, Curt is a Private First Class in the U.S. Marine Corps, an infantryman in one of the finest fighting forces in human history. Today he will board a flight to Afghanistan to fight an enemy that is hard to define, ruthless in its methods and mindset, and as elusive as the echoes of gunshots that melt into the jagged mountains that define its home. It doesn't take a planetary scientist to conjure up the images of danger that await him there. But Curt signed up for this with full knowledge of all that -- and he did so willingly. When he told us he wanted to join the Marine Corps, I asked him what would possess him to do such a thing. His answer was simple: "Our country is in a war. Somebody has to fight it. It might as well be me."

He was 17 years old.

I honestly do not comprehend the selfless courage of the young men and women who, since September 11, 2001, have willingly stepped up to defend our way of life. For those of us who served only in a time of peace, there is no way to compare that to what these brave heroes face voluntarily. I know this for sure because three of them are my sons. I do not say that only as a "proud father." I say it as an awed admirer of better men than myself. I thank God for what they do and I pray that every person in this comfortable, safe nation stands similarly in awe, with humble gratitude, for those whose service allows us to forget that they offer it. I just wish there was no need for them to do so.

Robby has been where Curt is going. When he arrived there last July, in the first message he was able to send us, he described the landscape of Afghanistan as a place that "looked like the moon."

Rob's apparent fixation with describing things using Solar System analogies hasn't changed, nor has Curt's silent dedication to the causes he takes on.

The Man from Pluto is headed to the Moon.

Godspeed, Curt. Be safe. Be smart. Don't think you have to come home a hero ... you have been one for quite some time.

On The Ugly Thing

2011-12-05T11:06:00.001-05:00

I've been thinking a lot about war lately, not about the politics of the current war(s) we are involved in (don't get me started on that), but more about the whole idea of war at the point where it really matters -- the tip of the spear where those who actually fight the war have to live.

To a greater degree than any time in human history, modern technology has allowed the vast majority of our society to remain wholly disconnected from the horrors of the wars we fight. Beyond headlines on the CNN crawl at the bottom of your TV screen; beyond USA Today's three-by-three inch text box that regularly contains the names of the most recent casualties; and beyond the Wounded Warrior plea for donations that might show up in your mailbox, the wars in which we are currently engaged don't get any more play than Lindsay Lohan's latest court date. Probably less.

In some cases, even those who are directly involved in combat ... are not directly involved in combat. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in Afghanistan are flown by pilots who sit in front of a video game console at Nellis AFB in Las Vegas and drive home every night for dinner. The aviation assets that are on location in theater can bomb targets they cannot see, from tens of thousands of feet above the clouds, guided by GPS and lasers that make them lethally accurate. Even those who are more directly engaged have standoff capabilities that keep them beyond retaliation range with an unprecedented level of safety. These are all good things and I pray we make them better.

But there is also a moral element to these aspects of modern warfare. How do we square the disconnect between the horror and pain of war and the ability to deliver its consequences with physical and emotional detachment? Has this made war even more barbaric than it already was? Does the future portend an easier justification for war because those who commit to engage in it are able to do so without tangible personal consequence? We need to think about these things and as we do, we need to remain cognizant of the basic reality of war that has never changed in the least. No land is conquered; no enemy is defeated; no aspect of warfare is complete until, and unless, you have boots on the ground.

And there are young men in those boots.

I am as guilty as anyone of taking this for granted so I have no delusions of speaking from some kind of moral high ground. The truth is that my own acknowledgement of this has come in an emotionally painful way -- as I watch my own sons lace those boots up and walk away to war.

The fact is that we do take their sacrifice for granted. We whine about our circumstances, forgetting that whatever we are experiencing is also being experienced by young men burdened just to walk with 80 pounds of combat gear on their backs; or sleeping, without protection from the elements, in the dirt and mud; or wondering if the next step they take will be the one that triggers some diabolically disguised IED. We bow to a consumerist culture and load our holiday shopping carts with things we don't need, while these young men want for a bar of soap. How many people walking through the mall this week do you think ever give these realities a second thought -- or even a first.

This is not meant to induce a guilt-trip on anyone. My point is simply to try to remind myself to see the reality of war through the eyes of those who are most directly impacted by it and to reflect on why they fight. Though many dismiss this aspect of the mindset, it is a real one:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

It has become a cliche to say but I don't know how else to explain it: they go to fight for something bigger than themselves. Very few may articulate it even if challenged to do so, but it is a motivation toward honor and toward protecting a comfortable way of life, not just because it is "comfortable," but because it represents the best (even if imperfect) kind of society flawed human beings can hope to live in. It is this idealism that grounds the cause of liberty and justice even if some (me being one) disagree about how we go about trying to spread it around the world.

Sebastian Junger verifies this in his book, War:

Self-sacrifice in defense of one's community is virtually universal among humans, extolled in myths and legends all over the world, and undoubtedly ancient. No community can protect itself unless a certain portion of its youth decide they are willing to risk their lives in its defense. (242)

They fight for us.

Yes, politicians and leaders can, and do, manipulate this sentiment. And, yes, their doing so is the lowest form of demagoguery. But that doesn't change the fact that it is there. Argue about our wars we must, but there is no denying this idealistic kind of love is a part of what motivates them to put the boots on in the first place.

Once the boots are on, however, the idealism vanishes. After more than a year of being embedded with Army units in Afghanistan, Junger also goes on to identify a completely different aspect of the war -- the one that most of us will never experience or completely understand:

What the Army sociologists, with their clipboards and their questions and their endless metanalyses slowly came to understand was that courage was love. In war, neither could exist without the other, and that in a sense they were just different ways of saying the same thing ... the primary motivation in combat (other than "ending the task" which meant they could go home) was "solidarity with the group." That far outweighed self-preservation or idealism as a motivator. (239-240)

They fight for each other. It's just another form of sacrificial love.

We are afforded the luxury of living our lives in blissful ignorance of the real cost of war. We should be thankful for that. But I pray that none of us take that blissful ignorance for granted. Someone has to face the ugliness of war and it would do us all well to stop ...

... and remember how and why they do it.

Time To Put Up

2011-11-13T13:03:00.003-05:00

An internal debate among Christians

I have said many times before that I subscribe to an ancient view of the earth. I believe the Old Earth (OE) view is perfectly compatible with the words of the Bible and overwhelmingly supported by modern science. Some of my fellow Christians disagree. Their Young Earth (YE) view insists that the Bible clearly states that God created the earth in 7 consecutive 24-hour days just about 6000 years ago. While I usually do my best to avoid the divisive nastiness that often accompanies this topic, I have always tried to make two points about it:

1) The really important issue we face in our science-worshipping, Naturalistic culture is not about when God created; it is that God created. This is the point the culture denies but that both YE and OE believers can agree on.

2) There are important theological considerations to the answer we arrive at that we cannot ignore and we need to seek the truth of the matter. The OE/YE topic should be an internal debate between respectful Christians who sincerely disagree.

Well, recently someone called me to task on the second point and challenged me to debate a YE Christian about this very topic. Put up or shut up I think they call it. So I will put up.

On March 22, 2012 I will debate Tim Chaffey of Answers In Genesis at Cincinnati Christian High School. For the record, I have never been involved in a public debate about anything so this is a stretch for me. But I believe the topic is too important for our young people to understand to allow me to avoid this opportunity. Mr. Chaffey has been publicly defending the YE view for several years and has even co-authored a book (with Jason Lisle) about this topic. I am reading it now. This allows me to study Mr. Chaffey's arguments and research OE responses to them. So, in order to also stand behind my belief that these kinds of debates ought to be respectful, and in the interest of fairness, I plan to offer a series of blog posts about the various arguments I plan to make in the debate. While I am sure he won't be caught off guard or surprised by any of these, and because I haven't written a book on the subject, this is the only way I know to give Mr. Chaffey the courtesy of being able to prepare to respond to my arguments just as I am preparing to respond to his.

For those who are interested, most of the material I utilize originates with Reasons to Believe, a scientific apologetics ministry based in the Los Angeles area. Mr. Chaffey is very familiar with their work. Though the details have yet to be established, the major topics we plan to debate are:

The Age of the Earth
The meaning of the Hebrew word for "day" (yom) in the creation account
Death before the fall of Adam & Eve
The Great Flood of Noah

These are the topics I will offer blog posts about.

I invite anyone who is interested in this type of thing to check out some resources and, if you live anywhere in the Cincinnati area, try to attend the debate on March 22, 2012. I will provide details about both of these in my future posts and I will also provide Mr. Chaffey with links to each.

My goal with all this is simple -- that we all honorably and respectfully seek the Truth.

God Will Hunting

2011-11-10T08:00:00.005-05:00

It is not uncommon to hear fellow Christians, as they ponder a difficult life decision, agonizing out loud about their sincere desire to “find God’s will for their life.” Their consternation is understandable, especially in an environment where “seeking God’s will” has become the standard method of decision making within the Christian culture. The process can be confusing and terrifying. After all, what if they make the wrong choice by picking the wrong place to live, the wrong job, or, most dauntingly, the wrong spouse? If they marry the wrong person that means that their spouse should have married someone else who in turn also married the wrong person – and the string of wrongly chosen spouses soon multiplies exponentially. Something must be awry in a view that allows the possibility that one wrong decision could lead to consequences of such catastrophic, ungodly proportions. How do we prevent the calamity and avoid the uncertainty? Is decision making really supposed to be this daunting?

Making decisions is hard enough. We certainly do not need to add to it the burden of evaluating our options against a false understanding of whether or not we have properly uncovered the Divine Plan. The simple fact is that any of us can assess our alignment to God’s Will with clear assurance. To understand why this is so, we need only evaluate this commonly accepted way of thinking against a biblical understanding of the nature of God’s will.

“If there really is a perfect will of God we are meant to discover, in which we will find tremendous freedom and fulfillment, why does it seem that everyone looking for God’s will is in such bondage and confusion?”

~ Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something

A Hidden Message

The contemporary model of Christian decision-making amounts to something like a treasure hunt. It sees God’s will as a secret blueprint that has been hidden from plain sight and can only be accessed by our imploring God to reveal it to us in doses small enough to protect us from misusing it. Through quietly whispered revelation and guidance, God assures us that we are following the right path.

Under this method, God’s “plan for our life” is a road map we must decipher by painstaking deliberation. The pressure is on the believer to uncover this plan correctly or risk straying from the course God has mapped out. Within this kind of model, our distress is understandable. The pressure to conform to the right plan is enormous because the treasure we are seeking is not just some worldly, material payoff – it is the very purpose of our life.

There are two problems with this model. The first is that it becomes an exercise in trying to see the future – a futile errand (Ecclesiastes 7:14, 8:7) for those who are not ordained prophets endowed with all the authority and responsibility that comes with that position. The second is that this decision making model is nowhere to be found in the Bible.

God’s Two Wills

God does have a Sovereign Will. It was planned before the beginning of the universe, placed in motion at the moment of creation, and it will play out the in exactly way the Creator intended. We can be sure of that. We can also be sure that we cannot know what it is ahead of time and that there is nothing we can do to change it.

This sovereign will is described in biblical passages about God’s foreknowledge, purposes, and in the concept of predestination. We can see evidence of each of these, but never by looking forward. The fact is that there is only one way to recognize God’s sovereign will – by looking backward at the amazing “coincidences” we have experienced and the ways in which our lives have worked out to bring us to where we are in the present.

There are times when we do not appreciate this aspect of God’s will. We want to know how things are going to turn out. Our motives for this desire may be good ones. We sincerely want to stay aligned with God’s purposes, avoid pain and hardship, or even want to avoid hurting others. But the fact remains that this desire, no matter how well motivated, amounts to an unwarranted preoccupation with the future.

There is second aspect of God’s will that is also crystal clear: “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified” (1 Thessalonians 4:3). This is God’s Moral Will and it is the ongoing project, not to decipher the future he has in store for us, but to conform to his likeness. Theologians refer to this process as sanctification. It is the transformation that begins with the renewing of our minds and continues to mold our will to align with “his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2). It is a life which manifests the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22). God’s moral will is that we reflect the character of Christ.

The Wisdom Model

Taking these two aspects of God’s will into account, the biblical model of decision-making is simple and direct. When it comes to making decisions about our lives, we must recognize that God’s sovereign purposes will always be carried out. Along the way, any life choices we consider must be consistent with God’s moral will. In other words, God’s desire is not about the specifics of where we go or what we do; it is about who we are. It is about the person we are becoming. If the decisions we make are in accordance with God’s moral standards, we are free to do whatever we want to do. Our motivation should not be to receive directions, but to develop wisdom.

This is not to deny that God can speak to anyone at any time. God is God, after all. But the biblical precedent for his doing so shows no evidence that the standard practice of his followers was to await personal messages from God after groveling for his guidance. Quite the opposite. As apologist Greg Koukl puts it, an examination of the record shows that personalized guidance in the bible is not only rare but an intrusion into the lives of those who receive it. It is most certainly not an answer they obtain after pleading and then “waiting quietly” for direction. God’s voice is supernatural and therefore unmistakable, even to an unregenerate persecutor of the church like Paul on the Road to Damascus. In short, if and when God speaks to us, there will be no doubt who is talking, or what he is trying to say.

The way in which we approach decisions about our lives need not be disconcerting or overwhelming. As long as the options we consider do not violate God’s moral boundaries, the biblical decision making model trusts the wisdom of godly believers to pursue Christ-like aspirations. Once we understand that, decision-making becomes a joyous process that we learn to pursue with confident humility. Instead of approaching difficult life decisions with fear and trembling, we do so in pursuit of a God-centered lifestyle in which we will “…be joyful always, pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for [us] in Christ Jesus (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

_______________________________

“This idea of guidance is actually a novelty among orthodox evangelicals [that] does not go back further than the last century ... It has led people to so much foolish action on the one hand, and so much foolish inaction on the other ... that it has to be seen as discredited.”

~ J. I. Packer

Hot Tub Religion

“We should spend more time trying to figure out how to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God (Micah 6:8) as a doctor or lawyer and less time worrying about whether God wants us to be a doctor or lawyer.”

~ Kevin DeYoung

Just Do Something

“We find God’s will for our lives by obeying his commandments, including his commandment to seek wisdom. For he is a good father, and he does not want his children to grow up to be fools.”

~ Phillip Cary

Good News For Anxious Christians

_______________________________

If this is an issue you might want to delve into further, I would suggest the following resources that I found extremely helpful (and from which I derived the ideas for this article).

Greg Koukl, Decision Making And The Will Of God
Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something
Phillip Cary, Good News For Anxious Christians

Pink Ties and Little White Lies

2011-10-17T16:01:00.001-04:00

It is fashionable these days to show one's support for breast cancer research by going "pink." The NFL does it. My employer promotes it by allowing our pilots to wear pink ties with their normally dull black and white uniforms, while flight attendants get to wear pink shirts and blue jeans to work. Even some of our airplanes sport pink paint jobs for the cure. It is a great cause to seek to eradicate a horrible disease and I fully support the effort.

All that said, and at the risk of making myself the bad guy by throwing cold water on the cause, I believe it is imperative that those who choose to support the cause are aware of the full story behind breast cancer's most notable and public opponent -- the Susan G. Komen Foundation. This is an organization that does great work but, as my colleague at the Life Training Institute, Jay Watts, has put it, it has become more supportive of a narrative its friends follow about the world than the cause it is meant to champion.

My beef with Susan G. Komen is that, by its own admission:

"Annually, Komen Affiliates fund programs that provide breast health education and breast screenings for hundreds of thousands of low-income, uninsured, or medically under-served women via nearly 2,000 local organizations, including 19 Planned Parenthood programs."

Since this admission is buried deep in the Komen website and very difficult to find, I can save you the trouble. You can read Komen's full statement about this issue here: (Planned Parenthood Letter). Interestingly, in the place where this letter is found you can also read another letter from a north Texas pro-lifer who also supports Komen. In his letter, Norman Roberts assures us that:

As Christians, we have special obligations toward the less well-off. Those obligations would include doing what we reasonably can to see that these women get the needed mammograms. We could and should advocate that Komen affiliates make grants to groups untainted by abortion. We could donate to alternate groups directly, but there is a logical trap here. No matter how we fund these programs, in theory it frees objectionable groups of the burden and allows them to use other money for immoral purposes. The alternative is to force women to apply for needed services through groups we find unacceptable or not get the services at all. The grants in question represent a tiny fraction of the funds Komen raises, all of which, as best I can determine, go to an unequivocally noble cause.

He also makes the claim that the funds allocated by Komen to Planned Parenthood are audited carefully to ensure that they are only used for breast cancer screenings etc. I have no reason to doubt this. But it does not take much of an imagination to see that Planned Parenthood's ability to fund abortion "services" is enhanced by income they receive from foundations like Komen, even if those funds are designated for another purpose.

Both Roberts and Komen justify the foundation's support of Planned Parenthood by allowing the noble narrative of "caring for the poor" to trump the mission Komen claims to pursue because the questionable programs are only "a tiny fraction" of the immoral work that Planned Parenthood does. This is the most tragic and egregious aspect of this story -- Komen and its donors downplay their support of Planned Parenthood even as Planned Parenthood continues to promote both abortion and abortifacient oral contraceptives (OC) that increase the risk of breast cancer to women who use them. Research confirms the fact that:

women who start OCs before age 18 multiply their risk of TNBC by 3.7 times and recent users of OCs within the last one to five years multiply their risk by 4.2 times. TNBC is an aggressive form of breast cancer associated with high mortality.

"Although the study was published nine months ago," observed Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer," the NCI, the American Cancer Society, Susan G. Komen for the Cure and other cancer fundraising businesses have made no efforts to reduce breast cancer rates by issuing nationwide warnings to women." (Source: Medical News Today story, "Researcher Finally Admits Abortion Raises Breast Cancer Risk In Study That Fingers Oral Contraceptives As A Probable Cause Of Breast Cancer")

Subsidizing a "tiny fraction" of a moral evil still constitutes a moral evil. Caring for and assisting poor women with the means to protect and prevent breast cancer does not entail providing that subsidy. Please continue to "go pink." Please, please, please, by all means, donate your time, talents and finances to support the fight against breast cancer. But, until it makes the choice to end its connection with Planned Parenthood, offer that support to any source except the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

Answering The Same Sex "Marriage" Question

2011-10-13T08:00:00.007-04:00

If you want to hear the questions same-sex "marriage" proponents are asking ... and also get a clinic in how to respond to each of them, I suggest the Stand To Reason podcast of October 3, 2011 (available by clicking on the date in preceding link)

Greg Koukl's discussion with a caller on this issue begins at 2:15:45 and continues to 2:33:02. It is an especially clear and concise response. In this exchange, Greg does not address the biblical or moral aspects of the question -- there are other places to obtain that kind of information. He only speaks to the secular, legal case against same-sex "marriage." I think it is something anyone who is serious about being able to discuss the issue should hear. Check it out if you're interested.

Biblical Glass Houses?

2011-10-10T18:40:00.002-04:00

Monday is religious opinion day in today's USA Today "Forum" section. Though there are occasionally some fair, thoughtful articles here, this weekly column is usually my go-to source for blogging material -- and usually not because the column in question is fair to Christianity. Today is one of those days.

Tom Krattenmaker's ("a Portland-based writer specializing in religion and public life") piece is titled, "Holy Texts As Unholy Weapons," and its tagline warns us that "Whether it's the Bible or the Quran, believers must police acts of good and evil" -- the point being that the books associated with the two incompatible (editor's note) religions are really not all that different. "Let's face it," says Krattenmaker, "Whether it's Christians or Muslims, stone-throwers ought to realize that their own houses are glass." Both the Bible and the Quran have an equal culpability for condoning and justifying the violence and gruesomeness they contain. Being good pluralists, we should realize this and never engage in the:

too-common practice ... of plucking certain passages from the Quran (while ignoring the many peace-preaching verses) and marshaling them as "proof" that Islam is inherently violent.

Well, I am not one whose innocence allows me to throw stones. But I also reject the idea that Krattenmaker's admonition leaves me stranded in a glass house. I have written a little on this topic before (here and here), so I just want to respond with two points.

First, there is no doubt that the biblical passages that record God's command to wipe the Amalekites and Amorites off the face of the earth are emotionally difficult to defend. When the Israelites are told to destroy every man, woman, and child of some tribe, it is hard to square with our view of a loving God we honor and serve. But there are a few things to note here:

The utter evil that infused these cultures is hard to imagine. These were people who sacrificed small children by burning them alive. They had been given multiple chances to change their ways and warnings about what would befall them if they didn't. The sacrificial and sexually-charged societies (to include the practice of bestiality) they represented had infused these practices into many generations of inhabitants and there was every indication that their ways of thinking had infected the mindset of the entire society.
God also allowed his own people, the Israelites, to be decimated when they took up these same practices of the abhorrently evil cultures that surrounded them.
The language that is used is obviously hyperbole. How do I know this? As Paul Copan points out in his recent book, Is God a Moral Monster?, the same people who were supposed to be obliterated in these relentless attacks continue to crop up later in biblical history! The simple fact is that these instructions were not carried out to the extent the language suggests they were.

We rightfully cringe at the command to obliterate an entire community of people, and I do not in any way diminish our responsibility to explain these difficult biblical passages. Nor do I relish having to do so myself. But the simple fact is that the loving, bearded, white-robed God we want to imagine as a our cosmic grandfather is also the Creator of the universe. He not only brought all reality into existence and can therefore do with it as He pleases, but his perfection demands that justice be done for those who rebel against Him. Justice is a scary concept when you are on the deserving end. And justice is not fairness. In fact, those who are pardoned of their rebellion against God get precisely what they do not deserve. If anyone is being treated unfairly in these stories, it is those who are spared from God's justice.

Second, conduct a thought experiment for a minute by considering the teachings of Jesus. Which of those teachings would lead one to believe that following Him entailed engaging in the violent behavior that Islamists perpetuate every day? The answer of course is, "None."

What Krattenmaker conveniently leaves out of his admonition against "proof-texting" the Quran, is the doctrine of abrogation that the Quran explicitly spells out. As I've said before:

This Islamic doctrine claims states that those parts of the Quran written after 622 AD (when Muhammad returned to Medina) overrule earlier verses. When you read these passages you find that it is the later passages that contain the commands to:
"fight and slay the unbelievers wherever you find them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem of war" (Surah 9, verse 5) or ...

"Fight those who do not believe in Allah nor the Last Day, nor So, nor hold that forbidden which has been forbidden by Allah and His Apostle, nor acknowledge the religion of truth (Islam), even if they are of the 40 people of the Book, until they pay the jizya (Islamic tax) with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."

These passages are not "proof-texts" that are used to ignore the peaceful passages we find in the Quran; they are passages that the Quran itself says have been abrogated by Muhammed's newer, more violent, teachings.

Yes there are gruesome passages in the Bible. But these are descriptive passages that tell us the story of what happened in history. Conversely, the violence of the Quran is prescriptive of the remedies Muhammed passed down for his followers to carry out on the infidels that defied his teachings. One has to betray the teachings of Jesus to engage in violence. But when Muslims engage in violence, they are simply following Muhammed's prescription for the perpetuation of Islam.

One doesn't have to live in a glass house to see the difference.

Who's Being Unreasonable?

2011-09-27T15:24:00.002-04:00

"It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense, and can't see things as they are."

G.K. Chesterton's character, Father Brown

A favorite charge leveled at religious believers by those who denounce their belief system is that they are ignorant, gullible, irrational and, on Richard Dawkins' view, "deluded." As comedian Bill Maher puts it, "You can't be a rational person six days of the week and put on a suit and make rational decisions and go to work and, on one day of the week, go to a building and think you're drinking the blood of a 2,000-year-old space god." To go along with the discussion of doubt, I dug up a recent Wall Street Journal article that touches on this topic. Titled, "What Americans Really Believe," the piece reports on ...

a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University [in September, which] shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology. It also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians.

Hmmm. It is interesting to me that folks like Maher and Dawkins want to base their knowledge of the world solely on rationalism which they equate with scientific (as opposed to scientific, philosophical and theological) arguments. In that light, they are content to lob insulting assertions about the intellectual vacuousness of religious folks. But the research offered here by the WSJ is based on research studies done by ... scientists. So, instead of just lobbing insults, I propose that we look at the actual data.

The Gallup Organization recently polled Americans about questions like: Do dreams foretell the future? Did ancient advanced civilizations such as Atlantis exist? Can places be haunted? Is it possible to communicate with the dead? Will creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster someday be discovered by science?

31% of people who never worship expressed strong belief in these things.
Only 8% of people who attend a house of worship more than once a week did.

And here's a favorite of mine: "While increased church attendance and membership in a conservative denomination has a powerful negative effect on paranormal beliefs, higher education doesn't. Two years ago two professors published another study in Skeptical Inquirer showing that ...":

Less than one-quarter of college freshmen surveyed expressed a general belief in such superstitions as ghosts, psychic healing, haunted houses, demonic possession, clairvoyance and witches
The figure jumped to 31% of college seniors and 34% of graduate students.

