True Horizon

In my last post I made the assumption that readers know why I say that “life begins at conception.” This may not be the case. It is also wildly controversial in the abortion debate so I thought I would back up the claim. You may note that I am not arguing from the Bible. I am not making a theological case. I am not imposing my morality on others.

What I am doing is following a scientific and philosophical case that is undeniable. It is not my opinion that life begins at conception. I’ll leave it to others to make their points …

Dr. Hymie Gordon, professor of medical genetics and physician at the Mayo Clinic:

… we can now also say that the question of the beginning of life - when life begins - is no longer a question for theological or philosophical dispute. It is an established scientific fact.Theologians and philosophers may go on to debate the meaning of life or purpose of life, but it is an established fact that all life, including human life, begins at the moment of conception … as far as I know, this has never been argued against.

Dr. M. Krieger, The Human Reproductive System:

All organisms, however large and complex they may be when fullgrown, begin life as but a single cell … this is true of the human being, for instance, who begins life as a fertilized ovum.

Dr. B. Patten, Human Embryology:

The formation, maturation and meeting of a male and female sex cell are all preliminary to their actual union in a combined cell, a zygote, which definitely marks the beginning of a new individual.

Dr. Micheline Matthews-Roth, a principal research associate in the Department of Medicine, Harvard University:

So, it is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception, when egg and sperm join to form the zygote, and this developing human always is a member of our species in all stages of its life thereafter.

Dr. Ronan O’Rahilly and Dr, Fabiola Muller, Human Embryology and Teratology, 2nd edition:

It needs to be emphasized that life is continuous, as is also human life, so that the question “When does life begin?” is meaningless in terms of ontogeny. Although life is a continuous process, fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed.

There are many others but I won’t go on.

My point is this: When you try to argue that you don’t know when life begins, you are not arguing with me — you are arguing with those that write the embryology textbooks the abortionists learned from in medical school.

For a great read that makes the same case, check out Jay Watts (here) and read the comments too. There you will find more evidence like that I provided above.

And while I am at it, I should note that my source for these facts is Francis J. Beckwith’s, Defending Life — a must read for anyone who is interested in, or engaged in, the pro-life cause.

I have a policy to not delve into politics here except when it is unavoidable due to the moral dimension that some political issue brings to the table. In cases like that, I can’t help myself. One of those cases is Barack Obama’s stance on abortion. A quick summary of my view:

When it comes to the abortion issue, Barack Obama is a moral coward.

That ought to be succinct enough. I don’t say things like that lightly so let me explain why I’m saying it now. I’ll start with Obama’s response to Rick Warren at his recent appearance at Saddleback Church in southern California. Here’s the exchange:

WARREN: … Now, let’s deal with abortion; 40 million abortions since Roe v. Wade. As a pastor, I have to deal with this all of the time, all of the pain and all of the conflicts. I know this is a very complex issue. Forty million abortions, at what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?

OBAMA: Well, you know, I think that whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade.

What pay grade is he talking about? His current, and lifetime appointed, pay grade as a human being or his potential pay grade as President of the United States of America? I can do no better than my friend Jay at addressing the “pay grade” issue (here) so I won’t. But this is nothing but a spineless diversion from the actual topic in question. Obama knows that if a fetus is a person (i.e. life begins at conception) he cannot defend his pro-abortion view. So instead of confronting that moral question, he punts. Let me just say that his answer to that question was all I needed to come to my “moral coward” assessment. But there is more that I have learned since that has only strengthened my confidence in that assessment. (Read on …)

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you are probably wondering if I’ve been hiding under a rock someplace for the last month or so.

Well … sort of.

I have to apologize for my anemic posting rate but I do have an explanation. In June I began to prepare for a couple of reading/study intensive months that were to follow. I spent most of the month of July and early August in Atlanta training to fly a new airplane (The Boeing 737-800 NG). While living in an airport hotel and getting abused in a flight simulator day after day is a luxury few get to experience, trust me, you’re not missing anything.

More importantly, during the same time and for a couple of weeks after, I continued to prepare for an apologetics training program that I am really excited about. Twenty-nine of us descended on Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, NC for 3 days of training in both the knowledge and presentation of the case for Christianity. We were invited by Dr. Frank Turek, to attend the CrossExamined Instructor Academy (CIA), a program based on his book, I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist. Dr. Turek has turned the material in this book into a presentation/ seminar he gives on college campuses for one reason — 75% of kids who are brought up in the church leave the faith after they leave home.

The reason they leave is that they are inundated by the secular-atheist tilted faculty that dominates most college campuses these days. They hear the arguments these folks give and they are woefully unprepared to deal with them. In short, our kids know that they believe but they don’t know why they believe. This is a problem that must be addressed and, to his credit, Frank Turek knows he cannot do it alone. His goal is to assemble a nationwide team to help. I am trying to engage myself to become a part of that team.

