# articles

title: Abortion Is Not a Complex Moral Issue
topic: Bioethics
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/20/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/abortion-is-not-a-complex-moral-issue
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for January 2008</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>Emotional? Yes. Controversial? Yes. Complex? Not really. Abortion is a straightforward issue. There’s only one question to resolve for both sides of the debate. Once answered, the only option is to do the right thing.</p>

<p>This January 22nd marks the 35th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade and Doe vs. Bolton, abortion’s landmark cases responsible for making abortion choice legal in the U.S. As a result of these two Supreme Court decisions, each day an average of 3,500 unborn children are killed.</p>

<p>Many believers are eager to step up to turn the tide on abortion, but are paralyzed by the fear of delving into a complex mess of peripheral issues. I understand. It’s hard to be prepared to address every issue related to abortion. But you don’t have to.</p>

<p>You can engage someone in a meaningful conversation about abortion and not have to worry about every possible side issue. The key is to focus on the one question that matters: <em>What is the unborn</em>?</p>

<p>The answer to this question trumps all other considerations.</p>

<p>If the unborn is <em>not</em> a human being, then no justification for abortion is necessary. However, if the unborn <em>is</em> a human being, then no justification for abortion is adequate.</p>

<p>It’s simple. If we’re not talking about a human being, then you don’t have to give any reason to have an abortion. It’s like having your appendix removed. No big deal. Have the abortion.</p>

<p>However, if the unborn <em>is</em> a human being, then there’s no reason one can offer to have an abortion because it kills an innocent human being. The unborn’s right to life trumps unwantedness, financial hardship, the freedom to choose, the right to privacy, or any other reason given to have an abortion.</p>

<p>Once this moral framework is in place, one need only to answer the question, What is the unborn? Part of my bioethics work with Stand to Reason involves training Christians to answer this question from both a scientific and philosophical perspective. I equip them to give a substantive answer in any amount of time—in 10 minutes or 10 seconds—so they can make a contribution given almost any circumstances.</p>

<p>However, I would be remiss to not address two concerns you might have. First, I do believe abortion should be allowed in the rare instance that the mother’s life is in danger. Both the mother and the child would die otherwise. It is for the greater good to save one person than allow two people to die.</p>

<p>Second, while I believe abortion is <em>morally</em> simple, it can be <em>emotionally</em> complex. The decision for a woman faced with the option of abortion is anything but straightforward. There are many factors that can cloud her judgment or influence her to make a wrong decision. So I’m sensitive to the reality of decisions involving abortions and recognize they can be extremely trying. We need to come alongside mothers and support them both emotionally and physically.</p>

<p>Having said that, the abortion debate remains morally straightforward. The evidence is on our side. I am hopeful that our country will see a major shift on its policy on abortion in our lifetime.</p>

<p>Thank you for partnering with me. It is a great encouragement to have you support this important training. With the upcoming presidential election, Christians will have more chances to dialogue about abortion. Because of this training, they will be less likely to get sidetracked with tangential issues and will be more effective at staying focused in their conversation.</p>

<p>I will be equipping more Christians this next year to defend their pro-life views anywhere, with anyone, and in any time-frame. My bioethics work will be centered on teaching Christians to graciously articulate their pro-life view in a persuasive manner. Your gifts make this possible. Thank you for playing a critical role in defending the unborn.</p>

<p>Grateful for your support,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>
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title: Who, Really, Is Closed-Minded?
topic: Philosophy
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/who-really-is-closed-minded-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for August 2010</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>“Christians are closed-minded,”&nbsp;the saying goes. Many people think that’s true, especially on the topic of evolution. According to our critics, we read the Bible and then close our eyes to everything else. We’re dogmatic about our beliefs while the rest of the world is rational and open-minded. But the irony of this characterization of Christians is that the opposite is true. When you look more closely, it turns out that evolutionists are closed-minded. And sometimes they even admit it.</p>

<p>There are everyday evolutionists and then there are the heavy-hitters. Richard Lewontin is the latter. He has a degree in biology from Harvard University, a master’s degree in mathematical statistics from Columbia University, and a PhD in zoology also from Columbia. Now he’s a geneticist at Harvard and has been a leading evolutionary thinker for decades.</p>