In summary then, religious and more educated people are less likely to hold to what Maher and Dawkins might call "irrational" beliefs. This data is in direct opposition to the claims they make. In fact, Maher himself ...

... is a fervent advocate of pseudoscience ... Mr. Maher told David Letterman -- a quintuple bypass survivor -- to stop taking the pills that his doctor had prescribed for him. He proudly stated that he didn't accept Western medicine. On his HBO show in 2005, Mr. Maher said: "I don't believe in vaccination. . . . Another theory that I think is flawed, that we go by is the Louis Pasteur [germ] theory." He has told CNN's Larry King that he won't take aspirin because he believes it is lethal and that he doesn't even believe the Salk vaccine eradicated polio.

I also find it interesting that some of the most influential people in our culture are the Hollywood elites who personally and professionally (through their artistic work) mock religious people for their archaic anti-rationalism. These are the anointed few who, regardless of their education or background, are regularly called on to: lecture us about our duty to all kinds of justice issues; testify before Congress about scientific and cultural issues because they may have made a movie about them; and find increasingly inventive ways to wedge their agenda into media meant to influence us to think the way they do. At the same time, one of their most popular belief systems (I hesitate to use the term religion) is Scientology, the brain-child of science fiction writer, L. Ron Hubbard.

Hubbard proposes that emotional duress in an individual's life is caused by an accumulation of unpleasant memories and traumatic incidents, some of which predated the life of the human. In Scientology, he further stated that spirits (or "thetans") have existed for tens of trillions of years (several orders of magnitude greater than the scientifically accepted estimate of the age of the universe). During that time, Hubbard says that thetans have been exposed to a vast number of traumatic incidents and have made a great many decisions that influence their present state. According to Hubbard, thetans were conditioned by extraterrestrial dictatorships such as Helatrobus in an attempt to brainwash and control the population ... Among these advanced teachings is the story of Xenu (sometimes Xemu), introduced as an alien ruler of the "Galactic Confederacy." According to this story, 75 million years ago Xenu brought billions of people to Earth in spacecraft resembling Douglas DC-8 airliners, stacked them around volcanoes and detonated hydrogen bombs in the volcanoes. The thetans then clustered together, stuck to the bodies of the living, and continue to do this today.

This is just a short summary of the beliefs of Scientology, a "religion" brought to us by and for the enlightened elite who make a game of mocking traditional faith. Without going into any more detail, I find it amazing that those who believe nonsense like this could look down their collective noses at anyone who holds to Christianity.

I bring all this up for a very important reason: Nobody believes in nothing.

It seems that we humans have some kind of innate propensity to believe in something outside ourselves that serves to validate and give meaning to our existence. If not the commonly recognized religions that have been around since humankind came on the scene, we will gravitate to something bizarre or even dangerous. It is hard to justify this human characteristic outside of some kind of theistic/deistic reality. I don't see any way to explain it within a naturalistic worldview.

I suppose one could appeal to some kind of Darwinian explanation that serves to promote the will to survive, but I don't see how. A belief in abstract concepts like: other-than-physical reality; life after death; the need to rectify our moral failings; or even the need to "better ourselves," do not square with a purely deterministic, mechanical world.

Instead, it seems more "rational" to comprehend and seek a better form of reality that draws us its way because there actually is one. I can't fully explain this human characteristic otherwise. I don't think this view is irrational at all, especially if it also serves to explain the metaphysical aspects of rationality we all seem to understand innately. Or, to quote one who put it better than I ever could:

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

~ C. S. Lewis

Reasoned Pro-Life Apologetics Meets Raving Atheist

2011-08-20T23:46:00.000-04:00

I think it is unfortunate that many well-meaning pro-lifers defend their position by leading with the Bible. They attempt to ground their view in the authority of the Bible and expect their opponents to respect that authority because it is the Word of God. While I share their high view of Scripture and its unarguable support for all things pro-life, there are a couple tactical problems with this approach. For one, the Bible doesn't have much to say about the particulars of abortion itself. Though this "silence" in no way equals consent, it becomes difficult to make the case when you are left having to defend what opponents might call "tangential" evidence that the Bible finds the act of abortion deplorable. You end up in a debate about biblical inerrancy, or the proper translation of some specific word, or the cultural context of a passage -- instead of defending the plain facts about the unborn's value as a full-fledged member of the human family.

Secondly, and for more tactically important reasons, most of those who would justify abortion couldn't really care less what the Bible says about anything anyway. They dismiss your argument with the wave of a hand and avoid even engaging it because they categorize your position as just another religious claim that has no bearing on reality.

For these reasons it is tactically advisable to first ask the question -- "What is the unborn?" -- and then offer scientific, philosophical and moral reasoning to answer it. That is what we do at LTI and that is why we do it.

But beyond the obvious obligation we have as thinking human beings to clarify the status, and defend the value, of innocent, unborn human life, engaging in the pro-life project is also a way to make the case for the truth of Christianity in general. It stands to reason that if the scientific, philosophical, and moral arguments we offer in defense of the humanity of the unborn also happen to align exactly with the biblical notion of what it means to be a human being made "in the image of God," then the Bible might also have something to say about other things of importance.

This is a point Scott Klusendorf makes repeatedly but it was recently driven home in a very concrete way by, of all people, a hard core atheist in the most recent issue of Salvo magazine. A secular skeptic, law school professor, renowned blogger, and mocker of deluded "Godiots," the "Raving Atheist" attended a blogger party where he serendipitously sat next to a Catholic blogger named Benjamin. As the "Raving Atheist" explains:

At one point the conversation turned to abortion, and I asked Benjamin's opinion of the practice. I was stunned. Here was a kind, affable, and cogently reasonable human being who nonetheless believed that abortion was murder. To the limited extent I had previously considered the issue, I believed abortion to be completely acceptable, the mere disposal of a lump of cells, perhaps akin to clipping fingernails.

This unsettling exchange spurred me to further investigate the issue on Benjamin's blog. I noticed that pro-choice Christians did not employ scientific or rational arguments but relied on a confused set of "spiritual" platitudes. More significantly, the pro-choice atheistic blogosphere also fell short in its analysis of abortion. The supposedly "reality-based" community either dismissed abortion as a "religious issue" or paradoxically claimed that pro-life principles were contrary to religious doctrine. Having formerly equated atheism with reason, I was slowly growing uncertain of the value of godlessness in the search for truth.

Though the "Raving Atheist" continued to rave, there was now a stone in his God-rejecting shoe, placed there by a reasoned defense of the pro-life view. He couldn't disconnect himself from it and later admitted that the "selfless dedication [of pro-life advocates] to their cause moved [him] deeply." Later, he met a woman named Ashli whose work in pregnancy care drew him to further consider the pro-life position. Soon thereafter, the "Raving Atheist" became, in part, a pro-life blogsite ...

[This] stirred an angry mutiny among my readers. But I had become convinced that the secular world had it wrong on the very foundational issue of life ... The tangible expression of pro-life work was life itself. It was becoming clear to me that people who lived out their Christian faith were happier and better people as a result ... In June 2006 I saw [a] woman's sonogram ripen into a baby. In honor of Ashli's efforts, I vowed that the birth of the child would be the death of atheism on my blog. Late that month I announced that I would no longer mock God on my site.

And the rest, as they say, is history. The hard-core atheist became open to considering theism because of his encounters with reasoned pro-life thought. Today he is a Christian theist.

To be sure, there were other factors that contributed to the "Raving Atheist's" conversion but the simple fact remains that it was the cogency of the Case For Life and the concrete reality of the injustice of abortion that led him to doubt his atheism and consider a worldview that offered a better explanation for the world as we know and experience it.

--------------------------
For those who are interested in an eclectic approach to a defense of the Christian worldview that is far from the usual dry, stodgy material most people associate with topics like philosophy and Christian apologetics, I would highly recommend at least checking out an issue of Salvo -- a magazine produced by The Fellowship of St. James, which also publishes Touchstone. For what it's worth, I subscribe to both magazines and read every issue cover-to-cover. Salvo is targeted for a younger, more culturally connected audience. It is very well-written and often very, very clever.

More Clarity, Less Labeling

2011-07-16T18:04:00.001-04:00

Emerging ... Emergent ... Religious Right ... Postmodern ... Post-Christian ... Social Justice ... Universalism ... Community ... Missional ...

Labels are easy to put on people and "movements" but my experience has been that most of us who stick the labels on things (and, yes, I have been guilty of doing just that) may not understand exactly what the labels mean. To attach labels to people or ideas without intimate knowledge of the people or their ideas is to engage in sloganeering -- bumper sticker argumentation -- that doesn't get anyone anywhere. Seriously, has anyone ever changed your mind -- or have you ever changed anyone else's mind -- about anything by trading slogans or by failing to listen before you speak.

Neither have I.

Secondly, attaching labels to people or "movements" is dangerous because we may be labeling things using different terms. It is unwise -- and unfair -- to hold someone accountable to an idea they don't believe in simply because you have labeled them with your definition of that that idea.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

There will be more (much more, I suspect) to follow on this subject but I want to connect two parallel issues that have just converged for me where this is concerned. These are two issues that, until I sought clarification about them, I did not even realize were related.

The first is about a person -- a guy whom I have respected even if I haven't really known him personally -- who had a great, positive influence on my oldest son when he was in high school. His name is Chris Marshall and he was a Bible teacher and pastor at my son's school. He started a home church many years ago that my son attended for Bible study and to share a sense of community with his classmates. For reasons that I never fully understood (and still don't) this whole "home church" idea, and Chris Marshall himself, became a source of controversy. Some ideas Chris was espousing were seen as unorthodox, if not downright heretical. Chris was labeled a "postmodernist" and thereby took on all the baggage and assumptions that go with that label. He wrote a blog at the time that many of his "labelers" took exception to. Even Chris has since admitted that he probably crossed some boundaries on his blog and that he could have handled some things differently, but to be honest, those issues are not my concern.

There is way more to the story but the bottom line is that the high school and Chris came to a mutual agreement that it was time for him to go. He moved on and has continued in ministry. He kept writing his blog and I began reading it periodically. Chris seemed a bit more "liberal" in his worldview than I was -- a bit unorthodox in his views of church and the way we live out our Christianity -- but I never read anything that made me cringe. In fact, I never read anything that I even found to be the least bit objectionable. Chris just seemed to have a point of view I had never heard or considered before. Yet, the label Chris lived with remained even as the whole story never made sense to me. Recently, his name started resurfacing in places I didn't expect to see it. And, because I still respected and appreciated the impact Chris had on my son, I decided to resort to a radical way of trying to resolve these conundrums in my own mind.

I went and talked to Chris Marshall.

Crazy, I know.

Our conversation was enlightening and enjoyable. I was fascinated by much of what Chris had to say. I heard more background on his story, and have since learned even more (read Chris's background story at his blog here: The Wild Goose). I even learned things from Chris about my own son's heart for others that I had never really known. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Chris and I probably agree on more things than we disagree on. I found that he had some unique ways of approaching how we "do church," and about how we share our faith. It would be silly to say that some miraculous new friendship was born that morning, and I can only speak for myself, but I came away from our conversation feeling like I had been missing out on a relationship with someone from whom I had much to learn.

Which brings me to my second point.

Christian apologetics -- defending the truth of Christianity -- has been a passion of mine for many years now. If I read a book, it's theme is usually apologetics-related. And I read lots of books. I have had limited success teaching and talking to small (and a few large) groups of people about apologetic topics like: origins of the universe and life, biology, biochemistry, intelligent design, pro-life issues, miracles, morality, the reliability of the Bible, or relativism. I have gone to training seminars to better myself, not only in my level of knowledge about these topics, but in how to present the information. I have even had some published articles on these topics in some highly reputable outlets for such discussions.

Tangible positive results from my efforts? Not so much.

My attempts to address these issues with young men and women are motivated by what I consider to be a scary statistic -- that 75% of them walk away from the faith once they leave home -- and I want to do my part to address that statistic. I want to help them be able "to give a reason for the hope that they have." But lecturing them or showing them a powerpoint slide show is not cutting it with a vast majority of these young folks. I have felt like a complete failure at times or at least felt like I was unable to connect for some lasting impact. Overall, I began to question my methods and whether or not I am even gifted enough at doing apologetics to consider my efforts worthwhile.

I've been looking for a new way to make the case. A new way to make these philosophical and sometimes nuanced discussions relevant. A new way to help people who are really seeking answers find the applicable information, remember it, and apply it to their lives. I even began writing a book proposal for an idea I've had to connect the truth claims and foundational issues of Christianity with the ways we live our lives in the real world. I do this because I think it's too important to just keep doing the same thing while expecting a better result, but never getting it. The thing is that I don't seem to see many other apologists making inroads in these areas either. It's frustrating.

That's when I talked to Chris Marshall. And then I read the second installment in his latest blog post about some awakenings he has had lately (You can read that here: The Wild Goose, Pt. 2) about what has been labeled the "Emergent Church" and some of its leaders. What I found is that Chris Marshall shares my heart for seekers and my passion for honoring the heart of the Christian faith. Not only so, but Chris has found a way to do exactly what I have thought needs to be done -- a way to reach what seems like a "whatever" culture with the Truth of our mutual faith (more on both of these topics later in another post).

We may have arrived at our point of connection from wildly differing paths and points of view. We may completely disagree on some specific issues. I honestly don't have a clue. But what I know is that Chris Marshall and I are on a shared mission. Maybe we will complement one another's efforts in that mission. Maybe we'll continue down parallel paths. But in the end, we are headed toward the same goal because we share a commitment to the same Savior.

I have a lot to learn from Chris Marshall. And I never would have known that if I had just accepted the labels. We don't need labels. We need clarity so that we can find commonality.

Civil Discourse on Abortion

2011-07-11T12:00:00.004-04:00

If you are interested in how to make the case for protecting unborn human life, I suggest you take the time to watch this debate between my friend, Scott Klusendorf, President of the Life Training Institute and the former President of the ACLU, Nadine Strossen.

Very informative and exemplary about how such a discussion can, and should, take place.

Abortion Debate at Westmont College from Randy Alcorn on Vimeo.

Who's Helpless Now?

2011-07-08T00:01:00.006-04:00

I will never forget the day we put our infant son on the carpet in front of our family room fireplace just a few weeks after we brought him home from the Naval Hospital at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, NC. He struggled to lift his head. His body wiggled and his legs kicked, but he didn't move an inch. I was the invincible Marine attack pilot but watching him there literally drove me to tears. I was overwhelmed -- just like I was for every one of my 5 boys when they were infants -- by his utter helplessness.

He could not do anything for himself. I was overcome by the realization that his survival was totally dependent on the care Mary and I would give him. He literally couldn't live without us. As a new dad, the enormity of that responsibility was crushing. It took my breath away. I wanted to leave the room ... but I couldn't leave him alone.

Today that little infant is a 6' 1", 23 year-old, Infantry/Ranger qualified, 2nd Lieutenant in the Army's 4th Brigade, 101st Airborne 'Screamin Eagles' Division (please don't tell him, but I think he might be able to beat me up). More importantly, this is the day that young man is leaving for Afghanistan -- for FOB Sharana in the eastern province of Paktika on the Pakistan border.

After all the heart-warming West Point parades; after all the Army-Navy Game grief that has been exchanged; after all the academics that seemed so much like any other college; after all the military training he's undergone while we watched in knowing denial of its purpose -- today it all becomes real. Today my son gladly accepts the duty he committed himself to 5 years ago -- the duty to protect a way of life that I too often take for granted.

The wheel of history continues to turn but today that wheel seems upside down. Today my son feels invincible ... and I am the helpless one.

Godspeed, Rob.

A Tale Of Two Caseys

2011-07-06T18:20:00.001-04:00

I wrote about this issue in December 2008 but it seems appropriate to bring it up again in light of the recent media hysteria surrounding a jury verdict some may have heard about. Though the verdict has outraged numerous members of our society, the cognitive dissonance accompanying the case hasn't changed one bit. So, I offer a hypothetical comparison of what we might expect to be the public reaction by many of the same people to two different "Casey Tales":

Tale One

Cayley Anthony

A two year-old little girl, incapable of surviving on her own, disappears. Her rotting remains are found months later in the woods near her home. An investigation reveals that the little girl was either abducted, deliberately disposed of, or so badly neglected that she died a tortuous death at the hand of a demented killer who many suspect may be her own mother, Casey.

When the little girl disappeared, Casey did not even report her daughter missing for more than a month. She was known to party heartily and regularly and showed no sign of regret or fear for her missing daughter until someone else made an issue of it. Casey is tried for murder.

The trial is showcased in the national media as the most recent iteration of the "Trial of the Century." Casey is eventually found not-guilty and will most probably get rich off the story through some kind of book/movie deal. The talking heads who have kept the story on the front news burner for 3 years keep talking about it incessantly even afterward.

The public is outraged.

Tale Two

Baby Doe

A distinct, whole, living human being, incapable of surviving on her own, spends her days doing exactly what she was designed to do -- develop within her mother's womb. She differs only in size, level of development, location, and some level of dependency from her counterpart in Tale One. Her mother, Casey, makes an appointment with a local doctor to have the little girl violently removed for personal reasons that have nothing to do with her own health. The little girl's remains are put in a plastic bio-hazard bag and disposed of by a "health care professional."

There is no investigation of the event. In fact, Casey's right to choose to eliminate her daughter is lauded and protected by the Supreme Court as a privacy issue.

After the little girl disappears, Casey's life doesn't skip a beat. She is known to party heartily and regularly and shows no sign of regret for having ended her daughter's life. Casey is not tried for murder. There are no grounds for such a trial.

In general, the public doesn't know anything about it. Those who do, mostly couldn't care less.

If Necessary?

2011-07-06T15:03:00.001-04:00

~ St. Francis of Assisi

St. Francis of Assisi is credited with the famous saying at right. You can see it repeated everywhere and it sounds pretty cool. It is used by plenty of well-meaning Christians to emphasize that our actions speak louder than our words. It even seems to imply that talking the talk may be detrimental to the cause. "Keep your mouth shut," the quip seems to tell us, "unless you are forced to speak."

There is no arguing with that simple fact and, on one level, I completely agree. I have written elsewhere about the idea that "who we are speaks so loudly that no one hears what we say." This is meant as a warning against the false pronouncements of a believer whose life denies everything that believer claims to represent. We can, in fact, diminish the message to insignificance by our own hypocrisy.

But does that mean the reverse is true? Can we proclaim the message simply through our actions?

Here's the problem: the Good News (a.k.a. the gospel) is a propositional declaration about our status as rebels and the way in which our rebelliousness against a perfect Creator can be forgiven by the sacrifice of a perfect Redeemer. It is about redemption. And it is "good news" because without it, we are all doomed to eternal separation from our God. So here is my question:

How can we "preach" that message and explain its implications without using words?

I submit that we can't.

There is no denying that our actions support the Gospel message. But that doesn't change the fact that it is a message that needs pronouncement.

I cannot find the context of St. Francis's quip but I find it hard to believe that a thinker like him meant it in the way contemporary Christians use it. A little research confirms this. For starters, we have the quote wrong. What Francis actually said was:

"Preach the Gospel always and when necessary use words."

You notice the St. Francis himself did not render preaching of the gospel as a contingent option, nor did he separate it from the act of living it out. He did not say, "if," he said, "when." He linked the preaching and the actions directly together. We are the ones who have attributed an improper context to his words.

It is interesting that Francis of Assissi (birth name: Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone) devoted himself to the kind of life for which he is now known ... after being convicted by a sermon he heard in 1209. His vow to a life of poverty; his connection to nature and the beauty of the creation; and his empathy for others were all rooted in a sense of community and shared redemption that he learned from study and experience. In fact, St. Francis himself was known for the powerful sermons he delivered in his pursuit of that noble goal.

It is fashionable these days to see those who defend the gospel with logic, philosophy and confidence as displaying some level of arrogance in their attempt to do so. But let's not over-spiritualize or look down our collective noses at the relevancy of proclaiming the truth. Preaching the gospel and living the gospel are not mutually exclusive projects. Our choice is not an "either/or" dilemma -- it is a "both/and" duty.

"George Orwell Called, He Wants His Fiction Back"

2011-06-16T16:42:00.000-04:00

[Before I start, I have to give proper credit to David M. Case -- a person whom I do not know and will probably never meet -- for the title of this post. I stole it from a Facebook comment he made because it was so apropos regarding the topic of this post.]

"The thought police would get him just the same. He had committed -- would have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper -- the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you."

~ George Orwell, 1984

Frank Turek is a first class public speaker, debater, radio host, and author. He is one of the most gifted communicators you will ever meet. I have attended his CrossExamined Instructor Academy apologetic training seminar and plan to return if I can. I consider him to be a friend. So it was hard for me to believe it when I read a story about him this afternoon. If you care at all about religious freedom, follow this link -- The Cisco Kid -- to read an open letter to the President of Cisco Systems and then think about whether or not our religious liberties are under siege in this country. If you doubt that the homosexual agenda is out to silence dissent and squash the freedom of those who disagree with it, you will have to read no further than this article to cast those doubts aside.

I have a few questions for John Chambers (the President of Cisco Systems, who fired Frank Turek):

What is your stance regarding same-sex marriage? Does it disqualify you from heading your own company?
How many Cisco employees share the same (private) views as Frank Turek? Are you going to hunt all of them down and fire them too?
Why are you so spineless as to cave to the groundless demands of a single person who takes "offense" at the views of someone who has never shared those views with the "offended" one?
Has your company been so successful because it only allows everyone to think the same way?
Would you have fired Frank Turek if he had written a book that defended same-sex marriage?

Frank Turek fulfilled a contract with Cisco and did so in exemplary fashion. This was even admitted by the homosexual whiner whom he "offended." Frank never voiced his personal opinion about homosexuality. He never did anything to demonstrate his view of homosexuality. Frank Turek's crime was that he had the audacity to think the "wrong" kind of thoughts about the homosexual agenda. What he did was write a book that the complainer found when he Googled Turek's name after class one day. No doubt, this is the book he found: Correct, NOT Politically Correct To quote from it ...

"... the tide of political correctness has risen so much that it is now conservatives who need to be requesting tolerance (and most of us are not doing anything wrong!). Homosexual activists have a double standard. They want us to endorse their ideas, but they will not tolerate even hearing ours." (p. 90)

Dr. Turek's words could not have been more prescient. Unfortunately, they foretold a consequence that he would suffer himself because he considered it. But Frank has some other relevant thoughts about the "tolerance" issue that I think bear repeating ...

"The truth is we are called to go beyond tolerance to love. Tolerance is too weak. Tolerance says, "Hold your nose and put up with them." Love says, "Reach out and help them." Love does not allow us to be indifferent to acts that destroy other people, and it certainly doesn't allow us to endorse such acts." (p. 89)

Amen, Frank.

Frank Turek was fired from a company that didn't deserve him, by a president who lacked his courage and commitment, because of a whiner who has no concept of what real tolerance looks like. In other words, Frank Turek was treated unjustly because he stands for justice. For that reason, he should wear this incident as a badge of honor and never back down from telling the truth. Being the Jersey boy he is, I would never expect anything less.

Taqiyya

2011-06-15T21:07:00.004-04:00

We need to wake up.

We are engaged in a war wherein our nation's greatest treasure -- our young men and women -- are being maimed and killed overseas every day while we drive through Starbucks and update our iPods. As if that isn't bad enough, we are also engaged in a war that is going right under our noses -- right here where we live. Those two wars are inextricably connected and most of us have no idea how they are.

We rightly argue about economic and political ideas, but more and more we seem to do so in blissful ignorance about a threat to our common life and liberty that is much greater than anything being discussed in our internal political debates. The threat may one day include nuclear, biological, chemical or some other kind of active and obviously violent force. But for now this threat is insidious, and therefore a much more dangerous one. It is the threat that has consequences far graver than most of us can imagine.

And that is just the way our enemy likes it.

Most of us have heard of jihad, the concept of an ongoing "struggle" that motivates Islamic fundamentalists to fly airplanes into buildings and blow themselves up in the streets of the Middle East. No doubt, jihad is a threat to us here in the United States also. But, since September 11, 2001 you may have noticed that bold, blatant physical attacks like we experienced that day are few and far between. That is because a different, more effective tactic is at work. It is the concept of taqiyya, and it will be the downfall of this nation if we don't wake up to it.

If you want to a quick primer on this issue, the first thing you need to do is listen to this radio interview with Strategic Engagement Group's John Guandolo, a former Marine and SWAT Team member who now does strategic security consulting for all levels of government law enforcement about the threat of the Global Islamic Movement.

Guandolo is the kind of guy who gives credence to this issue as someone like me never could. My point is that when I talk about this topic (as I plan to do quite often) it will not just be the rantings of some loony, fringe conspiracy theorist. It will not just be my opinion or the result of my imagination. The information I hope to present here will always be supported by reasonable, credible sources. I will not speculate or extrapolate beyond what the evidence allows.