I believe Christianity is worth thinking about. I believe in the Vision of TrueHorizon and I intend to make it a reality. My hope is to become an active part of the The CrossExamined Solution. If you know of a church, school or group that may be interested in a guest speaker who can address these types of issues, please let me know. Better yet, please recommend me or, if you prefer, Frank Turek, to come make the case.

It’s good to be back but we have a lot of work ahead of us.

We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God … (2 Corinthians 10:5)

It’s been a crazy few weeks so I am drastically behind my “desired” posting schedule, but I did want to follow up on my last one with regard to Richard Dawkins’ view of God. Though I touched on the point that Dawkins’ seems woefully unaware of the amount of complexity cosmologists have discovered in makeup of the universe, the second point is more profound. Before I begin, I just want to re-offer the exchange (between Dawkins and Francis Collins) that prompted the whole thing.

In discussing the improbability that there is a Creator who could be responsible for the grand design we find, here are the comments that jumped out at me (and were expertly addressed by Robert Hart in the March issue of Touchstone):

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.

To this, Robert Hart asks, “How is this an argument against the Christian faith?” Good question. In fact, as Hart suggested in the subtitle to his piece, this guys sounds more like St. Augustine than the leading atheist critic of Christianity in the contemporary world! A couple of observations:

1) “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.”

Fair enough, Mr. Dawkins. But contrary to the straw-man defenders of a thought-free faith you like to repeatedly argue against, there are some who are doing exactly that. While I disagree about the “vanishingly small” chance that such a God exists, many have provided evidence-based support for the idea that is perfectly consistent with the God described in the Bible. You have dismissed that evidence either because your presuppositions won’t allow you to consider it, or because you don’t like its implications. Whichever of these you base your dismissal of theism on, it rings hollow when you suggest no one has offered it.

2) “I don’t see the Olympian gods or Jesus coming down and dying on the Cross as worthy of that grandeur.”

Of course you don’t! The Olympian gods are nothing but anthropomorphic myths that the educated of Athens never believed in. There is no evidence for their existence and the stories about them sound like the tales in a children’s book. Agreed.

But the evidence that Jesus came down and died on the cross is in no way similar.

We have historical documents, inscriptions and archaeological finds that have confirmed much of what the New Testament says. We have, in those documents, stories that could easily have been refuted by opponents of the apostles, and embarrassing details that no self-respecting myth-maker would include if he/she were “making up” a religion. Finally, we have the writers of those stories going to their deaths in defense of the notion that those facts were not only verifiable through witnesses, but true and therefore worthy of martyrdom.

No, Mr. Dawkins, this is not the kind of pie-in-the-sky god you want to argue against. It is not the kind of god you want to show himself in the way you think he should. Instead, we have historical, scientific and philosophical evidence for an infinite God who made himself finite, suffered the cruelties of this world, and died for a a cause that defines the whole reason for our existence. No, it wasn’t what you would expect.

And that was exactly the point.

On August 1, Francis Collins stepped down as the head of the Human Genome Project, a position in which he has served since 1993. Collins is a proud Christian who, even though he supports the Darwinian idea of common descent, 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 a recent article in Touchstone magazine that I read recently. The piece referred to an interview with Collins and 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. My next post will cover Dawkins’ assertion in general. The simple point is this …

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 chart (provided by Reasons To Believe’s, Hugh Ross) below shows how the number of design features in the universe has grown over the years …

That’s right, as of two 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’s a one, with 556 zeros after it — that the constants that define our universe would be just the way they are or life would not exist anywhere.

By way of comparison, there are estimated to be 10 the the 80th power atoms in the entire known universe. Mathematicians consider one chance in 10 to the 50th power to constitute an impossibility.

Dawkins would undoubtedly reply that no matter how improbable something is, that improbability does not mean it couldn’t happen. Fair enough. You be the judge of whose view is more reasonable.

More on Dawkins’ comment next time …

Apples to Oranges

Sam Harris despises religion — so much so that he has blinded himself to an intellectually honest assessment about the differences between them. To put that claim in context, Harris (as discussed earlier here), misunderstands the concept of condemnation to hell and, because of that misunderstanding, believes his in-your-face his chest beating has some force behind it when he says:

The fact that my continuous and public rejection of Christianity does not worry me in the least should suggest to you just how inadequate I think your reasons for being a Christian are.