<p>But in an article in the <em>New York Review of Books</em>, Lewontin made a revealing concession—one that should embarrass any evolutionist. Lewontin began:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science <em>in spite</em> of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs...<em>in spite</em> of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism&nbsp;[emphasis in the original].</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Why are many evolutionists willing to accept claims that are “against common sense,”&nbsp;patently absurd, and unsubstantiated? It’s because they have a prior commitment to materialism, Lewontin writes. Materialism is the view that only material objects, no matter how large or small, exist in the universe. No God, souls, or angels exist in a materialistic universe.</p>

<p>Do scientific methods or experiments lead evolutionists to accept materialism? No, says Lewontin:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world...</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Why, then, accept materialism? There must be a good, rational reason if you’re an open-minded person.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>On the contrary, that we are forced by our <em>a priori</em> adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute...[emphasis in original].</p>
</blockquote>

<p>This is an astonishing admission. Accepting materialism and, consequently, evolution has nothing to do with reason, evidence, or open-mindedness. Lewontin says it’s because evolutionists have an <em>a priori</em> commitment to materialism. That means they accept materialism <em>before</em> looking at the evidence.</p>

<p>Is their belief in materialism open to new data, evidence, or reason? No, says Lewontin. Materialism is <em>absolute</em>. It’s religious dogma that’s impervious to falsification.</p>

<p>And since secular scientists accept materialism, this <em>forces</em> them to accept evolution. They have no other choice. Why? Because if you believe the universe only contains physical things, then your explanation of how life emerged <em>must</em> also be physical. That’s part of the definition of evolution.</p>

<p>But why would evolutionists shut the door to reason, evidence, and open-mindedness? Lewontin answers:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>For we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>And that explains a lot. This isn’t about a testable hypothesis. Nor is it about following the evidence where it leads. It’s a desperate attempt to keep God from playing any role in reality. The cost, however, is great. It entails being locked into materialistic philosophy that demands evolution as the only acceptable answer, even when evidence contradicts that conclusion.</p>

<p>The Christian worldview, on the other hand, doesn’t have this liability. When evaluating evidence, Christians aren’t obligated to ignore parts of that evidence in order to draw one conclusion over another. When the data suggests a physical explanation (e.g. the effects of weathering), then a Christian can accept this conclusion. If, however, investigation reveals obvious design elements (e.g. tiny biological motors in bacteria), then the Christian can offer a non-physical explanation. The Christian is open-minded and able to follow the evidence where it leads.</p>

<p>This is one of the reasons the Christian worldview is so powerful. It not only makes sense of reality, but it provides the best tools to investigate and discover the universe that God created.</p>

<p>And thanks to you, I was able to teach these concepts last month for three days at a missions conference at the University of San Diego. Your faithful prayers and financial support allowed me to train Christians to recognize false claims and respond with clarity and confidence. That means you’re helping Christians become better ambassadors and taking part in fulfilling God’s plans. It’s a privilege to serve our King with you.</p>

<p>For His kingdom,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>
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title: Science: Philosophy’s Handmaiden
topic: Science
author: Greg Koukl
date: 04/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/science-philosophy-s-handmaiden
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Philosophy and math must come before you can do any science. Science depends on the tools of other disciplines, ways of knowing.</em></p>

<p>I mentioned yesterday about a letter that I got. It was a letter in response to a commentary I had written (Sagan &amp; Scientism) which was in response to something Carl Sagan had written. Scientism is the belief that science is the queen of all sources of knowledge, the source of reliable information about the world. On the other hand, religion and philosophy are just mere beliefs and you can’t really pit one against the other. In the commentary, I explained why I thought this was faulty. I quoted Dr. Francis Shaeffer and Dr. J.P. Moreland among other people who have made a tremendous contribution in this area. Apparently, somebody passed on this commentary to a gentleman in Hawaii, and he wrote back four pages, single-spaced; quite an exercised response to my thoughts. He didn’t think that I was very clear thinking at all, apparently. He doesn’t think that I understand science. He’s an atheist. He describes himself as an inquisitive doubter, someone who takes nothing on faith. Yesterday, I talked a little bit about the problems with someone even characterizing themselves like that.</p>