As a way of introducing this threat, I remind you of the knuckle-headed Florida "pastor," Terry Jones, who thought that burning the Koran would be a wonderful display of his Christian maturity. The vacuousness in Jones' thinking defies explanation and I think it is the wrong thing to do, but not because of any lofty respect I have for the Koran. I say this for exactly the opposite reason. Instead of burning it, I think we should encourage people to read it.

Christianity is a thinking religion. Despite the accusations brought against it by our "new atheist" friends, Christianity welcomes questions and seeks to provide answers to those who ask about the reason for the hope that we have. We are called to love our God "with all our mind," and to defend the faith intellectually, respectfully. It is therefore un-Christian and anti-evangelistic to insult, rather than persuade, and inflame anger rather than promote a loving dialogue with anyone.

The fact is that mocking or dismissing the claims of other religions does nothing to lead those who believe them back to the real Truth. When you read the Koran, you find a striking contrast between it and the Bible. The Koran reads more like a stream on consciousness than a historical account of actual events that took place. It is confusing and disjointed. In addition to that, reading the Koran and its associated texts reveals some interesting facts like the theory of abrogation.

This Islamic doctrine claims states that those parts of the Koran written after 622 AD (when Muhammad returned to Medina) overrule earlier verses. When you read these passages you find that it is the later passages that contain the commands to:

"fight and slay the unbelievers wherever you find them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem of war" (Surah 9, verse 5) or ...
"Fight those who do not believe in Allah nor the Last Day, nor So, nor hold that forbidden which has been forbidden by Allah and His Apostle, nor acknowledge the religion of truth (Islam), even if they are of the 40 people of the Book, until they pay the jizya (Islamic tax) with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."

So, where we are constantly told that Islam is "a religion of peace," actually reading it reveals quite the opposite.

You will also find Muslims who deny the reality of the theory of abrogation. There is a reason for that too -- a reason that becomes obvious when you consider a second doctrine that compels me to start talking about these issues. The theory of abrogation is an obvious concern to non-Muslims, but it is as least something that we can see being used against us. This second doctrine is the insidious one. It is the doctrine of taqiyya (Surah 3, verse 28), which holds that Muslims should not be friends with infidels except as a deception, always with the end goal of converting, subduing, or destroying them.

Taqiyya is what encourages Muslims to use our own system of freedom, liberty, and justice against us with the goal of destroying western civilization in general, and American society in particular, from within. When we understand that, and then look around with skeptical eyes at the actions of Muslim leaders, this deception begins to stand out in ways that are hard to miss. Taqiyya tells us that we should watch what Muslim leaders do, compare it to what some Muslim leaders say, and realize that the two exist in radically different universes.

Before I go on with this I want to make something clear. In my attempt to uncover the practice of taqiyya, I do not meant to disparage or insult most Muslims who live and work among us here in this country. Actually, I am sure that those we know would vehemently disagree with the claims I am making. I don't blame them -- for the same reasons that I don't blame most Christians who operate completely unaware of many of the central claims of Christianity. The fact is that it is a minority of Christians who hold to an orthodox Christian view of the world. Likewise, many (if not most) Muslims operate in ignorance to the doctrine of taqiyya and would disagree with it if they heard about it. But that doesn't change the facts I will present or our need to be vigilant.

My hope is that all of us -- including those Muslims who are unaware -- would wake up to the threat of the Islamist agenda that is hiding right in front of our eyes.

Passing On Our Narcissism

2011-06-12T12:07:00.003-04:00

If you turn your TV on these days, you can't avoid hearing about the Casey Anthony trial going on down in Florida -- the details of which are horrifying and disgusting. The case reminds me of a study I read about and am re-posting here because Casey Anthony is a poster child for this topic ... on steroids. It appears that little Caylee Anthony suffered the consequences of this trend from a mother who at best (even if she is innocent of murder) found her daughter to be a severe inconvenience, and at worst, bypassed the day care option by resorting to, shall we say, a more permanent solution.

I start with the results of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) -- a nationwide survey of 16,475 college students conducted between 1982 and 2006. In a nutshell, the survey revealed that the narcissistic attitudes of our youth have risen steadily over the past 25 years. In its latest iteration, two-thirds of the students demonstrated above average narcissism -- up more that 30% since 1982.

Reading this reminded me of another survey conducted during the 1990s wherein a research group studying the state of American education released a report comparing the math scores of U.S. and Japanese high school students. The results were not surprising. The Japanese students scored significantly higher than their American counterparts on an equivalent test. But what was notable was the response to a question asked of both groups of students right after they had finished taking the test but before they had seen the results. The Japanese students overwhelmingly expressed dejection and embarrassment for what they considered to be a poor performance on the test. The American students were confident they had aced it.

On hearing the reports of this study, one well-known critic of the public school system in America remarked, “I think its safe to say we’ve done a good job of addressing any worries we might have had about our children’s self esteem.”

Where did these narcissistic tendencies originate -- and why?

Of course, the root of the problem is man's intrinsic self-centeredness. It is the primary hallmark of human nature that has been plaguing us since the Fall. But what has made this trait of loving ourselves so deeply accelerate so rapidly in the last two generations? This past week I got a partial, and significant, answer to that question.

Rachel Zimmerman's article in the Wall Street Journal's Personal Journal examined the "Toll Kids Take on Parents' Sex Lives." In yet another study, the Journal of Family Psychology found that two-thirds of couples ...

experience a significant decline in marriage satisfaction -- including less frequent or less satisfying sex, more conflict and more emotional distance -- after the first baby arrives.

Now, there is no denying that having kids changes our lives. But it is sad and telling that so many believe these changes to be detrimental to their "marriage satisfaction" -- especially when you consider some of the attitudes and comments that accompany this view.

A report of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University notes that ...

many Americans now view life before children, and after they fly the coop, as the most satisfying years of adulthood, while children are viewed more as a disruptive force ...

This Rutgers study found that the discord is said to result from "sleep deprivation, loss of freedom, lack of time and keeping score on who does more dishes."

In addition, since many delay marriage and kids until later in life, older parents "suffer" more because they "...have had many more years to establish their habits and enjoy their freedom [and therefore] may harbor more resentment about the sacrifices children require."

One mom was quoted in the survey as saying that "some of her best days, sexually speaking, are when her daughter is in day care ... 'Day care,' she says, 'is the best thing that's ever happened to me.'"

Civilizations before ours have become self-infatuated (Rome comes to mind) and suffered the consequences of shirking their responsibility to sustain and nourish the continuation of their society. But at no time in human history has that tendency been so well supported by cultural influences that make matters worse. We live in an age when we can connect a vast library of personal entertainment and information directly from our iPods to our heads -- an age that allows us to retreat into our own little self-created, self-directed world. Technology (personal phones, computers etc.) fuels the fire of self infatuation while the trappings of our culture serve to convince us that we are the center of the universe.

Our kids not only suffer the consequences of these trends by being relegated to the status of inconvenient distractions, they are also directly affected by it. They too are enticed and infatuated with even more distractions. They too are caught up in the descending spiral of self-centeredness that is tightening into an inescapable whirlpool. When the whirlpool spins fast enough, all you can see is your reflection from the other side.

When you hear comments like those above it becomes obvious that the reason our kids are so narcissistic is right in front of our faces -- literally -- in the bathroom mirror. This is not to belittle the use of day care for those who require it, or to minimize the inevitable changes that occur when kids enter a married couple's life. Instead, I only mean to expose the attitude with which some approach these things. Kids sense when they are seen as an imposition on the selfishness of their parents. They know when the primary focus of their parents' lives is not them, but the pursuit of their parents' own self-satisfaction and the avoidance of anything that may challenge their personal "freedom" or "happiness."

If those who consider their life with kids to be an imposition on their freedom or as a source of resentment that can only be assuaged by pawning the kids off at the nearest day care facility, it is no wonder today's kids are so self-focused.

They learned it from their parents.

Camping Out (To Lunch)

2011-05-21T11:05:00.001-04:00

The end is here. Let's hope ...

By that I mean, the end of any shred of credibility that the likes of Harold Camping might have among those who take the Bible and the Christian faith as a serious description of reality that is worth thinking about.

You don't need to go any further than Harold Camping's "mathematical calculation" of the date of the rapture (and the ensuing end of the world) to see the ridiculousness in his thinking. Here is how he came up with the date of May 21, 2011:

The number 5 equals "atonement," the number 10 equals "completeness," and the number 17 equals "heaven."
Christ is said to have hung on the cross on April 1, 33 AD.
The time between April 1, 33 AD and April 1, 2011 is 1,978 years.
If 1,978 is multiplied by 365.2422 days (the number of days in a solar year, not to be confused with the lunar year), the result is 722,449.
The time between April 1 and May 21 is 51 days.
51 added to 722,449 is 722,500.
(5 × 10 × 17)² or (atonement × completeness × heaven)² also equals 722,500.
Thus, Camping concludes that 5 × 10 × 17 is telling us a "story from the time Christ made payment for our sins until we're completely saved."

Got it?

As I write this, the enormous earthquake that was supposed to kick this whole thing off this morning (Eastern time in the USA) didn't happen. No one has "disappeared" and Harold Camping is no doubt sitting in his office with a calculator and a Bible scratching his head about where he got the numbers wrong ... for the NINTH time in his career.

Why anyone has ever taken this guy seriously is beyond me. Harold Camping can believe whatever he wants to believe. But I pray that he will admit that he was wrong (again), and ask thinking Christians and non-Christians to forgive him for leading people astray.

If not, I hope he will at least desist with the nonsense, fulfill his own "prophecy" for the rest of us ... and just go away.

A Testbed For Cultural Experimentation?

2011-05-01T19:04:00.001-04:00

I have said many times here that I do my best to avoid politics on this blog unless there is a direct connection to some aspect of the Christian worldview involved in the argument I am trying to make. I believe that the topic I will discuss below is that kind of issue. But I also know that it is controversial ... and I don't care.

When it comes to multiculturalism (another form of relativism as I discussed last time), its emptiness and its corrosive effect on society, there is no place that it can be more harmful and dangerous to our liberty and our way of life than when the intellectual bankruptcy of relativism/multiculturalism is introduced into the military.

Sadly, our military is being manipulated by the spineless politicians within it (i.e. politically motivated generals and admirals) to lead the charge for succumbing to multiculturalism. I have spoken about the moronic comments of General George Casey before, but just to refresh the memory, Casey, then Army Chief of Staff (the highest ranking general in the U. S. Army), proclaimed that the 2009 Ft. Hood shootings, which were perpetrated by a very non-multiculturalist Muslim extremist Army major, were "a horrific tragedy" that could only be made worse if we allowed "our diversity to become a casualty."

I need no other example than this to make my point. General Casey demonstrated with that statement the utterly dangerous ends to which multiculturalism leads. The general actually allowed a politically correct view of "diversity" to lead him into an intellectual cul-de-sac where multiculturalism is seen to be more valuable than the 12 injured and 31 murdered troops under his command at Ft. Hood.

This example is disgusting enough on its own, but unfortunately it is no longer just an isolated incident or a stupid comment made by a politically motivated general officer. It's worse than that:

Following the lead of the esteemed general, Virginia Military Institute (VMI), recently held a conference that was originally titled: 711-2011: East Meets West, which was meant to "celebrate the 1300th anniversary of Tariq ibn Zihad's crossing the Straits of Gibraltar, setting in motion the fusion between two worlds."

Fusion?

How about we let Tariq ibn Zihad speak for himself about that statement. Here is a portion of the speech he gave to his men after they burned their ships in Gibraltar:

Oh my warriors, whither would you flee? Behind you is the sea, before you, the enemy. You have left now only the hope of your courage and your constancy. Remember that in this country you are more unfortunate than the orphan seated at the table of the avaricious master. Your enemy is before you, protected by an innumerable army; he has men in abundance, but you, as your only aid, have your own swords, and, as your only chance for life, such chance as you can snatch from the hands of your enemy. If the absolute want to which you are reduced is prolonged ever so little, if you delay to seize immediate success, your good fortune will vanish, and your enemies, whom your very presence has filled with fear, will take courage. Put far from you the disgrace from which you flee in dreams, and attack this monarch who has left his strongly fortified city to meet you. Here is a splendid opportunity to defeat him, if you will consent to expose yourselves freely to death. Do not believe that I desire to incite you to face dangers which I shall refuse to share with you. In the attack I myself will be in the fore, where the chance of life is always least ... If I perish after this, I will have had at least the satisfaction of delivering you, and you will easily find among you an experienced hero, to whom you can confidently give the task of directing you. But should I fall before I reach to Roderick, redouble your ardor, force yourselves to the attack and achieve the conquest of this country, in depriving him of life. With him dead, his soldiers will no longer defy you

Now there's some multicultural diversity for you!

After much protestation, VMI re-thought their stance on the conference and dropped the word "celebrate" from its description (though presumably not from the conference's content), which led blogger Patrick Poole to ponder, "No word if VMI's World War II commemoration will be entitled 'Germany meets Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Belgium, France, Norway, The Netherlands, and Russia.'"*

Meanwhile, over in the Navy, Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (the highest ranking military leader in any service) weighed in on the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT). This, as we know, is the ban not on the ability of homosexuals to serve in the military, but on their demand that they be able to flaunt it -- and force the rest of us to condone it. Mullen:

"No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens ... That there will be some disruption in the force I cannot deny," he said. "That there will be legal, social and perhaps even infrastructure changes to be made certainly seem plausible."

Funny, when I was in the military, no one ever seemed to give a rip "who I was." In fact, a good friend of mine lost his ability to express "who he was" with his shoulder-length, SoCal surfer dude red mop of hair. Everyone I served with lost their First Amendment right to free speech, their ability to express their political opinion in public, and their ability to engage in a relationship (sexual or otherwise) with whomever they chose. Each of us could have been courts-martialed for defying any one of those things. Serving in the military demands a unit cohesiveness that transcends any individual's sense of "who they are."

That's why they call it "service."

I will avoid getting any further off on a DADT tangent. My point in bringing the topic up is simply to remind the reader that it was the politically incorrect DADT policy that led universities like Stanford and Columbia to deny ROTC units any recognition or the ability to recruit on their campuses. So, now that DADT is being repealed, these folks should be happy and welcome ROTC and military recruiters on campus, right?

Not so fast.

At Stanford, the Students for Queer Liberation have found a new source for their discontent and moral outrage. DADT may be vacated, you see, but the military has (so far) stubbornly refused to allow transgendered individuals their "right" to serve. No word on the response from General Casey or Admiral Mullen. I'm sure they are engaged in an emergency meeting somewhere about how to square the military's highest priority -- diversity and inclusiveness, of course -- with the needs and feelings of the transgendered community.

When the lunacy of multiculturalism and moral relativism sinks its poison claws into the minds of our military leaders, we are in a heap of trouble. But it is a sad reality that instead of focusing on issues of life and death, our military leadership -- at least at the political level -- is wasting its time with this nonsense.

So far, the warriors at the tip of the spear don't seem to be affected by the silliness of their leaders. Let's hope it stays that way. You won't find any soldiers at Ft. Hood worrying about whether Major Hasan's religious rights are being honored. And you won't find any Marines being trained to catalyze the "fusion" of east and west in Iran. I only hope that if Admiral Mullen feels the need to study "the rights of transgendered sailors," that he conducts a focus group in Coronado, California.

Let's have him run that one by the SEALs.

________

*National Review, March 7, 2011, p. 14.

Relativism Writ Large

2011-04-18T13:58:00.023-04:00

Just when I thought my blog-based crusade against the vacuousness of relativism (1: here, 2: here, 3: here, 4: here, and 5: here) could be wrapped up and put away for the summer, the news reaches out and pulls me back in ...

Some recent reading reignited the issue for me when I saw the harmful ends to which relativism leads when it is applied to society at large. This form of relativism is marked by the the such politically correct causes as: religious pluralism ("All roads lead to God") and multiculturalism ("All cultures and their respective values are equally valid and worthy of our respect").

No they're not.

Most obviously, and just like the moral relativism to which they are related, these concepts promote ideas that are logically inconsistent. Even though they may share common concepts like living by the "golden rule" or "loving your neighbor," different religions which describe completely different versions of their respective "god" cannot all be true at the same time and in the same way. The Trinitarian God of Christianity cannot be the same god as the singular Allah of Islam. The messianic Jesus of Christianity cannot be the same God as the non-messianic Jesus of Judaism. You can pick out the aspects of some religion you like, but you cannot combine your favorite religious concepts, cobble them all together into something that appeals to you, and then claim that all religions therefore lead you to the same destination.

The simple fact is that the truth of a religion -- which can also be referred to as a "worldview" -- resides in its coherence with the way we find the world (evidence that supports it), and part of our judgment about whether or not that religion coheres with the real world depends on the ramifications of that religion. What are its views of: origins (both cosmological and human), human nature, the human condition, the solutions to the human condition, and the ends to which we are all headed? And how does that religion treat both its adherents and those who choose not to live by its dictates? Each of these is a way to evaluate the value and truth of a religious/worldview system.

And, since the culture that grows up around a worldview is a manifestation of that worldview, it follows that we can evaluate cultures in much the same way. All cultures are not created equal. Some are downright evil. Some are simply ineffective. But those who claim that we should accept all worldviews and cultures have a lot to answer for in this thing we call the "real world."

Take the culture promoted by Islamic Sharia Law for instance. It brings us the burka, honor killings, and female genital mutilation, to name a few things. It also gives us outcomes like the case of Sayed Mussa, and Afghani who was born a Shiite Muslim 46 years ago. During the Soviet invasion of his country, Mussa lost a leg "... and for the last 16 years has worked for the Red Cross fitting prosthetics on amputee children. Inspired by the example of some selfless foreign Christians, he adopted Christianity ..." in a country that, since 2004, has supposedly had the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion. For his efforts, the enforcers of Sharia Law in Afghanistan have imprisoned, abused, and humiliated Mussa and now threaten to hang him for his Christian faith (National Review, March 7, 2011, p.12.)

Would the enlightened multiculturalists in America allow that we should promote this kind of culture as "equally valid" to our own? I hope not. But European "progressives" have been promoting and living with a kind of "tolerant multiculturalism" for years and want America to follow suit. Unfortunately, many "progressives" on this side of the Atlantic agree and chastise those who argue against multiculturalism as being backward Neanderthals for resisting it. Even some of our most powerful leaders urge us to look to Europe for our example.

OK, let's do that.

Recently, German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, labeled multiculturalism a "total failure." French president Nicholas Sarkozy has said he believes immigrants should "melt into a single community" (Remember that quaint old notion of America as a "melting pot?"). And then there's British Prime Minister, David Cameron, who recently got himself in a fine kettle of fish for this little diversion into honesty and reality:*

A generally liberal country ... says to its citizens, "this is what defines us as a society: to belong here is to believe these things."

Cameron was speaking of the classical definition of liberalism, the one that meant that private individuals had a fundamental right to life, liberty and property. What got Cameron in trouble with the multiculturalists was that he went on to cite freedom of speech and worship, democracy, the rule of law and equal rights as the products of such a culture. To them, holding to this classical view of liberalism is an unforgivable sin, even though a cursory glance at the reality surrounding it leads those who have dealt with the nonsense of multiculturalism to attest to its failure. So why are some still so adamant in promoting it?

The sad truth, as Anthony Daniels puts it, is that ...

"Multiculturalists are seldom really interested in the culture of others. Very few of them read books in foreign languages, for example, let alone immerse themselves in [unfamiliar] scriptures or writings ... [In reality, they seek to dilute] the culture of their own country as much as possible: for only by rejecting what they have inherited do they think they can show their independence of mind and spirit. 'Let the heavens fall, so long as I am thought (by my peers) to be a free thinker.'"*

Like the moral relativism with which it is inextricably intertwined, multiculturalism is just another way to proclaim that it is wrong for someone to judge you, while you simultaneously make judgments about them. It is another form of denying the absoluteness of objective reality while claiming that your own view is absolutely true. The stated intention is to sound neutral and reasonable, as long you agree to subordinate the values of your own culture to those which the multiculturalist has deemed equally valid -- no matter how horrific its results.

Like its empty relatives, multiculuralism fails because it denies the clear existence of objective reality. And it is dangerous for the very same reasons ... especially when it successfully invades our most cherished and important societal institutions.

More on that next time ...

________________

* Each of the quotes above are taken respectively from National Review, March 7, 2011, p. 12, 18-20.

Dr. Frankenstein?

2011-03-11T16:07:00.013-05:00

Craig Venter led the first privately funded effort to sequence the human genome. Some might think that would be enough to keep one busy for a while. Not so. Venter is currently trying to become the first to create synthetic life. If you're interested, here is his own short description of the method he is using to do so. [Warning: Scientific jargon included]

If this sounds bizarre and a little scary, that's understandable. But that's why we should be thankful for people like Fazale "Fuz" Rana of Reasons To Believe (RTB). Fuz was a senior research scientist with Procter & Gamble right here in Cincinnati before he left his job to join RTB's scientific apologetics ministry in Los Angeles. He's ahead of the curve on this topic and has just had his book, Creating Life In The Lab published to anticipate a response to this kind of research.

Rana believes Venter will be successful in creating synthetic life
within the next 5 years.

So what should we think about this?

If you have a couple hours to kill on a treadmill or something, have a listen as Dr. Rana discusses his thoughts on the matter with Greg Koukl on his weekly podcast here: Koukl - Rana Interview. [The interview with Fuz begins at the 57:00 minute mark of the podcast]

Here is my summary:

First, don't think that Venter is animating anything even remotely similar to something you might see walking around. What he is actually doing is reverse engineering simple, single-cell bacteria-like organisms (keyword: "engineering," but more on that later) to unlock ways to create novel, new lifeforms. These would be designed for specific purposes and unique in that they don't occur anywhere in nature.

Second, the research involved with this project has led those who are most deeply involved with it to a sense of complete befuddlement at how life could have actually originated on Earth. Some of the leading researchers in the field of Origin of Life (OOL) Research have thrown up their hands and admitted they "have nothing" when it comes to that question.

Third, Venter is a responsible scientist who includes genuine ethicists on his research team. Some of the "creations" these folks are working on allow for the possibility of an experiment run amok but, Venter at least, seems to be sensitive to those concerns. That said, I have no idea about Venter's personal ethical beliefs, nor would I even begin to be qualified to vouch for his, or others, motivations or conscience limits. I also know that human beings have repeatedly shown that they are bent toward pursuing the worst possible ends in this regard. It is something that needs to be monitored. But the indications so far are that this is not an issue.

Fourth, along those lines, the goals of this research so far are to create organisms that can provide the capability to clean up oil spills or offer new fuel sources. These are noble goals that seem to be morally neutral, if not positive when it comes to helping human being and improving their quality of life.

Fifth, and most importantly, be ready for the headlines you will hear when Venter is successful. "If scientists can create life in the lab," they will say, "it certainly isn't any big deal to find it here on Earth. Therefore, there can't be anything special about it."

Nonsense.

Craig Venter's team knows the kind of products they are trying to create. In fact, Venter's preferred technique is to take living organisms and disassemble them to identify the minimal genetic components with which they can operate. He then uses those component parts and introduces viruses into them to promote protein growth to obtain his "novel" forms of life. Venter's team consists of dozens of scientists working tirelessly in pristine conditions to do their work. Rana notes that they are continually having to devise new ways to overcome the destructive tendencies of nature to force their designs to work.

In other words, Venter's team is utilizing teamwork, ingenuity, higher order thinking, complex design and detailed planning to create the most rudimentary kind of lifeforms, all the time knowing the end they have in mind.

To expect an undirected, purposeless process like Darwinian natural selection to produce not only the same results, but to go orders of magnitude beyond that and produce the very minds of the researchers who are involved in this endeavor -- minds like Craig Venter's -- is more than wishful thinking.

It is denial -- denial of what Venter is really proving -- that the existence of even the simplest form of life is a novel demonstration that it must have been designed by an intelligent source that exceeds the grasp of our wildest imaginations. He is proving intelligent design.

---------------------

Relativism: Why It Matters

2011-03-01T13:51:00.000-05:00

I realize that some of my examples here may sound like I am insisting on pushing trivialities -- and I have been accused of such by some who think I am making too big a deal about it or that I care too much about it.

Nothing could be further from the truth (no pun intended).

The fact is that you cannot live your life in the real world on relativistic terms. Everyone believes in objective truth and objective morality and lives their lives accordingly. If someone claims not to believe in objective morality just steal his iPod and tell him that "your" morality allows it -- then watch his reaction. Or listen to the relativist (who loves to exalt the need to be tolerant and non-judgmental) respond to those someone who insists she is wrong about something and takes her to task on the issue. The fact is that relativists are the most intolerant, judgmental people you will ever meet.

They have to be, because no matter how strongly they deny objective reality, they have to live in the real world just like everyone else -- and no one can live in a relativistic world.