His serious delusion regarding the public impact of his own views aside, Harris’ taunt (p. 4) rings hollow. I can only speak for myself of course, but it seems that Harris fails to realize that we Christians don’t hold our view based on the popularity or reputation of those who may, or may not, share it with us. To be honest, most Christians had never heard of Sam Harris before his book hit the stores. But this kind of misunderstanding on his part leads him to make what can only be described as completely baseless associations like this:

Assertion:(p. 6-7)

Every devout Muslim has the same reasons for being a Muslim that you have for being a Christian. And yet you do not find their reasons compelling. The Koran repeatedly declares that it is the perfect word of the creator of the universe … The burden is upon them to prove that their beliefs about God and Muhammad are valid. They have not done this. They cannot do this. Muslims are not making claims about reality that can be corroborated

Understand that the way you view Islam is precisely the way devout Muslims view Christianity. And it is the way I view all religions.

Response: To put it is nicely as I can, Harris’ complete ignorance about the nature of religion in general, and the relationship between Christianity and Islam in particular, is stunning.

(Read on …)

“The true gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others, rather than his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe.” John Wayland

There are few in the news media, or anywhere else, whom I have admired and respected as much as I have this man. Today Tony Snow is with his maker in paradise.

R.I.P.

Just a quick blurb to point out a couple of recent articles that should cause the naturalistic science folks to have “some ’splainin’ to do.” These kinds of things pop up every once in a while and it is interesting to consider the explanations they offer for discoveries like these.

For instance, yesterday The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science announced the recent discovery of:

a primitive single-celled microbe that answers to the name of Monosiga brevicollis [that] has a leg up on animals composed of billions of cells. It commands a signaling network more elaborate and diverse than found in any multicellular organism …

This treasure trove of diverse and novel tyrosine kinases took the study’s lead author … by surprise since it was long thought that tyrosine kinases are restricted to multicellular animals where they handle communication between cells.

When the only paradigm by which the scientists are allowed to consider finds like this is the naturalistic paradigm, those who study them are constantly surprised — and they should be. Pure mechanistic processes cannot account for information rich systems like this one. While they cavalierly mention the ability of cells to “communicate with each other,” it is easy to forget the blatantly obvious mystery that goes with having purely physical systems which have obtained such an ability.

The naturalistic paradigm demands that first life was a simple, single-celled organism that later evolved to complex, multi-cellular organisms. But here we have a highly complex, single-celled organism that seems to be capable of assembling a sensor structure meant to handle complex, widespread communication issues. How so? A candid scientist weighs in on that question:

With all this new information, one obvious question remains unanswered: what is a single-celled organism doing with all this communications gear? “We don’t have a clue!”

At least they admit it. But what some cosmologists won’t admit is the incredible fine-tuning that had to go into the universe just to allow us to exist at all. This article, which just posted on Space.com, addresses why cosmologists keep being blown away by how unique the Earth actually is in its uncanny and unmatched ability to support and sustain complex life.

I don’t have the room of the time now to start listing all the factors that have to be “just right” to allow us to be here. But I would suggest two books that address these issues in eye-opening depth. The first is Rare Earth, by paleontologist Peter Ward and astronomer Donald Brownlee. The authors make the case that it is entirely possible that we are on the only complex life sustaining planet in the universe. And though they (rightly) offer no theological inferences in their book, one doesn’t have to use their imagination too much to see them.

Less trapped by their worldview, authors Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards, in their bestseller, Privileged Planet are not only comfortable with making such a claim to divine design of our home planet, they take it a step further. They make a strong case that the factors which allow us to be here also do double duty as factors that allow us the ability and viewpoint from which we can discover how unique we really are in the universe. The correlation will shock you — especially when you consider that there is no reason for it to be that way.

I would recommend either (preferably both) books for some enjoyable summer beach reading. The stars and galaxies you look up at on vacation this summer may awe you even more after having done so.

[Editor’s Note: This would also serve a dual, and not insignificant role, in diverting you from the temptation to pick a book from the Oprah’s Book Club List. Nothing intentional … I’m just sayin’]

A fascinating story was just forwarded to me from a friend that I think deserves some comment and consideration. Today’s NY Times published this article about a tablet, first discovered about 10 years ago, which suggests that the idea of a Messiah resurrecting after three days in the tomb was around at the time of Christ!

“So what?” you might ask.

[Before I attempt an answer, please note that in today’s world it is probably a good practice, when you hear the term “Biblical Scholar,” to assume, until they prove otherwise, that the person proclaiming that title has it as their mission to undermine everything you were ever taught to believe about Christianity. Several Biblical Scholars are actually atheists who take great pleasure in engaging in that practice.]

The significance of this story is that many Biblical scholars have tried to debunk the Messianic story of Jesus by claiming that the notion of a dying and rising Messiah is actually just a story borrowed and then employed by Jesus’ followers to perpetuate the myth that Jesus was the Messiah.