<p>I want to address something else, though. Part of my concern in this discussion of science vs. faith, religion or philosophy—those are all in that category—is that there is a bias. The bias is that science gives you objective truth that is based on facts, and all religion or philosophy can give you is absolute truth. This phrase “absolute truth”&nbsp;is put in quotations in the letter, meaning that all philosophy and religion give you is dogma—wishful thinking that people hold to be absolute while they ignore the facts. That seems to be the sense of things in this letter.</p>

<p>One statement that gets to the point of my objection goes like this: “Mr. Koukl does not step up to the challenge that science is able to meet in giving objective information, as he is using subjective opinions rather than objective facts to argue his case.”&nbsp;There you go. My opinions are subjective because they don’t have to do with science and you can’t put them in a test tube. On the other hand, anything that can be put in a test tube is objective fact. He does talk about the liabilities of science, but it doesn’t seem like he really takes his own words seriously. Because objective facts are assessed through subjective analysis. I’m not saying that you can’t reach objectivity, but everything must be subjectively assessed in some fashion. So, just the fact that I have my personal opinions doesn’t mean they’re wrong. You can’t just dismiss them as being mere subjective assessment.</p>

<p>He goes on to say: “Citing the unreferenced and unsubstantiated opinions of Dr. Moreland, Dr. Francis Shaeffer, and unnamed philosophers hardly qualifies as using objective facts accepted by all observers.”&nbsp;This really gets to the heart of my objection, folks. In this response, what we have, essentially, is a statement that unless you can give objective facts accepted by all observers—these would be empirical facts—then your opinions are unsubstantiated and merely subjective. Therefore, by suggestion in the letter, they aren’t worthy of being believed. Do you see the bias to emphasize empirical data as a source for true information about the world and to de-emphasize philosophy and religion as a source of pure information about the world? Now, my point is this and I will substantiate it in just a moment. Science can’t even operate unless you have philosophy in place. Science is dependent on philosophy and this is something that my respondent did not agree with me on. But, I will give you his illustration and refute it.</p>

<p>I don’t think it’s unreasonable for science to use empirical evidence. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for it to operate within the framework of scientific law. What I think is unreasonable, is the claim that you can’t trust knowledge unless it is demonstrated to be true by empirical fact. That is an underlying supposition that’s throughout the entire letter. My point is that certain things must be in place that are not scientific and they must be true before you can even begin to practice science. In the piece Sagan and Scientism, I mentioned that you can’t even prove math by science. Math must be in place for science to work. You don’t discover math through scientific experimentation. The gentleman’s response to that was this: “The assertion that math cannot be proven scientifically is an absolute lie.”&nbsp;I think it is interesting the choice of words here. He doesn’t say it is false. He says it is a lie. There is a difference between a falsehood and a lie. A falsehood is something that is not true. A lie is something that is not true, spoken by someone who has an intent to deceive. And so he is saying that I’m not just simply mistaken, but that I know that I’m wrong and I’m absolutely trying to deceive other people.</p>

<p>What about the statement that math cannot be proven scientifically? He gives an example of how it can be and here is what he writes: “Anybody can do the following scientific experiment. Put two apples in a pile and add two apples to the pile then test the mathematically predicted result of four apples total. Is there a human on this planet that will get a different result? Math is scientifically provable objective truth.”</p>

<p>Now, I agree that math is objective truth. But I don’t think he has given us an illustration of science proving math. He gives a counter example to my statement that math is prior to science. What he does is clusters two apples with two other apples and points to the total as four and thinks he has tested math and proven it true. However, he did not test math. He exemplified math, and there is a big difference. He gave us an example of math at work. Here’s how I know for sure. First, you need no apples or anything physical whatsoever to know that two plus two equals four. You don’t need to do an experiment to know that truth. Not only that, but secondly, the gentleman had math in place before he even started his example. He thinks he proved addition with his example. But he didn’t, because math was necessary for him to do what he did. He says, put two apples in a pile and add two apples to the pile. Now, where did he get the notion of “two”? Where did he get the notion of “add”? Where did he get the notion of “equals”? Do you see that these are mathematical notions which must be in place before you can even do this illustration? They are logically prior to the problem. Again, I agree that math is objective truth, but not because it has been proven by science.</p>