To deny the existence of absolute truth or morality is to deny the way the real world actually works. As my colleague Frank Turek puts it, when someone makes a relativistic claim, apply the claim to itself. Here's what it looks like:

They say: "There are no absolutes!" You respond: "Is that absolutely true?"

They say: "It may be true for you, but it's not for me." You respond: "Is that true for everybody, or just you?"

They say: "Doubt everything." You respond: "Should I doubt that, too?"

They say: "You shouldn't judge people!" You respond: "Then why are you judging me?"

Here's the thing about truth:

Contrary beliefs are possible, but contrary truths are not possible.

You can believe everything is true, but everything cannot be true.

Objective truth cannot be denied without being affirmed.

For the Christian, there is an equally pressing issue at stake because the denial of objective truth also runs up against the statements of Christ himself. Jesus Christ said that he came to "testify to the truth." He claimed that he was "THE way, THE truth, and THE life." He didn't say, "A" truth, he said "The" truth. There is no way to make those types of claims cohere with a relativistic view of truth. It just doesn't work. There certainly isn't any Biblical support for the concept of relative truth. The very idea is antithetical, not only to Christian doctrine, but to reality itself.

And nobody can live like that.

Relativism: The Neutrality Myth

2011-02-16T09:45:00.009-05:00

I pointed out in the last installment, relativists absolutely love to claim the middle ground as their own. No arguing (which leads to truth claims that are arrogant). No extremes (which is born of arrogance and results in intolerance). Just the calm, safe, tolerant, enlightened center -- right there where we all should strive to meet.

Now I have to admit this sounds tempting -- especially in a time when political demagoguing (on both sides of the aisle) has become more like the UFC is than the U.S. Congress ought to be. But we have to make an important distinction here. Politics is the art of compromise on policy issues, but it does not follow that compromise should also apply to moral issues -- especially when it comes to legislation. You see, despite the fact that we are told we "can't legislate morality," the truth is that we legislate morality all the time. We can't help it. It's just another area where the relativist wants to live in a pretend world and deny the obvious realities that come with living in this one.

There are several problems with the relativist who tries to stand on the "middle ground" and claim neutrality as a badge of honor. When your claim to a moral position is reduced to a personal preference there are several things that follow from such a position.

Relativists inevitably make moral judgments. I don't say this pejoratively; I make moral judgments too. Everybody does! And that's the point. If the relativist thinks it’s wrong to judge, how can he say that those of us who claim that something is morally wrong are "mistaken" in the first place? Isn’t he just making a judgment by saying that and thereby pushing his socially conditioned view on me? Whenever a relativist says you shouldn’t force your views on others, the first words out of your mouth should be "Why not?" Any answer given will be an example of him forcing his views on you.

Relativism is not neutral. Some relativists claim that the attempt to enforce a point of view (i.e. to "legislate morality") on a controversial moral issue is illegitimate because that point of view is based on prior metaphysical commitment. As such, the government should not restrict it. But to say that government should remain neutral on metaphysical questions is a metaphysical claim -- a moral statement about how government should function. The fact is that most moral issues are controversial. So what? The fact that a point of view is controversial has nothing to do with the rightness or wrongness of the issue in question.

Moral relativism leads to inconsistent conclusions. Relativism doesn’t allow its adherent to claim anything is actually morally wrong, only that it is their preference to think it is morally wrong. This disallows the moral relativist the ability to advocate limiting moral wrongs if society has deemed them legal. Who is the relativist to question that? This illuminates the inconsistency in the moral relativist who claims on one hand that a moral position is wrong, while at the same time claiming adherence to moral relativism, which says that there is no such thing as an objective moral claim.

Moral relativism undermines the moral authority for cultural reform. Because most versions of relativism rely on the consensus of the community, many have actually promoted giving up on ethical disputes (against abortion for instance) because the issue we're arguing about is the law of the land, our challenging that law makes us sound "divisive," and our efforts are therefore an effort in futility. But legal does not equal moral.

Take the issue of slavery for instance. Suppose the abolitionists or civil rights advocates had thrown in the towel after the Supreme Court issued the Dred Scot decision that deemed slaves didn’t count as persons, or after Plessy-vs-Ferguson entrenched racial segregation? Those who fought against these gross abuses of human rights were in the minority -- but they kept fighting anyway. A true moral relativist would have no such motivation to fight against the "consensus." Or consider Nazi Germany. The Nazi opposition -- folks like Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- mostly died in prison for their actions, something moral relativism could not condone.

This also demonstrates the inherent danger in a morally relativistic point of view. In such a system, those who have the most power determine what is acceptable and what isn’t. Might makes right. Ironically, it is the relativist who sees neutrality as a virtue, who ends up under the thumbs of tyrants.

Moral Relativism leads to absurd conclusions: Taking relativism to its logical conclusions is often a great way to show how utterly ridiculous it can be. Because the relativist cannot succumb to judging whether someone else's view is wrong, she will go to great lengths to remain neutral about it -- even in the face of such an obvious wrong as slavery.

As an example, a relativist I was recently discussing this issue with defended his own view that slavery was wrong while also attempting to defend relativism. Here is what he was left with:

we as a society today have reached a consensus that slavery is immoral. And while I do agree that slavery is abhorrent and wrong ... it is a view of morality that exists by consensus. Its place as unquestioned moral truth is perhaps less due to its correctness, and more due to the fact that "justice is the advantage of the stronger." If the South had won the Civil War, the way people look at slavery would certainly have evolved differently, and any discussion about the morality of slavery would look quite different.

So, there you go. Moral relativism allows the possibility that slavery could be morally acceptable if our views had "evolved" differently. The idea is ridiculous on its face.

Now, I don't think the relativist really believes that himself -- he admits as much -- but his relativism forces him to put forth a view like this because the thought of admitting to an objective moral wrong is more repugnant to him than stating the obvious: that slavery is wrong for all people, at all times, in all places, for any reason -- the definition of objective moral truth.

The reality is that the moral relativist cannot live consistently within the view he defends. No one is neutral. Do not let the relativist denounce you for "imposing your view on others." The fact is that even the most strident call for neutrality commands the imposition of that moral point of view on you.

Relativism: What Do You Mean By "True?"

2011-02-09T10:00:00.010-05:00

Part of the reason that relativism is so frustrating to confront is that it is like punching a blob of jello. The relativist can constantly redefine what she "meant by that," or alternately define truth for herself. This hinges on the relativist's definition of "truth" as a moving target. The most extreme relativists claim that truth is nothing but a personal preference; everyone has their own. Most, however, subscribe to a version of truth that is "constructed" by communities or cultures.

Both these lead to ridiculous ends. Everyone can't have their own personal version of the truth. First, those who have differing (and therefore contradictory) versions of truth would be in direct logical conflict with one another but neither would be capable of calling the other one "wrong." Both could be wrong of course, but it is logically impossible for both to be right. Claiming someone else's truth is wrong is the ultimate No-No for a relativist.

Second, there would be no basis for a minority subset of the culture to question the consensus "truth," even if they disagreed with it. In the cultural consensus version of truth, might makes right. The danger in that philosophical idea should be obvious.

I have already discussed the Correspondence Theory (the orthodox view of truth that has been in place since the dawn of humanity). It is one of several other philosophical definitions of "truth," but it is the only view that does not see truth as some kind of construction. The important issue is that, to the relativist, looking at truth this way is not acceptable. The reason? Accepting this definition of truth leads to absolute (a.k.a. "objective") standards of truth and ethics, and any claim to know a truth like that is considered oppressive by its very existence.

To demonstrate how this works more tangibly, I will let some relativists speak for themselves to demonstrate the lengths to which they will go to avoid sounding oppressive or arrogant. That their claims sometimes descend into silliness is deemed irrelevant because, for them, the instinct to avoid the 'A'- word (Absolutism) or to avoid sounding "judgmental" overrides even the most basic tenets of logic.

The first example comes in several different versions, usually something like this:

"I am pursuing truth just like you are..."

"Always act in the name of truth..."

At first these sound nice -- the pursuit of truth and all -- and they would be if you took it in the sense that truth is an objective thing to be discovered. But when dealing with a relativist you cannot make that assumption. You have to be careful about identifying which definition of "truth" is in play when you converse with a relativist.

Always ask for clarification on which definition of truth we should act upon. The reasons for this are obvious. If one acts in the name of their own personal version of "truth" -- and if everyone else does the same -- the outcomes we strive for can be all over the map. Some will be selfish. Some will be inconsiderate of others, or even downright evil. This is especially true when you are dealing with moral truth. Some could seek to imitate Mother Teresa, while others chose Jeffrey Dahmer. Whose to say which is true, or wrong, or "better" than any other choice?

The same goes for the 'community consensus' version of truth. Some communities (like the Nazis) might pursue the "truth" that the Aryan race is superior to all others, while Flat-Earthers might vote to defund the Navy for safety reasons. It seems like acting on a relativistic truth (one that is defined by a person or his 'community') will lead to chaos while acting in the name of Absolute Truth leads to, well, Truth. The latter is what we call dealing in "reality."

When you attempt to point this out to a relativist, there are two common responses. The first is to chastise you for your know-it-all attitude and the arrogance you display in claiming to know the truth. The second (utilized only by polite relativists) invariably includes some sort of statement about how "we'll just have to agree to disagree."

The first response confuses the fact that the claim to be able to know true things does not imply that one is all-knowing or that one knows any truth exhaustively. Obviously, God himself (the source of objective truth) is the only one who could claim either of these. The second response is simply meant to avoid having to succumb to logic. But "just disagreeing" about a direct logical contradiction does not absolve the relativist from being bound by logic. It's just a cop out.

Another tack relativists like to take is to avoid having to side with the truth is the incessant pursuit of neutrality. I will talk about the "myth of moral neutrality" in my next post but this is the kind of thing you might hear a relativist say:

"Relativity is the best way. Everything is relative."

"The middle ground is the best place to be."

First, the confusion with "relativity" and "relativism" is a common one in which relativists believe that because Einstein's General Relativity Theory implies that "all motion is relative to its frame of reference," this can also be applied to the areas of truth and ethics to conclude that "everything is relative." To this notion, Einstein himself is said to have responded, "Relativity is for physics, not ethics." This is because Einstein was smart enough to know that logical contradictions cannot be true, regardless of the discipline in which someone tries to justify them.

Second, this common tactic among relativists -- to claim neutrality and always strive to avoid "taking sides" no matter how heinous or outrageous either of the poles may be. This inevitably leads to ridiculous ends.

For instance, if I say it is true that the Earth revolves around the Sun, while someone else says the Earth does not revolve around the Sun, what is the middle ground? The fact is that one of the claims is true, and one is false. There is no other option. In truth (no pun intended), the relativist resorts to the cover of "neutrality" because she doesn't want to allow for objective moral truth. Here is an actual example of how this kind of claim plays out:

Me: [The middle ground is not the best place to be] when the "middle ground" allows for a contradiction. Basic logic tells us there is a "Law of the Excluded Middle" that we just can't get around.

Relativist: ... the middle ground isn't always ideal. However, more often than not, staying closer to the middle rather than extremes will create a better result.

Me: But you said, "the middle ground is the best place to be." Your response to my comment says: "the middle ground isn't always ideal."

Most relativists say this kind of thing all the time, not seeming to realize that The Law of the Excluded Middle makes the middle ground a logical impossibility! In fairness, this particular relativist did reword her statement to say: "... Often, the middle ground is the best place to be." This has a completely different meaning than the original of course (and in fairness, this particular relativist did admit as much), but relativism is notorious for seeking middle ground when there is none. Again, I will address this in the next post.

But now, my favorite relativist claim, offered here as a "maxim" to live by ...

"There are no absolutes; everything has an exception."

For those who may not be familiar with the term, a "self-refuting" statement is one that cannot be true because it contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction. For instance, if I were to claim, "I cannot write in the English language," the claim is self-refuting because I wrote it in the English language. This maxim suffers the same fate because it makes the absolute claim that there are no absolutes (none, zero, nada) while at the same time making yet another absolute claim in saying that everything has exceptions. Don't worry, it gets worse ...

Me: This maxim is a self-refuting statement ... which means that there are, in fact, absolutes ...

Relativist: Self refuting? Not at all. If you read the whole thing (which I can't believe you didn't...poor reading comprehension on your part), you would see that I allow for exceptions to the "no absolutes" rule; i.e. some things are absolute. Not many though. And the goal of a maxim is to find a rule to live by which applies more often than not. It won't always apply...like I said, everything has an exception. Good try, but you fail in your attempt to 'one-up' me. In your rush to try and out-intellect me, you end up looking petty and jealous (emphases mine).

Me: Again, the maxim says: "There are no absolutes, everything has an exception," while your response to my comment says, "some things are absolute, not many though." Do you not see this is a contradiction? The contradiction arises because the maxim is self-refuting (and therefore false).

Relativist: It isn't a contradiction if you read the entire maxim. You keep quoting part of the whole, but leaving out an important piece. To paraphrase my maxim: "Everything has an exception, including this; there are a few exceptions to the rule that there are no exceptions. Therefore, some things do not have exceptions, they are absolute."

Got it? Is it possible to construct a more convoluted explanation than this in an attempt to cover up a simple logical contradiction? These are the ends to which relativism forces you to retreat in order to defend it. Let me break this one down ...

"There are no absolutes …" "No" means none, zero, nada, which makes this phrase an absolute claim. When this absolute claim is applied to itself, it is a contradiction, thereby rendering this phrase “self-refuting.”

"Everything has an exception …" The word "everything" also makes this an absolute claim which also makes it self-refuting and meaningless.

Combining two self-refuting phrases into a "maxim" does not a coherent statement make. But there is an easier way to re-phrase this maxim. It goes something like this: "There are absolutes."

See how easy that is? Why is it so hard for the relativist to just say it that way? And, as an aside, what about the nasty remarks that go along with it (i.e. "poor reading comprehension on your part," "petty and jealous" etc.) from a relativist who claims to abhor judgmentalism?

Interesting.

To be fair, if you look at this relativist's explanation, there is an admission that there are absolutes; he just can't bring himself to say so directly. It has to be couched in a convoluted triple negative flurry of "exceptions." This particular relativist also goes on to declare that he "is not bothered by our disagreement" but wonders about someone like me who will "push and push and push to make others agree with them." The arrogance thing, you know.

But please notice that if I am trying to get the relativist to agree with anything, it is not me. It is with basic logic and the inevitable conclusions of the relativist's own statements!

This is what makes relativism so frustrating to deal with, but deal with it we must. Relativism is more than just a trivial game of semantics. It is foolishness that turns deadly when moral truth is at stake. That will be the topic next time ...

[For the record, the discussion above is only meant to highlight some variations of the arguments I have personally run across from self-professing relativists. I have intentionally avoided identifying where or when I was confronted with these comments because it is the ideas that I find maddening. These kinds of things have been said by all kinds of different relativists on many different occasions. These are just specific examples that have stuck in my mind.]

Relativism: Living In Candyland

2011-02-04T10:00:00.001-05:00

[In keeping with the topic of relativism, this is a re-post of mine from a few years back that discusses the issue in a little more detail. It's kind of long but it contains a little more discussion of just why relativism is so misguided]

I want to start off by making a startling personal admission that you may find shocking. You may continue at your own risk but consider yourself properly warned. Here goes ….

I hate Candyland.

Always have. Always will. The game drives me nuts. When my kids were little, I used to find any kind of excuse to not play it with them. But, because I did not want to hurt their feelings or make a big deal about it, I was sometimes trapped into participating in the game that never seems to end. It requires no skill, no memorization, no strategy. It has no point.

It is simply a mindless game of chance in which your only claim to victory is the random drawing of the right colored card. Mindless that is, unless you are the Dad who pre-stacks the cards so that your happily oblivious kid always seems to randomly draw the exact cards he needs, in the exact order he needs to draw them, in order to reach the pinnacle of Candyland achievement – the coveted "Candy Castle."

Whatever.

Yes, I cheated at Candyland. And yes, I know I shouldn't be cheating. But please -- I only practiced "positive" cheating. And yes, I know that playing Candyland requires no skill or strategy because it is a game for little kids. I get it. But any game that: discourages actual thinking so blatantly; is so unsystematic and muddled that rule violations go unnoticed; can be so easily manipulated by those in positions of power; and that offers such a vacuous and unsatisfying payoff -- any game like that is a colossal waste of my time. I boycotted it years ago.

I thought I had put my disdain for Candyland behind me, until I began reading Douglas Groothuis’s book, Truth Decay, a defense of Christianity "against the challenges of postmodernism." One of the postmodern philosophers Groothuis repeatedly quotes in the book is Richard Rorty, the former Stanford professor who died last month. Rorty's death has prompted a rash of articles about him, many of which I have read over the last few weeks. In short, these events converged in my realization that we have people – serious, educated, intellectually gifted people – who live their lives based on a worldview that effectively treats morality, ethics and the pursuit of truth no differently than a rainy afternoon game of Candyland.

Let me explain ...

There are two basic ways that we can view truth. One is a view that was first formalized by Aristotle nearly 2300 years ago. This is the correspondence theory of truth. On this view, truth is propositional. As Aristotle put it in his Metaphysics, Book 4, Part 7:

This is clear, in the first place, if we define what the true and the false are. To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true; so that he who says of anything that it is, or that it is not, will say either what is true or what is false; but neither what is nor what is not is said to be or not to be ...

That is, true beliefs and propositions correspond to the way the world actually is. I could say that I am capable of playing on the PGA Tour and winning the U.S. Open. But because that belief does not correspond with the way the world actually is, my belief would not be true. The key is that what a belief is about "is not dependent on our mind believing it," as Groothuis puts it (89). "The truth value of a proposition's content is 'mind-independent.'" Whether or not something is true depends on whether or not it corresponds with objective, external reality.

Though this definition is loaded with philosopher-speak, the concept of correspondence theory truth probably seems elementary to most of us. But that's because we don't live in Candyland. Richard Rorty and his postmodern ilk, do.

Their view of truth has been given several names (constructivist, pragmatic, consensus) that each have subtle philosophical differences but all can be categorized under what Groothuis labels the coherence theory of truth. For a coherentist, all one needs to do to find truth is identify a set of statements that are consistent with one another -- that cohere together. Truth, they say, is not found, it is formed. It is constructed by the language/vocabulary used within various "communities" who decide for themselves what will be true and what will be false.

Those who hold to this view are prone to make statements like this one from Richard Rorty:

It is useless to ask whether one vocabulary rather than another is closer to reality. For different vocabularies serve different purposes, and there is no such thing as a purpose that is closer to reality than another purpose ... Nothing is conveyed in saying ... that the vocabulary in which we predict the motion of a planet is more in touch with how things really are than the vocabulary in which we assign the planet an astrological influence. (quoted by Groothuis in Truth Decay, p.93)

To folks like Rorty, we have no basis for claiming that the statements an astronomer makes about planetary motion are any more "true" than the predictions of some astrologer about the effect of those same stars and planets on your personality and destiny. Rorty, in other words, lives in philosophical Candyland -- a place where any old truth will do, as long as everyone who plays agrees to play by the same rules. You can even make them up as you go along or change them on a whim. This view is the philosophical basis for the relativistic culture that is threatening to engulf us all.

Groothuis summarizes where such a view will lead (103):

...if truth is a mere social construction, with no outside reference to an independent reality, it has no ability to anchor protest, to inspire dissent, to orient the soul toward what is objectively good and to liberate those ensnared in error.

This is not how the real world works. It most assuredly is not how the Christian worldview inspires us to live. It makes ethics, values and morality into a self or society-constructed game. To reiterate my earlier reasons for rejecting such a game ...

It discourages actual thinking. The Candyland mentality is really no mentality at all. It is a worldview that discourages intellectual rigor because it is an experientially and emotionally based rationalization for aberrant human behavior. It has to be. No honestly thinking human could assert, as Rorty does, that astrology and science contain equal truth value unless they were either consciously or unconsciously disengaging their mind from the process of the pursuit of that truth. No intellectually honest human being could assert, as Rorty has, that:

I do not think there are plain moral facts out there ... nor any neutral ground on which to stand and argue that either torture or kindness are preferable to one another. (Qutoed in National Review, 7/9/07, p. 34, "Truth Was Not His Bag")

At least he got the first four words of that quote right. And from that kind of shockingly empty logic we get the inevitable consequence that ...

It is so unsystematic and muddled that rule violations go unnoticed. Rorty, scoffing at those who hold to a correspondence theory of truth, is quoted as saying:

You can still find philosophy professors who will solemnly tell you that they are seeking the truth, not just a story or a consensus but an honest-to-God, down-home, accurate representation of the way the world is. (Ibid, p. 34)

Philosophy professors like Rorty chastise those who believe in "truth" by insisting that there is no objective truth. But the irony in statements like these is that Rorty (et al) believe that their view is true! The fallacy of their logic is that, if they are right about the consensus theory of truth they have no basis on which to critique those in other "communities" who hold to a different view. But they critique them anyway because, whether they acknowledge it or not, they live in the real world -- where things are objectively true or false. They cannot escape it. They write books trying to convince you that their view is objectively true, all the while insisting that there is no such thing as objective truth.

It can be easily manipulated by those in positions of power. Just as I stacked the Candyland cards to achieve the outcome I wanted, those who hold to the coherentist view of truth set the stage for misuse of the system by those who control it. Rorty explains how those who hold to his view of truth:

...take the unit of persuasion to be a vocabulary rather than a proposition. [Their] method is redescription rather than inference. [They] specialize in redescribing ranges of objects or events ... in hope of inciting people to adopt and extend the jargon ... [and] hopes that by the time [they] have finished using old words in a new sense, not to mention introducing brand new words, people will no longer ask questions phrased in the old words. (Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, p. 78)

To use "a vocabulary" Rorty attempts to avoid, this method of language manipulation can also be referred to as propaganda. As Groothuis points out, "Nazis, communists, fascists and assorted racists have excelled in such redescriptions." It was Hitler who bragged that if you tell people the same lie long enough, eventually they will accept it as being true. This is not just some unintended consequence of the application of the consensus view of truth, it is, as Rorty points out, the stated goal of those who adopt it.

It offers us a vacuous and unsatisfying payoff. The payoff for living in, or even winning at, Candyland is an empty one. It can change at the whim of players who can decide not to play if they wish, or cheat if they can, and impermanent rules that demand no adherence -- all this to reach a destination that makes no difference. While those who hold to objective truth in the real world can also misuse their power and influence, doing so demands that they suffer consequences inherent in the worldview they hold to. Players in Candyland bear no such consequence because they make or break rules to which their worldview holds no allegiance.

Living in Candyland, or under the parallel worldview of situational ethics, relativistic morality and subjective truth, leaves one without any foundation, devoid of any permanent goals, and therefore with nothing to hope for. It is the practice of living a life that serves only to fill meaningless time with pointless endeavors. For if there is no objective truth or reason beyond that we create on the game board, there can be no foundational reference by which one can measure the value or reality of one's success.

One of the critiques of the correspondence theory is that those who adhere to it are claiming to have absolute certainty about how the world really is and that they use that certainty to arrogantly and oppressively impose their views on others. But this accusation misunderstands some basic definitions. The correspondence view acknowledges that:

Truth is a property of propositions

Certainty is a property of persons

Truth is an objective property of propositions whether we choose to believe them or not. Objective realists hold that truth and morality work regardless of whether we admit to them or not, and that we deny both with the same inherent risk as stepping off a skyscraper in denial of gravity. This entails the reality of objective truth and that it is knowable. But holding to such a view of truth does not entail a claim to know the absolute truth exhaustively. Like gravity, we know and understand that it works. Our behavior acknowledges this truth even if we cannot fully understand how it works. We know, even if we do not know completely.

Certainty, on the other hand, is a property of persons who may or may not hold their certainty about true things. Ptolemy was certain that the Sun revolved around the Earth. But Ptolemy was wrong -- even if he was honestly and sincerely seeking to know the truth. Sincerity does not rescue certainty from falsity.

So, yes, there are those who abuse their position by imposing their views on others. But those who do so are not solely in the camp of objective realism. Wrongheaded certainty and abuse are not the traits of those who hold to any specific worldview, they are the traits of fallen human beings which, as far as I can tell, includes every one of us. The question is not about who corrupts their position with misguided certainty, the question is: Whose view of truth comports best with the way the world really works?

It sure isn't someone who is living in philosophical Candyland.

No, I think the Candyland-dwellers' problem with the correspondence view of truth lies in a different area -- with the nature and implications of what Groothuis offers as the eight distinctive properties of objective truth:

It exists and is knowable
It is absolute
It is universal
It is eternally engaging and momentous, not trendy or superficial
It is exclusive, specific and antithetical
It is systematic and unified
It is not an end, but a means to another end

Without delving into each of these individually, it is plain that these properties are repulsive to the Candyland world of subjective-truth relativists. But none is more revolting to them than:

8. It is revealed by God

In these characteristics of True Truth, the relativist finds himself accountable to a standard, and to a Person, that he can't avoid or just explain away. True Truth is not negotiable. It is not constructed. And adherence to it is not optional -- it comes with consequence.