“Some Christians will find it shocking — a challenge to the uniqueness of their theology — while others will be comforted by the idea of it being a traditional part of Judaism,” [a Biblical Scholar] said.

“This should shake our basic view of Christianity,” [a Biblical Scholar] said as he sat in his office of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem where he is a senior fellow in addition to being the Yehezkel Kaufman Professor of Biblical Studies at Hebrew University. “Resurrection after three days becomes a motif developed before Jesus, which runs contrary to nearly all scholarship. What happens in the New Testament was adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an earlier messiah story.”

So let’s take a look at the evidence. (Read on …)

Hitchens’ Childhood Epiphany

Christopher Hitchens begins his screed against God and religion by recounting his awakening, as a 9-year old “insufferable little intellectual,” to the “overreaching” comment of his grade school teacher, Mrs. Watts. The statement that is burned into Hitchens’ memory from that day is this: In an attempt to …

fuse her two roles as nature instructor and Bible teacher, she said, “So you see, children, how powerful and generous God is. He has made all the trees and grass to be green, which is exactly the color that is most restful to the eyes. Imagine if instead, the vegetation was all purple, or orange, how awful that would be.”

Assertion: I have to note that Hitchens is charitable in his assessment of Mrs. Watts. His only description of her is as a kind and loving woman with sincere motives. But Hitchens’ memory of this incident is that he was “appalled” by what she said. Knowing nothing of the argument from design, the claims of Darwinian Evolution, or any of the related issues, Hitchens remembers that he “simply knew, almost as if [he] had privileged access to a higher authority, that [his] teacher had managed to get everything wrong in just two sentences. The eyes were adjusted to nature, and not the other way around.”

This epiphany led him to notice other “oddities” over the next few years, such as (to list some):

• If God is the creator of all things, why should we praise him incessantly for doing what came to him naturally?
• If Jesus could heal a blind person, why not heal blindness?
• With all this continual prayer, why no result?
• Why was the subject of sex considered so toxic? (Note: remember this one for later!)

Response: If Hitchens is not embellishing (and I will assume he is not), you have to admit that these are some pretty precocious observations for a nine to thirteen year-old to make. But what interests me is not only that Hitchens readily admits that these are “childish” and “commonplace” objections — but that he still holds them.

Each of the four bulleted items above is related to either the “problem of evil” or centers on the fact that the God to whom theists appeal is not the kind of God Hitchens would like him to be. Each of these come out in his book in more sophisticated, but no less defensible, terms. He just can’t bring himself to believe in a God that would make the world this way. None of us “like” some of these things. But for such an intelligent person, you would think that he would realize that there are legitimate reasons to see the following …

• A perfectly holy God is perfectly within his “rights” to seek praise and we, being imperfect creations of his, would have no reason to deny it — beyond our own overblown sense of self-worth or rebellion.
• Perhaps God has a reason for allowing blindness. Sight is a gift. It is not required for survival. Easy for me to say of course because neither I, nor anyone I know, is blind — but there are many reasons that someone could be blind. None of them, however, hinge on the reality of the existence of a loving God.
• How does Hitchens know there is “no result” to prayer? What if two people are praying for contradictory results, with insincere motivation, or for answers that would be against God’s sovereign will? The truth is that neither Hitchens, nor anyone else, knows whether there are results to prayer, or whether there will be results in the future.
• Toxic sex? There is nothing in the Bible that deems sex “toxic.” Has Hitchens ever read Song of Solomon, for heaven’s sake?! What can be toxic are the results that follow from immoral and/or aberrant sexual behavior. That can be toxic … and for many legitimate reasons.

I’m trying to keep this short but I would also like to address Hitchens’ original disgust with his teacher’s assertion that the color of vegetation was made to be pleasing to the human eye … and Hitchen’s counter that it is obviously and exactly the other way around.

I won’t argue for or against the design of the human eye here. But what I would like to point out is an insight that J. P. Moreland brought to my attention in class several years ago at Biola University …

There is no color in an electron, or a proton, or an atom, or in any of the bits of matter that make up this universe. So the “stuff” that makes up the universe is colorless. Why then, does anything have color at all? It is not a requirement for existence, that’s for sure. Things have color because they emit, or reflect certain wavelengths of light. But a wavelength is just an arbitrary unit of measurement assigned by scientists. Wavelengths don’t have “color.”

Color, in other words, seems to be an arbitrary feature of the universe with no reason for its existence. “Maybe,” J. P. said, “God just added color to the creation to make it more enjoyable for us.”

Now Hitchens would never accept that as an explanation. And I wouldn’t offer it as a defense of the design of my eyes, or the vegetation I like to look at. But it is interesting to ponder. And I bet Mrs. Watts would think so too.