<p>I might ask this question of the gentleman: Sticking with more of the scientific method, which requires repeatability, how do you know your two apples plus two apples will equal four apples in your next experiment? His answer would be, “It’s obvious.”&nbsp;In fact he says in the letter, “Is there a human on this planet that will get a different result?”&nbsp;Notice that he knows his solution is universal just by doing one single experiment! What scientist does one single experiment, gets the result of that experiment and then declares a universal truth? Nobody does that. Science doesn’t work that way. You have to do dozens and dozens of experiments, and many other people have to do their experiments to prove a universally true scientific principle. But he says, who could possibly get another result to this? It is obvious that it’s always going to be the same. My response is, “You are absolutely right, it is absolutely obvious, they will always be the same which means you don’t have to do a bunch of experiments to prove such a thing. You know this to be true before you do your experiment. That’s why your experiment works. It is merely an exemplification of math. It is not a proof of math. It is an example of math in operation. It isn’t something we do to discover how addition works.”&nbsp;We know that all cases will be just like this, and so does he, because math is a notion that is prior to science. It’s a rational intuition. It’s something we know to be true as soon as we understand the relationship of numbers to one another and what equals means, what plus signs mean, what minus signs mean, what sums mean and what numbers mean. I don’t need a footnote to prove that. I don’t need a test tube to prove that. It’s obvious, not only to me and to you listening, but it is also obvious to this man and to every scientist, because he must use those things and depend upon those things as true before he can even start at science.</p>

<p>You see, what I’m trying to do is to poke a hole into this mentality that science is where information and knowledge starts. Science isn’t where it starts. It really starts with philosophy. Philosophy is the discipline that teaches us how we know certain things and how we justify our beliefs. When we have a good epistemology, which is what that field is called, then we can take that epistemology and apply it to the issue of the physical realm. Then what do we come up with? We come up with a method. The method is called the scientific method. Why? Because science is the queen of all knowledge? No. But, because if the scientific method is good at all, it’s because it’s been justified by the philosophy of epistemology. We have a method that produces information about the world. The method, though, comes not from science, but from somewhere else. The math example was a perfect example to show that certain things must be in place before we can even practice science. Where do those things come from? How do we know they are true? We know because we have access to truth about the world in a different way than just five senses and test tubes. That’s the whole point.</p>

<p>Another reason I know that math is prior to science and not a result of science, is that math is not dependent on induction, but science is. What is induction? Induction is a method of drawing conclusions that gives you probable-istic results. You go out and you observe crows and you observe a million of them. By looking at a million crows, you draw the conclusion inductively that crows are black, because you have seen all of these black crows. Now, it doesn’t mean that there can’t possibly be a white crow, but it seems to be the case that crows are black, because every time you’ve seen a crow, it’s been black. That’s induction. You know a thing is true inductively because you go out in the world and you search around and find a lot of examples of it. Math is not like that. We don’t know that 2 plus 2 equals 4 because we’ve put 2 apples and 2 apples together in a pile many different times all over the world. We don’t learn math inductively. We know math intuitively. We discover math, we don’t learn it in an inductive fashion. Since science is inductive and math is not inductive, then math and science aren’t the same thing. You don’t learn math scientifically. You must have math prior to science. That’s my point.</p>
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title: Jihad and War in Islam and Christianity
topic: Other Worldviews
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/20/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/jihad-and-war-in-islam-and-christianity
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Do you know the first question I get when I teach on Islam’s long history of war and killing? Most people ask me, “Doesn’t Christianity have a long history of war and killing too? Isn’t it just like Islam?”&nbsp;The answer is yes and no. Yes, Christians have killed in the past. Yes, they have waged war against other people. Yes, their history is marred by events like the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition. But, no, it’s not just like Islam. In fact, it’s very different.</p>