True Truth is not made up in a pointless little game we play for fun. It is the currency we trade with in the world we live in. And that makes it the real thing.

Planned Parenthood Professional At Work

2011-02-02T14:47:00.003-05:00

A link from my friend Scott Klusendorf over at the Life Training Institute Blog: "Planned Parenthood: Pure Evil"

Just a reminder -- Planned Parenthood receives more than $300,000,000 of your tax dollars every year.

Relativism: Where Rational Thinking Goes To Die

2011-01-31T12:59:00.009-05:00

For the next few posts, I am going to address the most ridiculous, frustrating approach to thinking the world has ever produced -- RELATIVISM -- and I am not exaggerating when I say that. I do this not to simply prove a point or engage in some kind of intellectual gymnastics. I do this because relativism is more than frustrating and vacuous; it is dangerous, not only to the church within which it has taken hold, but to society in general. Relativism is a cancer that is eating up the way people see the world and interact with one another in it. It is doing this because it is corrosive to the concept of truth itself, and therefore contrary to reality.

[For those who will want to dig further, I cannot recommend the book (cover to the right), Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted In Midair, highly enough. Frank Beckwith and Greg Koukl do a masterful job refuting every aspect of relativism in this short, readable, and highly impactful treatment that I found invaluable in helping to identify and respond to the silliness of relativism. Koukl also has a downloadable (.mp3 format) talk on his website here: The Bankruptcy of Relativism. This link is to Stand To Reason's secure website so you may have to register there to be able to download the talk -- registration is free.]

Some recent conversations I have had elsewhere about this topic have compelled me to talk about it here because the claims of relativists -- and the responses I have gotten to my challenges to those claims -- beg to be refuted and shown for what they are: utter nonsense. There is just no other way to put it. Unlike some of the relativists I have encountered, I will not identify the individuals who have made these claims because who they are has no bearing on the ideas they are trying to defend. As it has always been, my goal here is to challenge bad ideas, not embarrass the people who hold to them.

That said, I will not hesitate to quote these folks verbatim to demonstrate how truly ridiculous some of the things they say are. I can promise you that if I do quote someone here, I have not made the quote up. I don't need to. Those who attempt to defend relativism do just fine making their views sound silly all by themselves.

Relativism has been around for centuries but has gone more mainstream over the last three hundred years or so as "postmodern" philosophy came more into vogue. The philosophical road to postmodernity is complicated, but a simple model to understand what it is begins during the Enlightenment (roughly 17th -18th centuries). Because of the corruption in the church, and as a reaction against it, this was the first time in human history that divine revelation was dismissed as a way to know true things. In its place, human reason and science were elevated to almost (if not actual) divine status. This brought us "modernism" and our subsequent deification of science (labeled "scientism") as the only way to find the truth about anything.

Science seemed to work. It brought us the staggering worldly successes and the technology that we are all familiar with today. Unfortunately, "scientific" solutions were also brought to bear on social issues ... and those failed miserably. Think: the French Reign of Terror, Nazi eugenics, and Soviet communism. The devastating results of trusting science as the only source of knowledge of the truth -- and the only way to fix the world's ills -- led to skepticism about whether or not we could know anything for sure. Since revelation had long since been in doubt, and since science seemed to have also led us astray, some philosophers concluded that there was nothing we could trust for sure -- and this led to the philosophy that we refer to today as postmodernism.*

Here's the thing. Modernism was born because some abused the authority and power of the church. The church needed reformation, no doubt. Similarly, postmodernism was born because of the horrific failures of modernism, which also had problems that needed to be addressed. Postmodernism is a reaction against that -- and rightfully so. But the problem with each of these philosophical trends is that they are rooted in an incomplete view of the world. For this discussion, the important thing to remember is that postmodernism is characterized by an over-arching distrust of anything or anyone that claims to know true things.

Relativism is postmodernism's degenerate offspring.

Because of the general distrust inherent in postmodernism, anyone who makes truth claims about anything is met with suspicion at best, derision more likely. This is where we hear statements like: "There is no truth," "True for you maybe, but not for me," and "Who are you to impose your morality on me?"

It's not just that postmodernists (PM) distrust you if you make a truth claim, they think you are dangerous, oppressive, intolerant and/or arrogant for doing so. This view toward truth and ethics manifests itself in both veritical (truth-related) relativism (VR), and moral (or, more accurately, ethical) relativism (MR).

In the interest of not making these posts too long, I will begin to take those on next time.

----------------------

[* Those familiar with the history of philosophy will no doubt see this summary for what it is, simplistic and incomplete. That's OK. I'm not a philosopher. But my goal here is modest -- to trace the big picture as a means of understanding the foundations and motivations of postmodernism. For that, it's good enough.]

Chances Are ...

2011-01-21T12:37:00.001-05:00

In August 2008, Francis Collins stepped down as the head of the Human Genome Project after serving in that position since 1993. Collins is a proud Christian who, even though he embraces the idea of full-fledged Darwinian common descent (which I reject for lack of evidence), has been a strong voice in the debate about the relationship between faith and science. We owe him a debt of gratitude, not just for his incredible leadership in the quest to decipher DNA, but for his defense of the Christian worldview as being intellectually viable in a culture that has been led to believe that science has rendered it impotent.

The end of Collins' tenure reminded me of an article I read in Touchstone magazine. The piece referred to an interview with Collins and "new atheist" Richard Dawkins that was published in Time magazine in November, 2006. That interview contained an exchange between the two that I think is worthy of comment. While considering the beginning of the universe and the possibility that a supernatural creator could have been responsible for it, we get the following:

DAWKINS: ... We are profoundly ignorant of these matters. We need to work on them. But to suddenly say the answer is God--it's that that seems to me to close off the discussion.

TIME: Could the answer be God?

DAWKINS: There could be something incredibly grand and incomprehensible and beyond our present understanding.

COLLINS: That's God.

DAWKINS: Yes. But it could be any of a billion Gods. It could be God of the Martians or of the inhabitants of Alpha Centauri. The chance of its being a particular God, Yahweh, the God of Jesus, is vanishingly small--at the least, the onus is on you to demonstrate why you think that's the case ... we were talking about the origins of the universe and the physical constants, I provided what I thought were cogent arguments against a supernatural intelligent designer. But it does seem to me to be a worthy idea. Refutable--but nevertheless grand and big enough to be worthy of respect. I don't see the Olympian gods or Jesus coming down and dying on the Cross as worthy of that grandeur. They strike me as parochial. If there is a God, it's going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed.

Today I want to address one simple point. Dawkins goes on, from the above quote, to dismiss the idea that the improbability of 6 physical constants (gravity being one, not sure of the other five he admits to) of the universe being "tweeked" exactly right for life to be possible is not very convincing to him. Apparently both Dawkins -- and Collins, who never corrected him on it -- are unaware that in 1961 there were two of these constants in play. By the 1970s, scientists had identified the six to which Dawkins appears to refer. The information below (provided by Reasons To Believe's, Hugh Ross) shows how the number of design features in the universe has grown over the years. Strikingly, it includes the probability that each of these features would occur at the same time in any universe.

In 1995 there were 41 features. The chances are 1-in-10 to the 31st

In 2000 there were 128 features. The chances are 1-in-10 to the 144th

In 2002 there were 202 features. The chances are 1-in-10 to the 217th

In 2004 there were 322 features. The chances are 1-in-10 to the 282nd

In 2006 there were 676 features. The chances are 1-in-10 to the 556th

That's right, as of four years ago astronomer Hugh Ross has identified 676! While improbability does not constitute an airtight argument, at some point such astronomical improbabilities would seem to approach an impossibility. In this case, Ross has calculated the probability at one-chance-in-10 to the 556th power that the constants that define our universe would be just the way they are so that life would exist anywhere.

But that's not all. The kind of life we are talking about is nothing but a permanently existing bacteria -- the simplest form of life. By contrast, the number of features required for advanced, high-tech, sentient human beings -- creatures like Richard Dawkins that wonder about these kinds of questions and are equipped to answer them -- is a mind-boggling 824, while the probability of all those features occurring in any universe is one-in-ten to the 1050th power.

That is one chance in 10 with one thousand and fifty zeroes after it!

These figures have only improved (for the theistic case) since the chart was published (I don't have the newest figures available as I write) but the trend is obvious.

By way of comparison, the number of atoms in the entire known universe is estimated to be 10 to the 80th power. Mathematicians consider odds of one-in-10 to the 50th power as the definition of an impossibility.

There are a couple observations to be made here about yet another claim made by the esteemed and often-quoted "new atheist" Richard Dawkins:

First, Richard Dawkins dismisses the "impossibility of six physical constants" as "unconvincing." I wonder if he is ignorant of the fact that his admission of just six constants is based on scientific data from 40 years ago, or if he knows it and just hopes that none of his listeners/readers will notice? Either way, one has to wonder why anyone takes Richard Dawkins seriously as a "scientist."

Second, Dawkins and his ilk would undoubtedly reply that no matter how improbable something is, that improbability does not mean it could not have happened. Fair enough. But which view has more evidence to support it? Dawkins continuously sings the refrain that theistic/religious people are irrational and dismiss the obvious scientific data that refutes their view.

I leave the reader to assess who sounds more reasonable in this case.

Later, I'll challenge the equally irrational and lame philosophical reasoning of another scientific giant -- Stephen Hawking.

Big Questions

2011-01-07T11:33:00.007-05:00

A friend emailed me the other day with the following statement/question. Because I love talking about this kind of stuff, and because his observations were so good (and relevant to the blog), I decided to share both his comments, and my answer. I welcome discussing the issues involved here with anyone who wants to take the discussion further ...

COMMENT

The Universe is 13.7-14 Billion years old. The first stars lasted 10 billion years and seeded the organic material necessary to form the life producing second generation of solar systems and stars that are now 3-4 billion years old. Carbon, Amino acid precursors, etc, are being scanned spectroscopectively in nebulae. Early prebiotic compounds are being found among the earliest rock formations on Earth. All of this involves a brilliant, lengthy, "protection plan of evolving life" based using time and distance to ensure safety and development. Attribute the most complicated, sophisticated plan to God. Every time a scientist or a Humanist attributes a theory to Gaia or Carl Sagan, ask, if Gaia or Carl Sagan had a more sophisticated idea, why would that not be God? Evolution, as we vaguely understand, could that not be God's plan?! Why would He not use the most sophisticated means at His disposal to create and re-create?

I am constantly miffed by institutional science that declares the discovery of something earlier, more complicated or unexplained means God doesn't exist. If happenstance started everything, everything might be unsophisticated. If an ultimate and unlimited being created everything..........It would tend toward His image. Lots of open ground in this, but I'd like to know what you think.

RESPONSE

I don't see any reason why "evolution could not be God's plan," as you put it. But it depends what you mean by "evolution." I don't rule out evolution per se because of any preconception or presupposition. Many Christians think evolution is a dirty word and that considering it at all is heretical. I don't agree. I'm not afraid of science. I just want to find the truth. So, to do that I think we need to look at the evidence.

The evidence suggests that evolution occurs all the time in what we might call "micro-evolution." Environments change. Species adapt. There is no denying these things happen. But that is a far different thing from what I call "'Big 'E' Evolution" -- which is the theory that all that star dust (carbon etc.) you reference as being present in nebulae somehow formed complex, biochemical pathways that transformed non-life elements into complex life that then evolved into ... us. I don't see any evidence that that took place, or that it is possible even in principle.

Every form of evolutionary variation and adaptation we see runs up against limits and results in a breakdown or loss of information -- not a gain in information content. It just doesn't work. This is why you see evolutionary biologists punting on the issue of the Origin Of Life (OOL). Their data can't explain or justify it on Darwinian terms. That is why guys like Richard Dawkins have suggested that life originated elsewhere and then got transported here ("panspermia," they call it). But they seem oblivious to the fact that panspermia doesn't solve the problem -- it just pushes it back one more step.

Notice that Dawkins et al never deny the appearance of design. They see it too. They just refuse to accept anything but a natural explanation for it. They're constrained by their naturalistic presuppositions to do so.

So, to me adaptive "evolution" (little 'e') seems to be a reasonably logical demonstration of design. The wing of my airplane has to adapt to turbulence or it would snap off. It has to be able to bend and flex. It is designed to do so. Likewise, living things need to adapt to their changing surroundings to survive. But the ability to survive and live on does not explain OOL or the appearance of new kinds of life. All those elements you see in outer space were formed through billions of years of stellar births and deaths. But something had to transform those simple elements into what has become complex, sentient life forms. I don't see how any completely materialistic explanation can account for the non-material realities we live with every day -- laws of logic, numbers, ideas, thoughts, continuity of personhood, contemplating the future, moral realism etc.

I think all of these can only be explained by the direct intervention of a transcendent, non-material, intelligent, moral Source. Acknowledging that intervention is not anti-science. Likewise, acknowledging the natural phenomena that we observe over billions of years in a universe specifically designed for our existence is not anti-theistic. The evidence supports both ... so that's why I do the same.

If you want to read a great book that addresses all this stuff, check out Hugh Ross's, Why The Universe Is The Way It Is.Thanks for addressing some fascinating stuff. I wish more people would think about these things ... and I'm not sure why anyone talks about anything else :-)

Totally. Cosmic. Man.

2010-12-15T10:00:00.000-05:00

There is an assumption in our modern (postmodern) society that all of us have tacitly accepted whether we are openly "religious" or not. It is an assumption born in the Enlightenment and nurtured through three or four hundred years of modern philosophy, medical breakthroughs, and technological innovation. The assumption is this: That the physical world is all that really exists. The logical follow-on to that assumption is that science will eventually provide us answers to our most profound questions. This, as I have discussed many times, is the foundation of Naturalistic/Materialistic worldview. Though many of us claim not to accept this view, and though we may even vehemently argue against it, this is a difficult assumption to overcome because it is built into the fabric of our culture.

When we hear of an inexplicable healing, or an answered prayer, or an eerie "coincidence," our initial reaction is to seek a scientific explanation. Though we study and do our best to honor and defend a high view of Scripture, we secretly wonder if the walls of Jericho really just fell down; if the Red Sea really parted or (though we would be loathe to admit it) if Jesus really rose from the dead. We are hard-wired to be skeptical of claims like those.

"Test everything," Paul told us, and we take him up on it. That's OK. But in our knee-jerk reaction to do so we sometimes forget that the Christian view of the world is not limited to materialistic causes for things. Ultimate reality is not physical -- it is spiritual. Ours is a worldview that encompasses both the physical and the non-physical. Neither the physical nor the non-physical is, by itself, adequate to describe us as persons. Likewise, neither can explain the makeup of all we know and experience.

The modern, rational, naturalistic culture we have been steeped in disdains such a view and does its best to belittle and destroy it. The result is an ongoing battle of ideas in which we are perpetually engaged. The philosopher Francis Schaeffer addressed this conflict as being rooted in a post-Enlightenment split in the way we think. Though Schaeffer didn't originate this notion, he did popularized it in a form we all recognize when we talk about someone taking a "leap of faith."

Faith, Schaeffer said, is relegated by the secular to an "Upper Story" class of thought consisting of: values, spirituality, religion, faith and the like. The "Lower Story" ideas consist of the converse of the upper. In the lower story are facts, physical reality, science, and knowledge.

UPPER STORY: Values - Spiritual - Religion - Faith -- Private

LOWER STORY: Facts - Physical - Science - Knowledge -- Public

And here's the key: To the naturalistic, secular way of thinking, the lower story is the only place we can know true things. For that reason it is public and verifiable. It describes the only philosophically acceptable areas of our lives. Upper story ideas are private and subjective, having no business seeping into the "real world." To take a "leap of faith" is to ignore rational thought and the scientific method by leaping upstairs and believing on faith alone. While no one is permitted to question the thoughts or ideas of your "private world," neither are you free to allow those ideas to influence how you understand the lower story.

Unfortunately, most of us accept these notions without even realizing it. We tacitly accept the idea that our personal faith or religion should be disallowed from addressing public issues because private values have little relevance to a fact-based world. But this is a bifurcated understanding of what we know and experience in our lives. It is a corruption of the Christian view of the world which sees: facts and values, the spiritual and physical, religion and science, faith and knowledge; as all comprising a total, integrated view of reality.Though in our hearts we know this is true, the culture continues to denounce it. We know we should fight the battle but sometimes we don't know how. Sometimes we get no help. Some of our thinking assimilates. Some of our leaders and scientists accommodate. Some of our churches capitulate. And with each baby step in the naturalistic direction, the idea of the miraculous diminishes into a faintly held belief we have little hope of defending.

And then Christmas comes ...

Though it took me a bit to get here, I believe the ultimate message of Christmas is the cosmic-sized revelation that human-centered ways of thinking are inadequate to address the human condition. It is humanistic thinking that created our earthly problems from the beginning. It is humanistic philosophy that has exacerbated those problems by manufacturing a "two-story" view of the world -- a view that denies ultimate reality by dividing that which was made to be indivisible.

At Christmas we are reminded that it all can be fixed in only one way. We are shown an ultimate example on a cosmic scale of how the world was meant to work. At Christmastime, the floor joists are shattered and a thundering shock wave pierces the night. The ceiling above our human-centered world collapses and the ghosts who have been rattling around in our attics come crashing into our living rooms.

The divine is united with the human in one person -- a person who offers us the perfect example of how we were made in the divine image and meant to function as an integrated whole. That person offers us a way out of our self-made morass of idiotic ideas and worldly wisdom. The infinitely perfect man bridges an infinite gap between divine perfection and human failing.

Only He can do such a thing. And when He does, the world all makes sense again.

Holy War?

2010-11-22T12:06:00.012-05:00

Every Monday, the last page (The Forum) of USA Today's front (blue) section runs an opinion piece that focuses on religious issues. Here is the lead in they use to describe that column:

On Religion :: Faith. Religion. Spirituality. Meaning.
In our ever-shrinking world, the tentacles of religion touch everything from governmental policy to individual morality to our basic social constructs. It affects the lives of people of great faith — or no faith at all. This series of weekly columns — launched in 2005 — seeks to illuminate the national conversation.

Illuminate?

If you have ever considered starting a blog about religious/worldview topics, you could keep yourself very busy responding to the nonsense that appears in this weekly column. Though there are occasionally some decent, thoughtful editorials presented here, a vast majority of the time this is not the case.

I have read, and commented on, several of these columns but I do not believe I have ever seen a more arrogant, vacuous, or poorly-presented "argument" than the example that appeared recently about the supposed "war" between science and religion, "Science and Religion Aren't Friends".

There is nothing new or unique in this piece. The attitude of the author is a little worse than most -- he doesn't even pretend to try to do the topic justice or offer a thoughtful analysis. But, I guess that's what you should expect when the credentials of the one chosen to engage the unwashed masses in a "conversation" about religion and science is: "a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at The University of Chicago (Jerry A. Coyne), whose latest book is titled: Why Evolution is True."

Sounds like he'd be evenhanded, doesn't it?

That brings me to the first point I'd like to make:

Most scientists are incapable of addressing

the relationship between science and religion.

To be fair, so are most theologians. The reason for this is that the relationship between science and religion is neither scientific, nor theological. The point of contention is the relationship between the two ... and that is a philosophical point.

Case in point: Coyne tells us that "Science and faith are fundamentally incompatible, and for precisely the same reason that irrationality and rationality are incompatible. They are different forms of inquiry, with only one, science, equipped to find real truth." And how does Coyne tell us this works? By the scientific method, of course. "The methods of science," he says, "help us distinguish real truth from what we only want to be true."

To Coyne, the only way to find truth is by utilizing the scientific method of inquiry. So let's apply his claim to his own statement. How would we determine whether or not his claim that -- "the methods of science ... distinguish real truth from what we only want to be true," -- is true or false? What scientific experiment could we devise to test that claim?

Answer: None.

This is not tricky or elusive. It is just a plain fact. Coyne's claim cannot be tested by the scientific method because it is not a scientific question. It is a philosophical question. In fact, it appears to be a claim that Coyne "only wants to be true."

If you are going to run an "illuminating conversation" about the relationship between faith and science, you need to have some kind of philosopher writing it -- someone like say, a philosopher of science. If you can't have that, the least you could do is have whoever it is writing the piece actually try to address the philosophical issues that are in debate. You certainly shouldn't have a scientist (or a theologian) pontificating about why only their discipline has the only right answers.

There is plenty more to address in this article and I plan to do so in some follow-on posts. But, before getting to those, we have to understand that the main thrust of Coyne's assertion is self-refuting. Science cannot, even in principle, be the only source of truth because, as Frank Turek often puts it, "science doesn't say anything, scientists do." Scientists, like everybody else, are biased in their own perception of what the scientific data is telling them by their own philosophical presuppositions.

Science is the child of philosophy. More on that next time ...

Craig, Wolpe & Geivett -vs- Dawkins, Shermer & Ridley

2010-11-19T00:47:00.003-05:00

For those who may be interested, this debate took place in Mexico last week. I leave the listener/reader to decide which team offered compelling arguments and which team offered empty assertions and sarcasm. Yes, the question betrays my own opinion and, yes, I am biased.

The players ...

William Lane Craig: PhD, Philosophy (University of Birmingham, England); PhD, Theology (University of Munich, Germany). Author of Reasonable Faith (and several other books)

Douglas Geivett: PhD, Philosophy (University of Southern California). Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Ethics at the Talbot School of Theology, Biola University.

Rabbi David Wolpe: Rabbi of the Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and considered the leader of "the conservative Jewish movement."

Richard Dawkins: PhD, (Zoology) Balliol College Oxford, England. Author of The God Delusion and, more recently, The Greatest Show on Earth.

Michael Shermer: PhD (History of Science) Claremont Graduate University. Founder and Publisher of Skeptic Magazine.

Matt Ridley: PhD (Zoology) Magdalene College Oxford, England. Science journalist.

[The introduction is in Spanish but hang in there, the debaters are speaking English!]

Readback, Hearback

2010-11-16T10:00:00.000-05:00

"It sounds different when you say it that way!"

In the aviation business, we have a formality that many times seems cumbersome and uncalled for ... until you remember its purpose. The practice I'm talking about is called, "Readback, Hearback" (RH) and it has saved more lethal outcomes than we would ever be able to know.

RH is simply this: When an air traffic controller gives an aircraft instructions to follow, the pilot is required to repeat back the instructions as they were given. The controller then verifies that the pilot heard the instructions correctly and clears the aircraft to maneuver. Finally, the pilot acknowledges the clearance and complies with it.

As you can see, this practice can sometimes result in four radio transmissions for, say, a simple change of altitude. Yes, it is cumbersome. But the reasoning behind it is that it verifies that both parties to the conversations are very clear about what is being said before any direct action is taken. At every point in the dialogue, the participants can clarify the instructions. It keeps airplanes from occupying the same airspace at the same time -- a result that can obviously prove to be disastrous.

So what does this have to do with my discussion here?

In the week leading in to the mid-term elections, a young blogger with whom I am acquainted posted his thoughts about all things political. The post gave all the reasons why he was fed up with both political parties. As a way of demonstrating his independent thinking, he used the abortion issue as an example of how he differed with both of them. Here (cut and pasted) is his central argument against the party that is usually considered to be pro-life.

"I do have a moral opposition to abortion. A strong one, in fact. However, I disagree that the solution is to make abortion illegal. Rather, better educational opportunities and focus on family growth will lead to less abortions and a healthier society. Like we saw with prohibition in the 1920s, making something illegal doesn't make it go away. And besides, there are some scenarios (such as a woman who became pregnant after being raped or engaging in incest, or a situation where the life of the mother is in danger) in which I could not in good conscience make abortion illegal. Do I think it is abhorrent and terrible? Yes. I am in favor of limiting late term abortions as much as possible. If a consensus can be reached in the larger community about when life begins, I believe abortion can be limited to before that moment. While I believe that life begins at conception, that is not a belief I can force on others. Legislating morality is not the answer - which means that the core of the Republican party and I do not agree."

To the untrained ear, the argument may sound reasonable and "moderate." But I thought it would be instructive to put the argument to a "Readback, Hearback Test." So, I cut-and-pasted the argument into the comment section of his blog -- with one minor exception. I replaced the word "abortion" with the word "slavery" and offered him the following hypothetical example to let him hear what he just said in a different way:

HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION: It is 1860 and President Lincoln gives a speech in which he says the following:

"I have a moral opposition to slavery. A strong one, in fact. However, I disagree that the solution is to make slavery illegal. Rather, better educational opportunities and a focus on alternative economic growth issues will lead to less slavery and a healthier society. Making something illegal doesn't make it go away. And besides, there are some scenarios (such as a slaveowner who is having a hard time making ends meet, or whose slaves were bequeathed to him by his ancestors) in which I could not in good conscience make slavery illegal. Do I think slavery is abhorrent and terrible? Yes. I am in favor of limiting slavery as much as possible ... While I believe that slavery is immoral, that is not a belief I can force on others. Legislating morality is not the answer - which means that the core of the Republican party and I do not agree."