<p>Usually a Muslim, a critic of Christianity, or a believer with an honest desire to understand will point to examples where Christians have killed or waged war. They might cite Old Testament stories of God’s people waging war against their enemies (as in the case of the Canaanites). Or they might highlight the Crusades and Spanish Inquisition. None of these examples, however, parallel what occurs in Islam.∗</p>

<p>Take, for example, the Old Testament wars. God typically used wars as an act of judgment upon a sinful and guilty nation, not as a method of expanding the Jewish nation. Indeed, God judged sin regardless of who committed it. While God used the Jews as an instrument of judgment against the guilty Canaanite nation, He was also willing to use Israel’s enemies as an agent of judgment against the guilty Jews. God was, and is, an equal opportunity judge. In Islam, however, Mohammed used war as a means of defeating his enemies. The Muslims were always characterized as the good guys, fighting anyone who opposed their “noble”&nbsp;cause.</p>

<p>It’s also important to recognize there is no theology that makes the war and killing of the Old Testament normative for Christians in any era. The biblical text, in Old Testament examples, is descriptive, not prescriptive. No denomination or school of thought currently exists that advocates military action as an appropriate means of evangelism.</p>

<p>The Qur’an, on the other hand, not only describes the countless battles Mohammed engaged in, but prescribes a model of how to behave today. Abul A’la Mawdudi states, in his apologetic work Towards Understanding Islam, “...all the command and injunctions in the Qur’an can be acted upon at any place and in any age...”&nbsp;Muslim scholar and translator of the Qur’an, Muhammed Asad, says this regarding surah 2:191, a passage prescribing the Muslims of the seventh century to wage war: “...as is always the case with historical references in the Qur’an—the above injunction has a general import, and is valid for all times and circumstances.”&nbsp;There is a robust theology of war present in the Qur’an and normative for Muslims today.</p>

<p>Examples like the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition provide no parallel with Islam. These events have no theological basis in the Bible. Although the Church attempted to justify their actions using the Bible, their efforts were misguided. Whatever theology was erected has since been repudiated by the Church because it lacks biblical support. Islam still vigorously defends jihad using the Qur’an, the precedent set by Mohammed, and Mohammed’s own instructions. No prominent Middle Eastern Muslim scholar would ever repudiate jihadist theology—it’s central to Islam.</p>

<p>When I’m asked, then, about the Crusades or the Inquisition, I affirm that Christians engaged in wrongdoing, but then quickly point out that their behavior was inconsistent with biblical theology. When Muslims, however, have engaged in war and killing, their behavior has been consistent with Islamic theology.</p>

<p>Finally, if one wants to know how Christians are supposed to live, they can look to Jesus’&nbsp;life, instructions, and the model of the New Testament church. Jesus’&nbsp;life was so peaceful that many people mistake Him for a pacifist. Even after facing multiple assassination attempts, He never retaliated with violence. He, unlike Mohammed, harmed no one. Just before leaving this earth, Jesus gave us what has become known as the “Great Commission”&nbsp;(Matthew 28: 16-20). It’s His final instructions for His followers. He said we are to make disciples of all nations, to baptize them, and to teach them what He commanded.</p>

<p>In fact, it’s interesting to note what the early church did. Look at the first 100 years of Islam after Mohammed and the first few hundred years of Christianity after Jesus. Islam spread primarily through military conquest taking control of lands from Spain to the borders of China and India. Christianity spread, amid intense persecution, for nearly 300 years throughout parts of Europe, northern Africa, and the Middle East.</p>

<p>With Christ as their example, it’s hard to argue that Christians are called to war or violence to advance the cause of Christ. Jesus’&nbsp;life and the teachings of the New Testament are what principally guide the lives of Christians. If Muslims want to live peaceful lives today, they would do better to model their lives after Jesus, the Prince of Peace.</p>