Maybe, for good measure, Lincoln would also add: "For those who object to my reasoning, I understand. But if you think owning slaves is immoral, don't own one."

QUESTION: Do you think Lincoln's argument is reasonable and should be accepted by the abolishionists?

When you hear it put that way, an uncommitted "moderate" stance against slavery doesn't seem so reasonable. So, why is it reasonable and "moderate" to hold the exact same view about abortion?

It isn't.

The only reason it ever has been considered so is because we have been conditioned (rightly) to see slavery as being morally reprehensible for its denial of dignity, respect and protection to those who deserve each of those things simply in virtue the kind of thing they are -- distinct, whole, living human beings. At the same time, we have been conditioned (wrongly) to deny the same moral status to the unborn. In other words, we can only hold such a view by looking past a cognitive dissonance that sees the unborn as something other than a human being.

So, do some pilot stuff -- practice "Readback, Hearback" with those who make these kind of claims about the unborn. Make them acknowledge and verify exactly what they have just said by putting it in a context that makes it sound as ludicrous to them as it does to you. It makes for safer maneuvering around the battlefield of ideas.

And the life you save just might be one that is powerless to save itself.

Mildred Jefferson

2010-11-15T12:46:00.001-05:00

From National Review's The Week:

When Mildred Jefferson graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1951 -- the first black woman to do so -- she took the Hippocratic Oath. Jefferson believed in it, and believed it prohibited the taking of life, so two decades later, when the AMA declared that physicians could ethically perform abortions, she became one of the founders of the National Right to Life Committee. She remained active in NRLC and other pro-life groups until her death on October 15, 2010.

A surgeon, she was renowned for her energy, her stirring oratory, and her tireless dedication to the cause. Perhaps her most concise explanation of why she felt so strongly came in a 2003 article:

"I am not willing to stand aside and allow this concept of expendable human lives to turn this great land of ours into just another exclusive reservation where only the perfect, the privileged and the planned have a right to live."

When she testified before Congress in 1981 about a pro-life bill sponsored by Jesse Helms and Henry Hyde, Jefferson was no less blunt:

"With the obstetrician and mother becoming the worst enemy of the child and the pediatrician becoming the assassin for the family, the state must be enabled to protect the life of the child, born and unborn."

RIP ...

Off Center

2010-11-05T13:23:00.001-04:00

The Geocentric Model

[ ... this is the final post in a series that began here ... ]

There were two other main points my reader wanted me to consider in his appeal. Both were contained in separate booklets he included in the package he mailed to me. The most astounding one was a booklet titled, "The Exegesis of Cosmological Passages Supporting Geocentricity."

I am not being sarcastic when I say that I literally could not follow the logic of this document but, from what I gather:

The earth was created first, then the heavens, but both were created "from within the initial mass of water."
The noun (shamayim erets) which names "the heaven(s) and the earth" demands that there are "two physical heavens."
Psalm 147:15 ("his words run swiftly") means that God placed his "spinning power" only in the heavens.

All this (and more) to say that "the earth was not rotating or moving. Indeed, the earth was in no shape to do anything. It had nothing to hold it together. If it tried to spin in this condition, water and matter would make a muddy mess all over the universe."

This was all proven true by the Sagnac Experiment ("which measured the rotation of the aether of the Sun"), and the Michelson-Morley Experiment ("which measured the Earth's annual velocity around the Sun to be zero"). The conclusions of these confirmed that "the earth just won't move."

I am no physicist but I do know this -- Michelson and Morley were the first to accurately measure the speed of light. When they did, one of the things that led to their breakthrough was the realization that the long-assumed "aether" that everyone thought made up the stuff of outer space, actually did not exist. Michelson and Morley's work determined that the speed of light was constant -- a scientific fact that led to Einstein's Special Relativity Theory, and eventually to his General Relativity Theory.

Yet, here we are 120 years later being told that an experiment surrounding "the rotation of the aether of the Sun" helps prove that the Earth does not move. I also find it ironic that a short glance at a description of the Sagnac Effect shows that it is employed in current technology like ring lasers and inertial guidance systems "that need to take the rotation of the Earth into account in the procedures of using radio signals to synchronize clocks."

I honestly feel badly for folks like my reader/critic who are constrained by their own pre-ordained commitment to a young earth that they must insist that the earth is the unmoving center of the universe -- to insist that others also accept a "fact" that is so plainly false.

If your view of the world demands that you perform these kinds of mental gymnastics to prove it, you might want to reconsider what you are thinking. I'm not sure what else I could possibly say about that.

The Age of the Earth (Part II)

2010-11-01T10:00:00.003-04:00

... continued from last post (10/30/2010) ...

In addition to the Scriptural issues described last time, the scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports the OE view and therefore also aligns perfectly with the scientific evidence from God’s natural revelation. If we truly believe that all truth is God's truth, we have no reason to distrust valid scientific data that does not conflict with a valid interpretation of Scripture. As I've said before, the two complement one another in amazing ways.

If we do not trust the scientific data, we are forced to resort to claims like the ones my critic puts forth below. The irony here is that my YE friend accepts the fact that the universe looks old and "admit[s] that it is a serious problem." The question is, how do [YE] Creationists address this serious problem?

My critic offers three suggestions that I have heard before and two that I have never heard. First, the familiar explanations:

The decreasing speed of light -- Because the speed of light has been gradually decaying, objects appear farther away than they actually are. There is little scientific evidence to support this claim. The minor deviations in our measurement of the speed of light cited by some cannot begin to account for the discrepancy between the roughly 14 billion year age of the universe claimed by modern science and the less than 10,000 year claim of YE creationists.
Time dilation in outer space -- Based on Einstein's General Relativity (GR) Theory, this is similar to the speed of light assertion -- that the universe simply appears older than it actually is. Again, there is no scientific evidence to support this claim. Ironically, the concept of time dilation rests on an acceptance of GR which also happens to posit an expanding universe and therefore provides strong physical evidence for Big Bang Cosmology. This aspect of GR is what led Einstein to doubt (and modify) his own theory because he could not accept the divine implications of an expanding universe. He later described his modification as one of the worst mistakes of his life. So, I say it is ironic when YE proponents appeal to time dilation to buttress their case because by doing so they are also unwittingly accepting one aspect of the Big Bang -- a scientific theory that YEs despise because, again, they claim it supports 'Evolution.' The materials my critic sent me do exactly this and specifically deny the expansion of the universe as being true.
Starlight created in transit -- The starlight was created after the stars themselves or it was artificially made to look like the stars are older than they actually are. Once again, there is absolutely no scientific evidence for this claim. Additionally, one has to wonder why the God who we all accept as the source and standard for Truth would deliberately foist a deception like this on us -- and for what reason? In fairness, most reasonable YEs have abandoned this option.

This brings me to the unfamiliar points:

"The Lord has put a shield in front of each star and each shield has a different color of the rainbow" -- The idea here is that these shields affect the brightness of the stars, thereby rendering them dimmer in appearance than they really are. This dimness makes them appear to be farther away than they actually are.
The Bible tells us the approximate size of the universe directly (but only in the KJV) -- This distance is easily calculated as follows:

Reading Revelation 8:1 and 12:1 together tells us that, on the fourth creation day, "there was silence in heaven about the space of half and hour."
The speed of light is 186,000 miles/sec
186,000 miles/sec x 60 sec/min x 30 mins = about 350 million miles to the "outmost parts of heaven" (re: Deuteronomy 30:4)

Because we "know" that the Earth is at the center of the universe (a later post will address this claim), the outer edges of the universe must lie just beyond this 350 million mile limit. This is offered as "proof" that the universe is orders of magnitude smaller than astronomers claim and therefore verifies that it is also orders of magnitude younger. As a point of reference, I would note that modern science -- by direct measurement -- puts the planet Jupiter at approximately 468 million miles away. Therefore, I leave it to my readers to evaluate the reasonableness of this claim.

Forget the actual numbers or the fact that these claims completely defy any of the actual findings of modern science. What I really object to here is the method involved. Because the hard core YE proponents see any acceptance of modern science or the OE view as a capitulation to 'Evolution' (as described in the previous post), and because the YE camp holds to a dogmatic insistence that its interpretation of the word yom is the only valid one, they are forced to offer these kinds of explanations to support their view.

In addition to that, the exegetical method of plucking Bible verses out of thin air and using them -- or even using phrases from them -- to make a scientific point strikes me as doing violence to Scripture. It is completely indefensible to ignore (or worse -- make up) the context just to suit your own personal, pre-ordained view of what the text "should" be saying. Using that method, one could make the Bible say anything they want it to say. The proof of that is in the pudding above.

My question is, why? Why does anyone find it more compelling, reasonable, or more in line with Biblical truth to have to concoct these kind of twisted explanations for things than to just accept the clear coherence we find between the findings of modern science and an equally valid (and, yes, "literal") translation of the Bible? I honestly don't get it.

I sincerely hope that my YE critics will weigh in on this and that we can engage in a productive and polite debate about these issues.

The Age of the Earth (Part I)

2010-10-30T10:00:00.009-04:00

[This is the second in a 3-part series, "First Do No Harm," that began here. Part III will follow tomorrow]

I have dealt with this before and am seriously considering making it a personal policy to never do so again. I know all the arguments for the young earth (YE). I used to hold to them myself. It is a subject that causes more diversion of apologetic resources than it deserves because the fact is that, no matter who is right on this one, the consequences are trivial and irrelevant. So, instead of arguing the same old OE/YE argument, I simply aim to show that the OE view has legitimate Scriptural support while the YE alternatives are utterly unconvincing.

As I have pointed out before, one of the primary reasons offered by those who demand adherence to the YE view is that accepting of the old earth (OE) view somehow means one also accepts 'Evolution.' In the printed material my reader sent me, one of his papers began, "Creationist, Those who believe the earth is less than 10,000 years old. We know that the evolutionist cannot use the rocks of the earth to prove how old the fossils are ..."

It goes on from there but the point is that he equates Evolution with OE -- even though these are completely different issues! One is a scientific theory meant to explain the diversity of species of life on the Earth, while the other is a simple question about how old the universe, solar system, and planet Earth are. The former is a biological question. The latter is a cosmological, astronomical and geological question. Why does the reader (and almost every YE proponent I have ever heard) insist on equating the two?

The problems with Evolution include (but are not limited to):

1. Inability to explain abiogenesis
2. Inability to explain diversity of species
3. Inability to explain consciousness
4. Inability to explain ethics
5. Inability to explain the Cambrian Explosion
6. Non-falsifiability
7. Used to explain everything we observe and therefore capable of explaining nothing
8. Inability to make predictions

None of these issues go away if you just give Evolution more time to work. In fact, none of these issues go away if you give Evolution an infinite amount of time to work. The dogmatic connection between OE and Evolution is therefore not only invalid, it is irrelevant.

As for Scriptural support for the OE view, I offer the following:

First, the Hebrew word for “day” used in Genesis 1 is yôm. This word can mean:

sunrise to sunset (the daylight hours)
sunset to sunset
an unspecified length of time with a definite beginning and a definite end

Second, the word is used in each of these ways throughout Scripture so it is not correct to say that it always refers to a 24-hour period of time. For example:

Genesis 2:4 (RSV, KJV, ESV, NASB) uses yôm to refer to the entire creation week (this is especially interesting, considering my critic demands that we only use the KJV)
Psalm 90:4 uses yôm in comparison to both a 4-hour watch period, and a period of 1000 years ... in the same verse!
Both Job and Zechariah (especially Zechariah 14:6) yôm is used to refer indefinitely long periods of time.

Each of these is admittedly unique, but then again so is the entire creation account. Within it we also find that the use of the phrase "there was evening and there was morning, the ___ day," is not standard in the Hebrew. This suggests a unique usage meant to describe a unique kind of day. Additionally, this phrase does not occur on the seventh day, suggesting that the seventh day may be ongoing.

Professor Dan Dyke of Cincinnati Christian University has also pointed out that the words for "evening" and "morning" have their roots in the Hebrew for "chaos" and "order," respectfully. This may reasonably suggest that the days are meant to describe God’s ordering of His creation in stages from the chaotic "formless and void" (tohu wabohu) state described in Genesis 1:2.

I bring these up to point out that YE proponents routinely insist that they are correct because they invoke the plain, literal meaning of the Scriptural text.

Well, so do I.

Every one of the definitions of yôm above is a literal translation that is perfectly legitimate in the context of the passages in question. Saying otherwise is just plain false. It is therefore perfectly reasonable to accept a different, but also "literal," version of the creation account that equally honors an inerrant view of Scripture.

The scientific issues surrounding the age of the earth will follow tomorrow ...

First Do No Harm [Intro]

2010-10-28T14:48:00.007-04:00

In response to the article I recently had published in The Lookout (you can read it in my last post here), I received a small package in the mail from a reader who took exception with a couple of points I made in the piece. I will not identify the reader but I will address the points he makes because I think they are vitally important to our approach to apologetics and a commitment to being effective ambassadors for the Truth.

Before I begin to respond, I want to point out that the tone of the cover letter he sent with the material was polite -- he even said he enjoyed my article -- so I don't want to make too much of the attitude behind his disagreement. Though it is impossible to tell if his "enjoyment" was sincere, my previous encounters with those who hold similar views have been anything but polite. For that reason, I want to commend the reader for not being "nasty." He ended his note by saying "comments are welcome" -- so I will offer some.

The fact is that we hold completely different views on the topics I will address but I hope that he (and others) will take my comments with the same spirit of charity with which I accepted his.

The reader sent me a small booklet, a pamphlet, and some individual essays/comments that related to each. There was quite a bit of information in the packet but I can boil it down to three main points he wanted me to consider :

That the Earth is less than 10,000 years old.
That the King James Version (KJV) is the only "authorized" translation of the Bible. The accompanying pamphlet urging me to order a book, In Awe of Thy Word, was meant to convince me of this fact and is available at: A.V. Publications Corp.
That the commonly accepted view of heliocentrism is false -- the Sun is not at the center of the universe. The Earth is actually the center of everything and the entire universe rotates around the Earth.

I want to point out that each of these three views is closely intertwined. They stand in mutual support of one another. As such, showing that any one of them is obviously false should compel those who accept any one of them to seriously question all three. That is, if they are pursuing the truth and not just demanding a dogmatic acceptance of some self-defined test of orthodoxy, a thinking person should at least consider the fact that they may be wrong in adhering to any one of these claims.

Tackling all of this at once would take too much space so I will devote a separate post to each. My aim is modest: Though I think each of these is demonstrably and obviously false, I only hope to show that disagreeing about any one of them does not disqualify one as a legitimate Christian.

There is an important reason why I say this. Many who hold to these views believe that those of us who do not hold to them could only disagree because we ...

Believe in Evolution (where 'Evolution' is never precisely defined)
Do not hold a high view of Scriptural Authority
Do not believe in Biblical Inerrancy
Accept the claims of scientists above the claims of the Bible and, therefore, God Himself

As you can see, the stakes are high. Many times, those who hold to these types of views actually believe that those of us who don't are not "real believers." We are headed to hell. Some are quite belligerent about it and some are nice about it, but the fact is that many of them believe it. Because it is so important to those who hold these views, I think we owe it to them to show that we are serious too.

Case in point: A few weeks ago, a friend told me that he met a guy who was also interested and involved in Christian Apologetics. He asked if he could have him contact me because, living in the same area, he thought we might be able to work together on some teaching/speaking projects. A few days later, I received an email introducing the fellow apologist. I responded with a list of my affiliations -- one of which was Reasons To Believe, an organization that makes a strong case for the Old Earth view. I said that I would be glad to work with him and hoped we could do so while concentrating on the primary issues that every Christian apologist should hold in common. Here is a portion of his response:

While Reasons to Believe does have many things in common biblically with what I believe there are some key differences that deal with the authority of Scripture such as, death before sin, the extend (sic) of the Genesis Flood, the order of created events and logic, … These I could not compromise on since they affect the foundation for the Gospel and the character of God (emphases mine).

You see the not-so-hidden implication: because I work with an organization that promotes the old earth view of creation I have "compromised" on the authority of Scripture, the foundation of the Gospel, and the character of God.

I never heard from him again ... apparently because, in his mind, we are not on the same team.

I understand the concerns of these kinds of people -- and I share them. They are important questions that must be addressed. But our disagreement about interpretations is an internal debate that should never be thrown down like some kind of gauntlet that demands one view as an uncompromising test of orthodoxy.

Believing in full-blown Darwinian 'Evolution' (a materialistic path from non-life, to life, to conscious human thinkers) denies the obvious work of the Creator as it is clearly outlined in the Bible -- which is why I reject full-blown Darwinian Evolution.

I too hold to a high view of Scripture and a classical view of Biblical inerrancy.

I deny that any scientist speaks with greater authority than Scripture. But the fact is that there are some scientific things Scripture simply does not talk about at all! In those cases, or in cases where Scripture's voice is ambiguous (it never talks about nuclear physics or the process of cellular reproduction for instance), the legitimate study and discoveries of science are perfectly reasonable to accept with proper discernment. Science is simply the human attempt to understand the world God has created. So, when we engage in science we are seeking to understand the truth about God's natural revelation. That is not my opinion. That is Biblical:

"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their [the heavens] voice is not heard. Their [the heavens] voice goes out into all the earth, their [the heavens] words to the end of the world." ~ Psalm 19:1-4

"For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities -- his eternal power and divine nature -- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. ~ Romans 1:20

Before I begin to critique the three points my reader wants me to consider, I want to make this crystal clear. I respect and trust the Bible just as highly as those who hold these views. I do not elevate science above Scripture. I believe that, properly approached, science and Scripture complement one another perfectly. So let's do away with all the pious claims to spiritual superiority. We agree on those points. Instead, let's look at the facts in question and see if they are reasonable to accept.

Let's seek the truth and use it to compel others to do the same.

The fact is that the dogmatic promotion of the three points my reader wants me to consider (above) does violence to the Scripture ... which diverts us from the truth ... which serves to turn people away from the Gospel altogether.

That is a compromise I am unwilling to make.

The next three posts I will address each of my reader's points ...

Creation's Common Ground

2010-10-19T10:47:00.004-04:00

The following article appeared in the October 10, 2010 issue of The Lookout, a weekly magazine put out by Standard Publishing. It is my attempt to put first things first as a Christian community and unite to defend the idea that the Biblical view of creation is not only compatible with modern science, but superior to any naturalistic alternative. Though it is difficult to make the entire case in the 1600 words I was allotted, my hope is that we can avoid the internal debate about when God created, and unify around the parallel notions that He did, and why He did.

______________________

Christian theism offers answers to life’s most profound questions, standing in stark contrast to the anti-theistic alternatives presented by competing worldviews. Unfortunately, we in the Christian community spend a lot of time challenging one another about internal issues, and not enough time talking about the simple fact that the evidence for God’s existence and involvement in the world is overwhelming. We can unify around a shared purpose to defend Christianity by understanding that Scripture and science complement one another in amazing ways regarding creation.

Beginnings Need Beginners

General revelation (nature) and special revelation (Scripture) reinforce one another regarding the pre-existence and transcendence of the Creator.

Our approach to this issue improves if we begin not with Genesis 1, but with John’s Gospel. There, the apostle makes the claim that the divine logos existed "in the beginning" with God and as God, which then became incarnate in Jesus Christ. The logos concept encompasses rationality, intellect, and the attempt to comprehend God’s mind. This is consistent with the wisdom that "was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began" (Proverbs 8:23), and offers us a new way to consider God’s being "before all things" (Colossians 1:17).

Because these Scriptural references place God before creation, it is theologically correct to say God pre-existed time and space and must therefore be separate from the creation. This is the definition of transcendence.

Science confirms the concept of a transcendent cause for the universe by acknowledging a simple implication of the laws of thermodynamics. The First Law holds that there is only a fixed amount of energy available in the universe. The Second Law states that the universe is constantly using that energy. Like the gas tank in your car, a fixed amount of energy being continuously used means there must have been a point when the tank was filled. In other words, these two laws of nature point to an astounding conclusion—that the universe cannot have been going on forever. It must have had a beginning.

If the universe must have had a beginning, simple logic tells the scientist that it must also have had a Beginner. Things that begin to exist cannot cause themselves to come into existence. Science is the attempt to identify and understand causes and effects. The specific case of the beginning of the universe is no different. Both scientific and theological orthodoxy imply that the cause of the universe must have been in place prior to, and separate from, the universe itself.

From Nothing, Everything

Genesis 1 offers the clearest statement of the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo—that God brought the universe into existence out of nothing. This doctrine stems from the first verse of Scripture, "In the beginning God created (bara) the heavens and the earth (shamayim erets)." Though other Hebrew words can be used to describe God’s making things, Moses’ use of the Hebrew bara, the first creative act, means that God created something brand new. The phrase shamayim erets, which has been translated "the heavens and the earth," was the Hebrew way to describe all that exists. Taken in tandem, this entails God creating the entire universe out of nothing.

This concept is not unique to the Genesis creation account. In Job 38:4, Isaiah 45:7, 12, Colossians 1:16, and several other places, Scripture talks about a universe "formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible" (Hebrews 11:3).

Science also offers evidence that the universe we see today came into existence at a point that defies conventional understanding. Several cosmological theories, including General Relativity Theory, along with the laws of physics, have been verified back to an infinitesimally tiny moment after the creation event—a point when all matter, energy, time, and space shared a common origin.

Because the scientific evidence for this beginning point is so strong, naturalistic scientists since Einstein have done their best to avoid it. The length to which some will go to deny the implications of their own evidence is astounding, but the theistic implications of this are perfectly consistent with Scripture’s creation ex nihilo. Christians have no reason to avoid these scientific theories. Indeed, we should embrace them as further proof of the correlation between both forms of God’s revelation to us.

In His Image

Closely tied to God’s transcendent creation ex nihilo is the more specific issue of the creation of life in general and of humanity in particular. Here again, the first chapter of Genesis provides the foundation of the doctrine of the creation of man in God’s image—the imago dei. The Bible wastes no time establishing the fact that "God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him."

Prior to this, Genesis 1:24, 25 uses the Hebrew term "soulish" (nephesh) to describe the advanced animals—those that display traits like mind, will, and emotion. But in the creation of man, God grants a faculty that exceeds the "soulishness" of the animals—the ability to understand, seek, and relate to the Creator himself. This is the imago dei.

Philosopher Ken Samples contends this rich concept encompasses the uniquely human capacities of moral awareness, creativity, thirst for knowledge, and appreciation of beauty. These aspects of our common humanity set us apart from all of nature by our ability to approach God in spirit and in truth.

It would be overreaching to say that science offers direct confirmation of the imago dei, but there is scientific support for the existence of the human soul and mind. Mathematicians and physicists have shown that the physical nature of the human brain cannot account for the functions we associate with the human mind. In other words, contrary to what atheistic science claims, your mind cannot just be a "computer made of meat." Intellect has the capability to create computers, but the opposite is not true. Computers cannot create intellect.

Our ability to engage in abstract thought and judge the truthfulness of propositions sets human intellect apart from some purely mechanical ability to process information. This is perfectly consistent with the concept of the imago dei.

Keeping the Big Picture

A detailed analysis of Genesis 1:1, 2 has led theologians to make the case that the entire universe originated in a "formless and empty" (tohu wabohu) state of chaos that was in place prior to the beginning of the Genesis narrative. The initial presence of darkness and sea, both of which are signs of imperfection in the Hebrew, stand in sharp contrast to the much anticipated "new heaven and new earth" of Revelation 21, which contains neither sea nor night. According to this view, Genesis 1 is an account of God’s preparing the universe for the saving work he began at the creation and will complete with the abolishment of evil in the new Heaven and earth.

The pinnacle of God’s creative work comes on day six with the introduction of man, through whom he initiates the establishment of his kingdom on earth. Thereafter, the Bible records the history of God’s actions that lead to the future defeat of evil. God’s choice to create man to be a part of his own glorification in this cause makes humanity the primary participant in the creation’s purpose and the central reason for the existence of the entire universe. But is there any scientific evidence to support such an idea?

More than you can imagine.

Even atheistic cosmologists recognize what has been called the Anthropic Principle—the idea that the universe seems to be designed specifically to support conscious human life. Nature displays hundreds of distinct laws, forces, and unique relationships between them that are each specifically fine-tuned to allow life to exist. If any one of these was not exactly as it is, no life—let alone human life—could be possible.

The level of design that has prompted scientists to formulate these anthropic explanations fully supports the Scriptural idea that the makeup of the creation reflects the remarkable level of care the Creator infused into it to serve his eternal purposes.

At times we seem to get overwhelmed in an internal debate about when God created the universe instead of focusing on the fact that he did and why. These are the issues that shape our worldview and bring it into sharp contrast with the naturalistic alternative that is having so much impact in our culture—and so much success at capturing our young people. The remarkable coherence of the biblical creation model with modern science makes Christianity a clearly superior alternative and the most viable explanation for the world as we find it.

That is ground we can all stand on together.

_______________

Bob Perry is a freelance writer living in Cincinnati, OH

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Evidence For the Soul and Mind

Neuroscience has shown that simply thinking contrary thoughts can reduce the physical size of the neurological connections in the brains of patients who are afflicted with obsessive-compulsive disorder. This implies that there is something non-physical about the mind that differentiates it from the brain. Researchers could hook electrodes up to your head to monitor and map every electrical impulse firing in the neurons of your brain, but they could never know what you are thinking—unless you told them.

Pursuing An Accurate Sense of Our "Esteem"

2010-10-16T11:44:00.001-04:00

Providing our children with self-esteem does not seem to be a problem in contemporary America. They seem to have plenty of it. I would argue that they have more of it than they deserve.

I remember a study that was done during the 1990s by a research group that was studying the state of American education. The group released a report comparing the math scores of U.S. and Japanese high school students. The results were not surprising. The Japanese students scored significantly higher than their American counterparts on an equivalent test.

What was notable was the response to a question asked of both groups of students right after they had finished taking the test but before they had seen the results. The Japanese students overwhelmingly expressed dejection and embarrassment for what they considered to be a poor performance on the test. The American students were confident they had aced it.

On hearing the reports of this study, one well-known critic of the public school system in America (I believe it was William Bennett) remarked, "I think its safe to say we’ve done a good job of addressing any worries we might have had about our children’s self esteem."

Don't misunderstand -- I get it about the self-esteem thing. There are children who live in a state of continual psychological torment by parents who don't care for them, school-mates who verbally and/or physically abuse them, and a culture who tells them their sense of worth lies in all the wrong things. This is cruel and should be resisted.

It is also true that the abusers of our childrens' self-esteem engage in their negativity largely because they suffer from low self-esteem themselves. It is a common human flaw that propels some of us to make ourselves feel better about ourselves by cutting down someone else.

So how does this relate to the topic of Christian Apologetics?

This past week Dr. Alex Mcfarland, the President of Southern Evangelical Seminary, weighed in on this topic in a way that surprised me a little. In his article, "Deriving Worth from the Right Sources," Dr. McFarland addressed the improper values that plague teens (especially girls) who are engulfed in a "photo-shopped world." While I agree with his main points, his corrective "Christian Response" was to ensure that our kids "understand that their worth should be grounded in the following realities" ...

They are made in God's image
Jesus personally cares about them
The unconditional love present in their homes
The accepting haven provided by their church
Their status as a resident (and heir) of heaven
Confidence that God truly has a plan for them

Now, it's tough to dispute any of these and I wouldn't try. I might simplify them in the following ways, however.

If this should be the Christian "response," it seems that listing numbers 2 through 5 is a bit redundant in that the are each entailed by number 1. This is not a criticism -- Dr. McFarland is simply clarifying and emphasizing what follows from the recognition of being made in God's image.
Number 6 is true as far as it goes but for me it evokes the flawed view shared by too many Christians that it is their job to discover what this "plan" is by breaking some secret coded message that God has hidden from plain view. Greg Koukl addresses this topic forcefully and repeatedly and I completely agree with this take on it. I won't go into it here but I believe we see God's plan by looking backward, not forward. Beyond that, Dr. McFarland's inclusion of the idea here is not negative, just superfluous.

So, as one who likes to keep things simple, I believe that all of the above are included in the first statement -- we are made in God's image. That is the aspect of our being that should give us a positive view of who we are and serve to remind us that the cultural standards we too often accept in a negative way are hollow, deceptive, and contrary to the image of God that should define our human value.

What bothers me about the list is the conspicuous absence of another concept that serves to balance the artificially high self-esteem that is being promoted in contemporary culture. It is this -- we are all sinners who live in a state of rebellion against God. Knowing and accepting this second truth will prevent forming the warped sense of ourselves that our culture promotes in the other direction.

My contention is that a well-grounded Christian should resist accepting the negative view of his or her self-esteem because they recognize that they are made in God's image. But they should also temper that positive view of themselves by recognizing their own natural bent toward rebellion.

In other words, a Christian should not focus on either the positive or negative pole of their self-worth. Instead, the Christian worldview demands adherence to an accurate picture of human nature that honors both -- that seeks the golden mean of a virtuous life. By doing so, we avoid accepting a culturally-defined standard and instead see an accurate, healthy picture of who we really are when we look in the bathroom mirror. And that's the way it should be.

Stem Cell Obfuscation

2010-10-15T11:45:00.000-04:00

[This is the text of my article that appeared in the Christian Research Journal, Issue 33-03, available here: "Stem Cell Obfuscation" ]

If you pay attention to the news at all, you are probably convinced that stem cell research will eventually solve every medical challenge our society faces. The blind will see. The paralyzed will walk. Cancer will be cured. All this will be possible if the anti-science zealots in the pro-life wing of conservative politics would just get out of the way. And so, on March 9, 2009, our long walk in the scientific wilderness ostensibly came to an end when President Obama issued his Executive Order (EO) removing barriers to responsible scientific research involving human stem cells. The president’s announcement on lifting the ban said, in part:

With the Executive Order I am about to sign, we will bring the change that so many scientists and researchers; doctors and innovators; patients and loved ones have hoped for, and fought for, these past eight years: we will lift the ban on federal funding for promising embryonic stem cell research…in recent years, when it comes to stem cell research, rather than furthering discovery, our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values…Many thoughtful and decent people are conflicted about, or strongly oppose, this research. I understand their concerns, and we must respect their point of view. But after much discussion, debate and reflection, the proper course has become clear. The majority of Americans—from across the political spectrum, and of all backgrounds and beliefs—have come to a consensus that we should pursue this research. That the potential it offers is great, and with proper guidelines and strict oversight, the perils can be avoided.

No more false choices. No more political interference in our scientific research. The ban is lifted. Change has come!

It should be noted that the ethical concerns some claimed to have had about the issue were assuaged by an appeal to the consensus of the majority of unidentified Americans from across the political spectrum. While it may or may not be true that a majority of Americans believe this research should be pursued, it is unclear when it was determined that ethical considerations should be affirmed by a show of hands. In any case, the president clearly implied that it was George W. Bush in particular who thwarted all advancement in scientific research because he placed his anti-scientific, Neanderthal faith ahead of the more reasonable desires of those who wanted to find cures. The new administration ended that long national nightmare with a wistful gaze at a teleprompter and the swipe of a pen. There is just one minor problem with this narrative.

It is complete nonsense.

The legal and political meanderings surrounding this issue have become so muddled it is instructive to distill them into recognizable form. Though most of us would be vaguely aware of at least some of these events, seeing how the stem cell issue has actually played out is stunning to behold. Consider the following timeline:

1978: In the wake of the controversial July 25th birth of the first “test tube baby,” Louise Brown, Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Joseph Califano appoints an Ethics Advisory Board (EAB), which concludes that “research on very early embryos within the first 15 days of development [is] acceptable to develop techniques for in vitro fertilization (IVF).”

This EAB was appointed because of an earlier decision by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects to prohibit experimentation on IVF embryos unless approved by an EAB.
The controversy surrounding this policy led President Carter to allow the EAB’s tenure to expire. Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush chose not to reestablish it—effectively blocking embryo research.

1994: The Human Embryo Research Panel appointed by the head of the National Institute of Health’s Harold Varmus, recommends allowing the development of IVF techniques and the study of embryonic stem cells.

Such research would only be allowed with “spare” IVF embryos obtained through informed parental consent.
The panel recommended further consideration of the creation of embryos for research purposes and argued for federal funding of the same. The contentious nature of that stance led to further political maneuvers during the Clinton administration.

1996: Congress passes, and President Clinton signs, a rider to an appropriations bill, titled the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, which makes it illegal for the federal government to fund research that destroys human embryos. This rider has been reapproved by Congress and signed by the president in office every year since then.

1998: President Clinton signs an Executive Order enforcing the ban on federal funding for ESCR that destroys human embryos. He bases his decision to do so on the restrictions created by the Dickey-Wicker Amendment.

2000: After six years of taking a position against taxpayer funding of the destructive research, and on his way out of office, President Clinton flip-flops and announces his support for new federal guidelines that would allow taxpayer funding of embryo-destructive research. This apparent set-up for the incoming Gore administration backfires when Gore loses the election.

2001—August 9th: President Bush signs an EO meant to compromise on the restrictions that had previously been placed on ESCR. This order continues the restrictions put in place by the Dickey-Wicker Amendment but allows an exception for more than $200 million in federal funding for twenty-one existing stem cell “lines” that had previously been created (through IVF). Thus, President Bush becomes the first president to allow federal funding of ESCR. At this point, federal funding for ESCR is restricted to these twenty-one lines. It is not “banned.” There is not, and there has never been, a ban on privately funded research.

2007—June 20th: President Bush issues Executive Order #13435, which requires the government to fund research into alternative methods of obtaining pluripotent stem cells—methods such as Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (IPSC)—that do not require the destruction of embryos but instead “induce” regular adult skin cells to act like pluripotent cells.

2008: “Scientific researchers hail the development of IPSCs as the biggest scientific breakthrough of the year.”

2009—March 9th: President Obama rescinds Bush’s August 9, 2001, EO with his own EO entitled, Removing Barriers to Responsible Scientific Research Involving Human Stem Cells. The revocation of Bush’s EO is heralded as “lifting the ban on federal funding for promising embryonic stem cell research (ESCR).” This EO simultaneously revokes Bush EO #13435, which has provided federal funding of successful IPSC research. This aspect of the order is not mentioned at the press conference.

2009—March 11th: President Obama signs and renews the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, which continues the ban on federal funding for ESCR that Obama claims to have lifted two days earlier. No announcement is made and no press conference is called.

Whatever one’s politics, it is hard to deny the purposeful deceit and tactical shenanigans that have gone on with respect to ESCR. Obama claims to want to honor both the scientific promises of stem cell research and the ethical reservations of those who hold them. But the practical outcomes of his policies have done nothing of the sort. Though he refuses to ever acknowledge a difference between stem cell research and embryonic stem cell research, his policies have led us to the point where creating cloned embryos with the purpose of letting the created human being live is illegal, while creating cloned embryos for the purpose of tearing them apart for research purposes is encouraged and federal funding for it has been increased.
Though he claims to have “lifted the ban of the last eight years,” two days after he did so he knowingly and quietly re-signed the amendment that overrode his own Executive Order. Though he claims to approve of “promising research,” President Obama touts the very kind of research—embryonic stem cell research—that has led to exactly zero cures. At the same time, his revocation of President Bush’s Executive Order #13435 directly eliminated federal funding for adult stem cell research such as IPSC that has already led to more than seventy-three successful therapies.

Most disingenuously, and most importantly, Obama believes that his opponents on this issue are offering us “a false choice between sound science and moral values.” Further, in his speech at Notre Dame University, he claimed to seek “common ground” with those who do have ethical reservations about ESCR. One must wonder why, if the conflict some seem to see between sound science and moral values is a false one, there would be any need for compromise at all?

Even if we disregard the inconsistency in those two lines of thought, it is clear that research like that being done on IPSC gives us the best of both worlds. Beyond its proven technical success, it holds the principal advantage of avoiding the very aspect of ESCR that some find ethically troubling—the destruction of human embryos.

This represents the ultimate political winner. By promoting IPSC, Obama could not only take credit for its scientific success, but also simultaneously allay the ethical concerns that many hold. It is a political dream solution, yet Obama deliberately and quietly defunded it. This can only mean that Obama’s motivations on stem cell research are not political.
And if they are not political, one has to wonder just what his motivations are.

Robert Perry, M.A. (Christian Apologetics) Biola University, is a speaker with the Life Training Institute and an instructor with CrossExamined.org. He blogs about Christian worldview issues at http://true-horizon.blogspot.com.

Our Korean Connection

2010-10-10T22:26:00.003-04:00


With Mr. Young Kil Lee at KyungMin University in Uijeongbu

Thanks to all who left comments and offered their support in other ways about this latest adventure Mary and I took to Korea. I'm sorry I couldn't provide updates but we had no access to the internet while we were there (beyond checking email on a public computer once). What an incredible week for me personally, and for the mission of the Life Training Institute (LTI)!

No description of this trip to Korea would be complete without acknowledging the work of Mr. Young Kil Lee, our guide, interpreter and my newest friend. Mr. Lee worked tirelessly for months planning the trip. He led us by subway, bus, car and taxi all over Seoul, Daejon (his hometown) and Cheongju. There wasn't a day that did not include at least 4 hours of travel time, but none of it was wasted.

Mr. Lee would tell fellow train riders that I was an American -- as if they couldn't tell :-) -- who was there to talk about "knock-tae" (abortion). He had handouts he would give them that explained the mission of LTI in Korean. One lady became so excited she asked to pray for us right there on the subway.

I was without access to the internet for the week, so I could not update from Korea. The schedule ended up changing quite a bit (mostly with additions) since I left home, but here is a summary of the impact LTI made into a country with one of the highest abortion rates in the world:

Sunday
Myung Sung Presbyterian Church English Service (400)
Uijeongbu Community Christian Church (25)

Monday
International Christian High School - Uijeongbu (100)
:: Seoul sightseeing in the afternoon ::

Tuesday
EUCON Christian High School (35 + several parents!)
KyungMin University Students (800 in two sessions)

Wednesday
Young Shin Girls High School (500)
KyungMin University Faculty (400)

Thursday
Daesung Boys High School for 3 back-to-back sessions (1500 total)
Sam Nam Church Pastor's meeting in Cheongju (40 pastors and many of their wives)

Friday
Kwang Sung Boys High School 2 sessions (1000 total)

Several of the presentations included Q&A time where I was asked some pretty tough questions -- the usual kinds that we are challenged with. Though it was difficult to work through the language barrier at times, I believe the questioners were satisfied -- even when they disagreed. One lady who was pretty emphatic in her disagreement with me actually bought a group of ten of us dinner afterward and thanked us repeatedly for being there.

While this list shows us speaking to just under 5000 students, pastors and university faculty members, it does not do justice to the impact LTI had -- largely due to Mr. Lee's strategic planning. For instance, the Myung Sung Church we visited on Sunday is the largest Presbyterian church in the world (at just over 100,000 members). Though I only spoke to about 400 at the English Service, those included faculty members from several local universities and about six of Myung Sung's pastors. Each of them approached me afterward and thanked me for "delivering this message to Korea." One of them told Mr. Lee he wished I could have spoken to the main congregation.

On Thursday, the small pastor's meeting at Sam Nam Christian Church was planned because Cheongju is a modern and fast-growing city southeast of Seoul -- an "up and coming" place. Those 40 pastors represented an estimated 8,000 congregants who will soon have the LTI message delivered to them. It also included several more college faculty members who were drinking the message in and want to offer a "Pro-Life Seminar" on the LTI material at a local university.

Mr. Lee thinks strategically.

The list goes on. I cannot tell you the number of people who sat in stunned disbelief when they heard and saw the truth about abortion -- or how many left in tears. It is a subject that Koreans simply have not talked about -- until now.

I think the Korea trip was a huge success but I'll leave it to Mr. Lee (in his second language, please remember) to sum it up:

Thank you Bob and Mary for your sweet testimony of Jesus that you showed to me and thousands Korean people everywhere your presence were. Many Koreans were blessed and trained by your sacrificial and loving ministry of your message with clear answer to the question WHAT IS THE UNBORN? I pray God will continue to work His will in many thousands lives that heard this message from you so that they will be lead by the Holy Spirit to protect many lives of the unborn. I expect to keep communicating with you and will hear of your next coming to Korea for the ministry in Korea for Korean people.

Korean Pro-Life Trip

2010-09-29T15:26:00.003-04:00

Abortion is illegal in Korea -- yet the country has one of the highest abortion rates in the world. For that reason, friends of the Life Training Institute have been working to provide some pro-life training to the good people of Korea for quite some time.

This Friday, my wife and I will be leaving for Seoul for a week of speaking engagements at churches, high schools and to the students and faculty at a university campus. All will be centered on the pro-life issues of abortion and/or stem cell research.

This is a huge undertaking for me -- "daunting" is the word that keeps coming to mind -- so I greatly appreciate the words of encouragement and support I have already received from many friends and family. And, for all those who have made it, I also appreciate the commitment to pray for a safe and effective trip -- that those who hear the information would be receptive to it, and that they would be the catalyst for change in their country.

Though it seems to be changing by the hour, this is the latest version of the schedule that has been planned for me. I don't know what kind of internet access I will have, but I will try to report as best I can as the week goes on.

The Darwinian Assumption: Baby Talk

2010-09-07T10:16:00.003-04:00

As a follow up to my post about the evidence for an innate and highly developed sense of consciousness in newborn and infant babies, I was amazed, not only at the level of development the studies uncovered, but in terminology used to describe it. Here, for instance, are a few examples:

"... babies are exquisitely designed ______ to change and create, to learn and explore. Those capacities, so intrinsic to what it means to be human, appear in their purest forms in the earliest years of our lives."
"Children reason in complex and subtle ways that cannot be explained by simple associations or rules."
"Fundamentally, babies are designed to learn."
"If the brain is a computer ____________, we can ask about the _______ justification and neurological basis for the extraordinary learning abilities we see in very young children."

These are all extraordinary statements that support the plain observation that a baby's intellect displays the appearance of design. But what I think makes each of them even more significant is that -- in the blanks left in statements 1) and 4) -- the author has inserted the words: "by evolution," "designed by evolution," and "evolutionary," respectively. This is because ...

"The central idea of cognitive science is that the brain is a kind of computer designed by evolution and programmed by experience."

On what basis does the author make this claim? There is no supporting evidence given -- and there never is. It is simply an assumption made by those who will not accept any other explanation. But two facts make this bold assertion highly unconvincing. The first resides earlier within the same article!

Remember from my first post that the author, who wants us to accept this as "the central idea of cognitive science," has also just reported that:

Infants understand fundamental physical relations such as movement trajectories, gravity and containment
Infants are born knowing much of what adults know about how objects and people behave
Newborns already understand that people are special ..."

All these traits are displayed by newborns that, by definition, could not have been "programmed by experience." They are infants. They don't have any "experience."

The second fact is directly applicable to the claim, repeated over and over again by the author, that the brain is "a computer designed by evolution." Notice (in quote number 2. above) her assertion that: "Children reason in complex and subtle ways that cannot be explained by simple associations or rules."

OK, but what else does evolution have to offer? Darwinian Evolution is, by definition, a mindless, purposeless, mechanistic system, that can bring about nothing but a product based on the "associations" between various physical particles and the "rules" of physics and chemistry that govern them.

Yet materialists, forced by their own philosophical presuppositions to deny the existence of anything other than the physical world, routinely proclaim that our minds and the ideas contained within them are completely reducible to the matter, and the behavior of the matter, contained in our brains. This understanding was summed up well by Sir Francis Crick when he announced that we ". . . are nothing but a pack of neurons."

On this view, the human mind is simply a computer made of meat that can be completely explained by studying the ways in which neurons function. Philosopher John Lucas and mathematician/physicist Roger Penrose have formulated a brilliant rebuttal to this naturalistic view, based on the work of Austrian logician Kurt Gödel.

This work showed that the brain cannot be a computer made of meat for one simple reason: Assuming that it is, and that there is computer program running in our brains, means that we should be able to modify the "program" -- which infers that we would be able to outwit ourselves -- a notion that is completely incoherent. The explanation for their sophisticated thinking is beyond the scope of this blog, and beyond my ability to explain sufficiently, but you can find a detailed explanation (as I did) in Stephen Barr's, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith -- a book that was published in 2003.*

It is not religious hocus-pocus, or wishful thinking that led to this proof. Lucas and Penrose use logic and mathematical reasoning to show that the materialistic view that the human brain cannot simply be a computer made of meat is demonstrably false. Yet, here we are reading in Scientific American at least seven years later, about how evolution designed the computer that is our brain.

The baseless assertions and obvious contradictions made by those who demand that "evolution is a fact," never cease to amaze me. Maybe Evolution is true. Maybe all the magical capabilities attributed to it really are possible. But can someone please tell us exactly how this works ... or can they at least stop contradicting themselves when they insist on labeling things -- things that even they admit blatantly display all the traits of design -- with a forced, and unsupported, materialistic explanation? Can they do so without pretending that their claims have not already been legitimately falsified?

Just once?

_______________
* Stephen M. Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 195.

Free eBook: "Is Christianity True?"

2010-09-02T14:25:00.000-04:00

Image via Wikipedia
Several months ago I participated in an apologetics essay project over at Apologetics 315. One of the goals of the project was the publication of an eBook that would contain a compilation of all the essays contributed. The eBook is now available (FREE!) for download here: "Is Christianity True?"

Check it out. If any of the essays generate questions or comments, I would be happy to address them ...

Stem Shell Game

2010-08-26T01:21:00.003-04:00

On Monday August 23, 2010, Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. issued an injunction on the use of federal funding for embryo-destructive stem cell research. The New York Times’ (for one example) reaction to the announcement was one of stunned indignation:

"The ruling came as a shock to scientists at the National Institutes of Health and at universities across the country, which had viewed the Obama administration’s new policy and the grants provided under it as settled law."

What the Times failed to note in its story was that Judge Lamberth was not the first federal official to strike a legal blow against President Barack Obama's stem cell policy and thereby block federal funding of embryo destructive stem cell research. The first such move actually occurred on March 11, 2009. That move was made by ... President Barack Obama.

The fact is that Judge Lamberth's ruling is perfectly consistent with the law. While the administration, with great public fanfare, claimed to have "lifted the ban" on ESCR with his March 9, 2009 Executive Order (EO), Mr. Obama quietly overrode his own EO just two days later when he re-signed (as has every president since 1996) the Dickey-Wicker Amendment to a federal appropriations bill (as Scott noted in his post on the subject). The Dickey-Wicker Amendment bans public funding of research that destroys human embryos. Mr. Obama signed it. He didn't call a big press conference to herald the occasion because doing so would not fit the narrative he is trying to sell about his forward looking faith in science as opposed to the Luddite opponents of ESCR.

The dirty little secret here is that the stem cell research EO Mr. Obama and those who are carrying his water have called "policy" and referred to as "settled law" is a hollow document that carries no legal force. His signing of the Dickey-Wicker Amendment into law is binding and the unquestionable basis on which Judge Lamberth rendered his decision.

The reality of that fact is something pro-lifers need to soak in. Though it is becoming a fading memory, it serves to remind us of another EO Mr. Obama issued during the health care debate. In exchange for the votes of so-called "pro-life Democrats," Mr. Obama issued an EO proclaiming there would be no federal funding of abortion in the health care bill. They bought it. He signed it. And now we are left with an EO on abortion that contains the same amount of legal power we find in his EO on stem cell research.

None.

Judge Lamberth's ruling is also perfectly consistent with basic ethical reasoning. Where adult and Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell (IPSC) research have produced more than 75 successful therapies, embryonic stem cell research has produced exactly zero. Yet, Mr. Obama continues to push for the latter. And while they may be smaller and less developed, the embryos he wants to use are distinct, genetically whole, living human beings. That fact is scientific, not religious. There is no ethical justification for taking the life of a defenseless human being -- no matter his/her size or level of development -- for the benefit of another.

The truth is that adult and IPSC research constitute the common ground that Mr. Obama claims to seek. They are more successful and they do not entail the destruction of human beings. This is a political win-win. Mr. Obama could claim the successes of these therapies while at the same time assuaging the ethical concerns of those who hold them. Yet, for some unknown reason, he never undertakes a single action that would further his claim to seek that common ground.

Given Mr. Obama's political nature and the political power he wields as the most powerful man on earth, one has to wonder why he wouldn't take advantage of the political win-win being offered. That he doesn't do so tells us that his motivations on this issue aren't political. And if they're not political, one has to wonder just what his motivations really are.

Kids Do The Darndest Things

2010-08-21T12:48:00.004-04:00

The July, 2010 issue of Scientific American contains an article that Peter Singer and his fellow materialists may find in curious opposition to their infanticidal belief system as it relates to the (so-called) personhood -- or lack thereof -- of those they see fit to eliminate. In direct opposition to earlier research that described children's thoughts as "irrational and illogical, egocentric, amoral and with out any concept of cause and effect," new studies and techniques instead "look at what babies do instead of what they say." The results are fascinating.

Without going into detail here (you can access the entire article at: "How Babies Think"), I'd like to summarize a few of the discoveries that behavioral psychologists have previously "never thought possible."

First, let's remember that Dr. Singer, in his book Practical Ethics, defends the parallel notions that newborn infants should not be considered persons until 30 days after birth and that, disabled newborns can be ethically killed on the spot by the doctor who delivers them. With that in mind, consider some of what the SciAm article reports:

Babies can detect statistical patterns of musical tones and visual scenes, and also more abstract grammatical patterns
Babies can understand the relation between a statistical sample and a population
Babies are not completely egocentric -- they can take the perspective of another person

But enough about babies. There is even more that has been discovered about infants:

Infants understand fundamental physical relations such as movement trajectories, gravity and containment
Infants are born knowing much of what adults know about how objects and people behave

And here's my favorite ... The author of the SciAm article (Alison Gopnik of Cal Berkeley) believes that "the most important knowledge of all is knowledge of other people." While I disagree with her -- the most important knowledge of all is knowledge of the truth -- I understand the point of view from which she makes the claim. In any case, Gopnik reports that Dr. Andrew N. Meltzoff of the University of Washington has shown that:

"Newborns already understand that people are special ..."

If only Peter Singer could re-connect with this innate knowledge that seems to have eluded him.

I have always appreciated Peter Singer for showing us the actual ends to which his naturalistic worldview leads -- speciesism, the moral neutrality of bestiality, justification for infanticide etc. Describing his views to people shocks them into considering not only the horrific conclusions to which his worldview leads, but that it may actually be wrong. But it turns out that the main premise on which he bases his justification for infanticide -- that infants are not sentient and therefore not "persons" -- is false. Newborns actually are sentient after all. They are so sentient in fact, they understand that other people are "special" to a greater degree than Peter Singer does.

Let me be clear. The findings reported in this Scientific American article have no bearing on the case we make at the Life Training Institute. Our claim is that human beings at all stages of development are valuable simply in virtue of the kind of thing they are -- for their intrinsic value. What these newborns can do (their instrumental value) is irrelevant. I just find it satisfying to see that, even by Peter Singer's own dubious standards, his case collapses in light of the scientific evidence.

There is more to this report -- like what the author attributes these findings to -- but I'll save that for the next post.

Logical "Choice"

2010-08-10T02:00:00.000-04:00

Image by clockworknate via FlickrWhile perusing a story about the challenges to ObamaCare being posed by those who are beginning to realize that the new national health care plan really will provide public funding of abortion, I ran across this little gem in the comments section of the article. I offer it simply to demonstrate the thoughtful deliberation and ethical clarity many on the "pro-choice" side give to the abortion issue. Read it and weep:

"If we have to pay for the smokers and drinkers and drug abusers that abuse their bodies all their lives, then we should pay for abortions. At least if we pay for the abortion we won't have to pay health care on another person. I think they should be offering them on every corner shop. Would solve a few problems."

How do you argue with that?

Group Wink

2010-08-04T10:00:00.002-04:00

To follow up on my last post (here), the reality of the possibility of an economic/debt related collapse became even more believable to me after reading about economist Dan Ariely's book, Predictably Irrational a few months back. Kevin Hassett referenced Ariely's book in his discussion about the relationship between moral conviction and economic action. In the book, Ariely quotes the iconic economist Adam Smith:

"The success of most people ... almost always depends upon the favour and good opinion of their neighbours and equals; and without a tolerably regular conduct these can very seldom be obtained."

In other words, as Hassett puts it, stigma matters. People will be affected in their economic decision making by the views that their peers have about them. He goes on to explore the ways in which ethical stigmatization may affect conduct by analyzing an experiment he devised to look at this phenomenon. The results were fascinating and are relevant not only to the purpose of this blog, but to the question of a possible coming economic catastrophe.

In the ethics experiment, several MIT students were given a simple math test to complete in a fixed amount of time, and given a reward for each correct answer they gave. The students were divided into two groups: a control group that handed in their tests to be graded, and another group that reported their own scores (and could therefore change their answers).

Here's the catch. The second group of students (who had the opportunity to cheat) were again divided into two groups. One of those groups was asked to make a list of 10 books they remembered reading from high school. The others were asked to write down as many of the 10 Commandments as they could recall. Here are the results ... and also where it gets scary:

The control group (who couldn't cheat) averaged 3.1 problems right
The group who simply listed 10 books from high school (and could cheat) averaged 4.1 problems right
The 10 Commandment group did not cheat, and reported only 3.0 problems right

As Hassett puts it, "thinking about the 10 Commandments put students in a moral frame of mind." They didn't cheat and their performance stayed right in line with the others who could not cheat. The simple act of thinking about a moral standard caused those students to feel an obligation to adhere to that standard.

And that's the rub. Remember from the last post that: "80% of individuals believe it would be "morally wrong" to strategically default on their mortgages." But there is another side to the data and it is this:

People were 82% more likely to state an intention to default if they knew someone who had already defaulted.

Do you see the correlation to the MIT study cited above? Once the mortgage defaults begin, it will become much easier for others to justify choosing the same escape route. Their "10 Commandment" morality will quickly give way to a declining standard that finds it more difficult to absorb the pain of an economic struggle than to simply throw in the towel like the neighbors did.

Lack of stigma matters too.

It is hard to imagine that there is any wrought iron fence strong enough to stop the resulting economic avalanche. I hope I'm wrong, but you tell me: In a society that has already proven its propensity for disregarding rising debt levels in favor of an "entitlement" to have a more comfortable life, more toys, more gadgets and houses they cannot afford; in a society whose political "leaders" will go to great lengths to avoid telling the economic truth, admit to the required economic pain and continue to pass the buck to the next (several) generations; in a society that is perfectly comfortable mortgaging its future at unprecedented levels -- do you think the trend will get reversed or simply continue to accelerate?

For some reason, I'm not optimistic.

Economic Immorality

2010-08-01T23:28:00.002-04:00

Several months ago, I commented on the possibility that may exist for an economic collapse and a correlated Evangelical collapse. I still don't know what to make of the relationship between the two, but I am just as convinced as ever that both of them are likely to occur. The economic reasons are no less threatening, that's for sure, but I was motivated to address the issue again after I ran across a few seemingly unrelated articles over the last few months.

In case you haven't heard, this country is in a debt crisis that is not going away anytime soon. It's gotten worse since these statistics were published last October, but at that time Kevin Hasset reported that the United States debt level is "higher relative to our national income than it was for the typical middle-income country that defaulted on its debt between 1970 and 2001 ... in worse shape than the typical Latin American country that defaulted" (National Review, October 19, 2009, p. 8).

The trigger for the current debt crisis was a housing/mortgage market that imploded. Since the implosion, politicians (of both parties) have tried to cover up the problem with silly "stimulus" measures and one-time tax credits ostensibly meant to mend the housing market. But this has a similar effect to painting over a rusty wrought-iron fence. It may look pretty from the road but the fence is still rusting.

Today, the Wall Street Journal estimates that 5.3 million Americans are living in homes that are worth 20% less than the mortgage they still owe on them. Of those who took "sub-prime" mortgages between 2000-2007, nearly 60% owe more than their homes are worth. In some places, nearly every mortgage is "under water" in this way -- 94% in Las Vegas, 89% in Phoenix, 86% in Miami. (National Review, March 8, 2010, p. 20)

At the same time the mortgage default rate has been surprisingly low, considering the number who could just walk away. In fact, Hassett reports that 80% of individuals believe it would be "morally wrong" to strategically default on their mortgages.

Remember that number. It tells us that a vast majority of people simply do not want to give up on their mortgages and have attempted to renegotiate them with the help of banks that have been primed by the federal government (more of that "stimulus" money). But printing money for the purpose of pretending that doing so will make everything get better cannot go on forever. And when it stops, all hell will break loose.

More next time ...

To Tell You the Truth ...

2010-07-15T22:34:00.001-04:00

Some of what I offer below is meant to be directed to evangelists but I like to think of it as good advice for talking to anybody. As someone has said, the Gospel is offensive enough to the self-centered, rebellious humans it is meant to reach. We don't need to make it more offensive by adding arrogant, patronizing attitude to the discussion.

Why can't we just be honest with people? After all, if the Gospel is actually true, and the skeptic you are talking to is actually seeking the truth (this is debatable in many cases but we have no justification for assuming so), let's let the chips fall where they may. It seems to me that this would garner a little more respect, not only for us personally, but for the truth we are trying to convey.

I ran across a couple of articles recently that confirm just that. The first one is by the self-described "recovering evangelist," Jim Henderson, in his article, "How To Sell Christianity? Ask An Atheist". Jim makes some good points:

The "I'm Right, You're Wrong" model is a conversation killer.
Telling people they are "lost" does not encourage further debate
An arrogant attitude does much to mask the message
Atheists are wary of being seen or treated as a "project"

If this sounds awfully familiar, it may be because another guy said it first. His name was Peter:

Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. (1 Peter 3:15)

Yeah, that Peter.

But that's not all. Another problem we seem to have in offering the truth of Christianity, is that we like to sugar coat it to make it more "marketable" or "seeker friendly." In other words, we seem to have a tendency to play into the cultural paradigm that tells us to market our convictions as a self-improvement program. Clay Jones of Biola University addresses that in his post on "Improved Lifestyle Witnessing" by making the following points:

Cults do the exact same thing.
Postmoderns, believing all truth is your own truth, are glad your Christian choice works for you, but their own (fill in the blank) choice works for them too.
It just ain't true ... ask the first generation of Christians about how their lifestyles were improved. Not only so, but if the evangelized person's life doesn't improve, you leave them to question the truth of Christianity itself.
Details, details ... but this is not what the Bible teaches. Jesus told us to repent, and challenged us with the oxymoronic promise that those who seek to save his life will lose it, while those who lose their life will save it (Luke 9: 23-25).

It follows from above that the very notion of this "improved lifestyle" gospel denies the nature of the real Gospel and is therefore doomed to failure.

So, can we all just agree to be straight up with people? Can we engage those who doubt the truth of Christianity with respect, and without using "Christianspeak," and just let that truth speak for itself?

It seems that we would be a lot more successful, and look a lot less like the world around us, if we did.

In His Image

2010-06-17T13:15:00.003-04:00

I have been a subscriber to National Review for about 20 years. I read it cover-to-cover every two weeks but must admit I don't pay much attention to the sidebar poetry the magazine sometimes adds to its pages. But, for some reason, I was flipping through an old issue (just before I was getting ready to throw it away) and my eye was caught by the title of the poem I share below.

I'm not much into poetry but this short, sweet little gem is a keeper so I thought I would share it. Enjoy ...

THE IMAGE

In shops, on streets, in random places

A light within me lights these faces.

I see them glance, and hear, and nod,

And each face is a word of God.

Briefly and casually He talks,

For all the language in His stock.

But this is Him: that eyes are eyes,

That flesh is flesh is His disguise

And His alone. What is so fine

And costly can't be yours or mine.

~ Sarah Ruden

The Rage Against God

2010-06-01T10:00:00.003-04:00

Peter Hitchens (yes, he is the brother of famed "new atheist," Christopher Hitchens) spot video introducing his new book, The Rage Against God. This has the potential to be a fascinating read.

Available today on Amazon.com. I hope to review it soon.

Shrouded in Nonsense

2010-05-13T14:13:00.000-04:00

The Full Shroud

OK, just five days after I declared my intention to "throttle back," I picked up a USA Today and it set me off. I can't help myself. I have to respond to this article: "Shroud of Turn is Real Enough," by David Farley in the "On Religion" opinion forum that appears there every Monday.

I have no idea what credentials allowed Mr. Farley to write this article except that he has apparently written a book on church relics, but the theme of the piece is that the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin is -- and should be -- irrelevant, particularly to the religious people who revere it.

"One thing," says Mr. Farley, "that's rarely taken into consideration is that scientific tests don't matter. Lambast the faithful for this antiquated form of worship ... It's an exercise in futility."

Listen, I have no idea if the shroud is authentic or not -- and I won't even attempt to tackle that subject here -- but this is the kind of thinking that really fires me up. Since when should the truth of anything, especially anything related to church history and the reliability of what we claim to believe, "not matter"?

This mindset plays right into the hands of those who dismiss religious belief as being a purely subjective epistemological game we play that has no connection to the real world we live in. Unfortunately, this view is held both by critics of religion and by religious folks themselves. Too many of us have grown to accept this bifurcation that either winks and nods at religious ideas in an effort to humor the silly religious believers, or actually believes it to be a sign of our own pious spirituality. Some actually wear this distinction as a badge of honor.

Mr. Farley goes on: "If they accept the shroud as the real deal, then, in their minds, in their hearts, in their conceptions of heaven and the afterlife, it is the real thing. They will pray in front of it and it will give them happiness and relief ... And isn't that what we all want, for ourselves and for each other?"

No, Mr. Farley, it isn't. What I really want is the truth.

I do not believe Christianity because it makes me feel better about myself. Frankly, if you really understand Christianity, the central point of it is that we should feel worse about ourselves than we do. We are meant to realize that our natural state is one of rebellion -- a rebellion that we cannot put down by ourselves. Someone has done that for us -- the God-man whose image some claim to see on that shroud.

Let me put it this way. I don't think it could ever be "proven" either way but, if the Shroud of Turin is for real, that would be a fascinating, earth-shattering fact. It would be really cool. But I wouldn't "pray in front of it" and it wouldn't alter my conceptions of heaven and the afterlife. I get those from the Biblical text.

Conversely, if the Shroud of Turin is a fake, it wouldn't surprise me in the least because it wouldn't be the first, or the last, time some charlatan had tried to pull off such a scam. That said, I would be the first to shout from the mountaintops that it is a fraud -- and I would still go right on believing that Christianity is true for a host of substantial reasons.

To suggest that religious people just "pretend" that such a thing is real regardless of the evidence is to suggest that truth and reality have no bearing on our faith. That is a faith I want no part of.

Thinking About Abortion

2010-05-10T10:00:00.001-04:00

The following article appears on the Life Training Institute (LTI) website. I am cross-posting it here simply to make my position on abortion clear and to explain why I have committed to LTI's mission, both as a speaker and a financial supporter. I only hope I can deepen both of those commitments in the future and I encourage the readers of this blog to visit and support LTI in any way you can. The issue of abortion in this country is too big and too hideous to ignore. We at LTI, and you in your own little corner of the world, have an obligation to own for ourselves, and to "persuasively communicate the pro-life message" to others.

Please consider educating yourself to participate in that endeavor in any way you can ... Thanks.

--------------------

Cleverness Not Required

If there is a more relevant poster child for the self-confident, narcissistic, postmodern personality than the pilot of a single-seat modern fighter airplane, I am not sure who it would be. There are exceptions to this generalization of course, but I was not one of them. So, it was with the related air of invincibility that I strutted into a hangar in Cherry Point, North Carolina after a training sortie in 1987 and was met by my squadron Operations Officer. “Bob,” he said sternly, “you need to call your wife. No debrief, no shower. Just go call her. She’s pretty upset about something.”

My pregnant wife had an appointment with her doctor earlier that morning but it never occurred to me that that might have anything to do with her call. When she answered the phone she was a blubbering mess. Through tears and sobs I got the message: “There might be something wrong with the baby.”

Over the next several days we learned all about the indications of the Alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) test which triggered the alarm. We were warned that our baby’s high AFP level could point to any of several severe abnormalities including: abdominal wall defects or neural tube defects like spina-bifida, and anencephaly. Finally, we were sent to the only military facility in our area that could provide a Level II Ultrasound – the Naval Hospital in Norfolk, Virginia. It was during that ultrasound that the technician maneuvered the equipment into position for a perfect, left-side profile view of our first baby. Neither of us will ever forget the moment.

He was sucking his thumb, his right hand curled into a ball. But just as the picture came into focus, he began to open and close his fingers. Our view from the side made it look like he was waving – like he was telling us that everything was going to be OK. At least that is how we took it.

Afterward, the doctor leaned forward on her stool and looked us in the eyes. “As best as we can tell, the ultrasound seems to be normal, but it is not definitive. All the risks we talked about are still there. So, you need to make a decision about whether or not you want to continue the pregnancy.”

The image we saw on the screen that morning was obviously a baby. Neither of us could have justified ending that baby’s life, even if it meant that we were committing ourselves to the possible agony of dealing with the short, painful life of a severely deformed infant, or the challenge of lifelong care for a physically and/or mentally handicapped child. Though the decision we made was final, in the weeks and months that followed I was haunted by the weight of it. The same question kept replaying in my head, “What if the baby hadn’t waved?”

For years I lived with the unresolved conundrum that I could never justify our decision based on such an obvious coincidence as the well-timed wave of a baby’s fingers, no matter how emotionally convincing it may have been. But neither could I muster a reasonable argument in defense of that decision. For the first time in my life I was confronted with the realization that I had never engaged my mind in even the most cursory reasoning about the reality of abortion.

My wife and I were products of highly ethical Christian homes. It was for that reason, and that reason alone, that we never seriously considered the possibility of not “continuing the pregnancy.” We had been immersed in an upbringing where the existence of objective truth and a normative understanding of right and wrong were simply assumed. Living in that kind of environment, we would never have contemplated doing otherwise. Moral people just didn’t kill innocent babies. When that is your outlook, an emotional response is all you need.

Unfortunately, the probability that such an environment is a prevalent one is becoming more and more remote these days. We certainly cannot assume it. No matter what their upbringing, a great majority of those in our culture are floating adrift in a sea of every kind of relativistic thinking. “That may be true for you, but it’s not for me.” “Who are you to judge?” “Don’t try to impose your moral standards on me!”

We are surrounded by several generations of adults, young and old, who have unquestioningly accepted a relativistic mindset wherein moral reasoning is considered the quaint practice of a less tolerant time. It is within such an environment that the merchants of death thrive. It is only within a world like this that a renowned philosopher like David Boonin could consider a memorable moment just like the one my wife and I experienced that day in Norfolk, Virginia – and come to such a gruesomely opposite conclusion.

Gazing at still photos of his son Eli at various stages of his life, Boonin refers to a sonogram image of him that he keeps in the top drawer of his desk. The photo, taken 24 weeks before Eli’s birth, confirms for Boonin that “… there is no doubt in my mind that this picture shows the same little boy at a very early stage in his physical development. And there is no question that the position I defend in this book [A Defense of Abortion] entails that it would have been morally permissible to end his life at [that] point.”[i]

People who think like Boonin influence our culture in insidious ways. They include folks who spend hundreds of pages in the books they write attempting to convince us that there is a difference between a human being and a human person. They include philosophers like Princeton University’s Chair of Bioethics at its Center for Human Values, Peter Singer, who believes that “… it can be morally permissible to kill infants; that some animals have a greater claim to our protection than [infants] do; that sex between humans and animals is morally acceptable so long as it does not cause the animal pain or harm; [and] … that the traditional view of the sanctity of human life is obsolete.”[ii]

Philosophers like Boonin and Singer may not be household names but their worldview has seeped into the very foundations of our most elite institutions of higher learning and from there into the unquestioning ethos of our world. The lines of reasoning they come up with to uphold these kinds of views are intricately detailed, meticulously constructed arguments that are not for the faint of heart and there is only one reason they offer them. They mean to condone the “right” to practice abortion or engage in embryo-destructive stem cell research by creating an ethical atmosphere in which limitless human autonomy is the paradigm and the high-sounding promises of what we can do through science become equivalent to what we should do. Their goal is to convince us that any “thinking person” should see their nuanced points of view.

And it works.

After all, this is a culture that gives no quarter to any restriction on one’s personal autonomy. That being so, the arguments have been effective within a society bent on embracing any justification for pursuing its own self-absorbed ends – a society eager to listen to whatever its itching ears wants to hear.

But it occurs to me that the average person, looking at their offspring’s sonogram on a computer screen, has never even heard these arguments and will, in all probability, never have occasion to consider their finer points or realize that they have been swayed by them. Indeed, these kinds of justifications for abortion would never have occurred to the likes of my wife and me in the winter of 1987, and they wouldn’t occur to almost anyone else now. Even so, when human autonomy and moral justification intersect, the result is a passive acquiescence to the vision of the anointed that leads us toward the least painful solution to our problems.

Ignorance of reality is bliss.

If someone like me can be so easily swayed to reject abortion by the coincidental movement of an unborn baby’s fingers, they can be just as easily swayed by emotional appeals to the opposite view.

My contention is that, minus the extremely rare exceptions of those with improperly functioning minds, every person on this earth carries with them a moral imagination that is an undeniable aspect of their humanity. That being true, it is a simple task to shock that imagination, with a jolt of logical thinking, into a confrontation with moral clarity. The goal of LTI is to deliver that shock in a winsome, attractive and convincing way that unveils the plain and obvious truth behind every issue we take on. We do it all the time and the response we get is always similar, “I’ve never heard it put that way before.”

But make no mistake – our tactics are nothing clever. Our case does not require specialized education or deep reflection. It does not rely on some intricately woven line of reasoning meant to slither its way through multitude of nuanced philosophical or scientific trivialities. We don’t have to play those kinds of games, even though our case is strong enough to stand up to those kinds of objections. The case for life is elegant in its simplicity and direct in its appeal to what normal people already know but may never have been led to recognize or consider for themselves. It is everyman’s argument, so clear and concise it can even be delivered by someone like me – or you.

For the record, the baby that triggered the chain of events described above was born in April of 1988. He was the oldest of what became five sons but he was the only son for whom we ever received the results of an AFP test. My wife refused to submit to them after our experience. Far from being born without a brain, Robby grew up to be a highly intelligent, confident and successful young man. Next May he will graduate near the top of his class from one of the finest universities in America.

My motivation to commit to the mission and vision of the Life Training Institute rests partially on the unacceptable notion that we have no idea how many babies just like Robby will never have the opportunity to accomplish what he has accomplished because their lives ended in a disposable bio-hazard bag at an abortion clinic. I cannot live with the idea that someone just like me would make the opposite choice simply because I never made the effort to educate them about the truth-soaked realities that undergird the pro-life position.

I am no bioethical expert. I am not a trained philosopher. But that’s the point. My hope is that my unexceptional background can confront some folks with the realization that they too have been intellectually disengaged from the reality of abortion, and that they too can admit that they are ill-equipped to articulate it. I hope to stir people who are just like me to embrace and promote what is so clearly and unarguably the morally superior position that LTI defends.

This is not a topic to be left to the high-sounding but vacuous arguments of the intellectual elite. It is a cause that every one of us can grasp, knowing that we stand on a solid foundation of truth that is not swayed by emotional appeals or the chicanery of those who go to such great lengths to undermine it. I cannot hope that someone’s baby will wave to them at just the right time. I cannot allow that others would be left to rely on the same shifting sand on which I stood when I was in their position. I cannot go on being a passive spectator or an insufferable complainer about an injustice I have no intention of confronting.

Our case is easily made. We just need to go make it.

-------------------
[i] Robert P. George & Christopher Tollefsen, Embryo (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2008), p. 113-114.
[ii] Ramesh Ponnuru, The Party of Death (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2006), p. 175.

Throttling Back

2010-05-05T10:17:00.000-04:00

There are times when one has to recognize his own limitations ... and I've just arrived at one of mine.

Keeping a blog active and up-to-date is not an easy task. It is time consuming and challenging to continue to come up with something interesting to say and to then take the time to put the right words on paper (or computer screen). Because I am a notoriously slow writer, the time element gets multiplied for me. I need more of it.

In aviation, when things get complicated during an emergency, one of the most important things I can do is pull the throttle back, slow down, and "create more time" to analyze and deal with the situation in which I find myself. It allows me to think more clearly, act more deliberately, and get things right. I think that applies to me here.

In my quest to expand my apologetics ministry, I have begun to be more proactive about getting "out there" to try to have whatever kind of impact I can. This includes speaking, writing and teaching. Each of these are time consuming activities. I am scheduled for a weeklong trip to Korea with the Life Training Institute in October. I have been asked to write articles for a couple of magazines, teach some classes, and speak at a few events this coming fall. I am also attempting to commit myself to finish a book idea I started several years ago (in my mind) but have never even come close to completing.

Each of these is important to me but none are nearly as important as my role as a husband and father.

As a result, I need to throttle back and create some time. Unfortunately, that means the blog has to take a backseat for a while.

I will continue to post tidbits, links to other bloggers I trust and admire, and throw a few of my own posts in when I feel the urge. But the upshot is that my activity here will be greatly reduced over the next several months. I have no delusions that this change of plans will greatly impact anyone else's life. Just thought I would let it be known. For those who have followed me here, thank you for taking the time to listen to me rant. I sincerely appreciate it.

I'm not going away ... slowing down a bit so I can think more clearly and concentrate on the important stuff. Thanks for understanding.

Noah's Ark?

2010-04-30T23:16:00.003-04:00

If you've heard anything about the recent claim that a team of Chinese and Turkish archeologists are "99.9% sure they have discovered Noah's Ark," beware. These types of stories -- like the "missing link" stories from the Darwinist scientific "experts" -- usually have a way of being more heat than light. As I write this, I have no idea what the most up-to-date information is but I do know that Frank Turek will be discussing the issue on his radio program on Saturday, May 1, 2010. Frank has actually participated in some expeditions that have tried to locate the ark so I am sure he has reliable contacts to tap before/during his radio show. Click here for a link to Frank's weekly AFR radio broadcast:

AFR FM Radio (station list available on AFR.net)

or go to CrossExamined.org for RSS and iTunes feeds.

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