<p>∗ It is important, however, to acknowledge the war, violence, and killing that exists in the Old Testament and in the history of the Church. One should never attempt to deny or downplay the violence that has taken place. As we shall see, though, these actions are not analogous to those in Islam.</p>
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title: Musings for the Masses: Making Complex Ideas Easy to Understand
topic: Christian Living
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/20/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/musings-for-the-masses-making-complex-ideas-easy-to-understand
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for October 2007</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>I strive to make complex ideas accessible to anyone. That’s one of my goals when I speak. After completing a four week series on evolution at Bel Air Presbyterian Church, a woman said to me, “I can’t believe I understood your whole series. Thanks for making this subject actually understandable to me.”</p>

<p>The topic of evolution can be difficult to grasp. To fully comprehend it, you might have to study geology, paleontology, genetics, zoology, and biology—all of which can be complex. Or, you can take one of my evolution classes. I’ll clarify all the confusing jargon. I’ll distill all the pertinent information. I’ll teach you all the best arguments. And I’ll do this in the allotted time. Yes, I’ll be winsome and gracious, too.</p>

<p>That’s one of the hallmarks of my work with Stand to Reason. I take philosophically or scientifically complex subjects and make them accessible to people who aren’t specifically trained in philosophy or science.</p>

<p>At the same time, I do the subject justice. I don’t oversimplify the issue to the point of misrepresentation. I distill the crucial points into bite-sized portions, shedding the superfluous ideas.</p>

<p>I think this is a valuable goal for anyone, especially if you’re speaking with a non-believer. They don’t want to be blasted with complex terminology and concepts—they want to understand the ideas. Your goal should be to make your point accessible to the listener. That’s what a good ambassador does.</p>

<p>In fact, an ambassador of Christ does many things. At Stand to Reason we’ve outlined ten qualities of an ambassador that I’d like you to read. I’ve provided you with a list on the back. I think it’s important for you to know them because of what my work entails. I’m not just trying to teach people ideas. I’m trying to develop a particular kind of individual—an ambassador of Christ.</p>

<p>Together, we’re training individuals to do the work Christ has prepared for them. Your partnership means a lot to me and to the lives of these newly trained ambassadors.</p>

<p>For the Kingdom,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>
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title: Muslim Followers of Christ?
topic: Theology
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/muslim-followers-of-christ-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for November 2010</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>I met a pastor from Bangladesh last month. He left Islam in 1978, now oversees several churches, and has a heart to see more Muslims come to Christ. So when an American missionary came to his country to offer help in reaching Muslims, the pastor was excited. But the missionary asked him to do something that took him by surprise: he asked him to become a Muslim again.</p>

<p>Like you, I was mystified by this request. It turns out that there is a growing trend among American missionaries to practice a new methodology to reach Muslims called the Insider Movement (IM). Their goal is to develop self-identified “Muslims”&nbsp;who believe in the biblical Jesus while they remain “inside”&nbsp;their social and religious (Islamic) communities. Since many former Muslims are persecuted for becoming Christian and are often forced to flee, the IM approach keeps new converts as a kind of closet Christ-follower so they can remain as a witness for Jesus among their family and friends.</p>

<p>Although I applaud the effort to win more Muslims to Christ and reduce the persecution of new believers, many aspects of the IM are troubling. Here are just two that warrant concern:</p>

<p><strong>First, new believers in Jesus Christ continue to identify as Muslims and participate in Islamic religious practices.</strong> Some still attend mosque, recite the Islamic creed (a confession that you believe in Allah and Mohammed as his prophet), or perform Muslim prayers. Even missionaries sometimes enter Islamic countries, take on a Muslim identity, and operate inside Islamic communities to trickle the Gospel message to Muslims.</p>

<p>But engaging in the practices of a false religion is strikingly similar to the syncretism condemned in the Old Testament. Israel was often punished for taking on the religious practices of pagan religions. They worshiped idols, sacrificed in the high places, and built altars for Molech. Merely participating in the rituals and religious practice of another religion was damnable in the sight of God. Yet this is precisely what the IM advocates.</p>

<p>There are also pragmatic concerns. New and immature believers are expected to remain under the powerful and oppressive force of Islam. And since they’re insiders who are not supposed to fellowship with other Christians, they are left without the ability to be nourished and discipled by mature Christians.</p>

<p>It’s no wonder, then, that reports from the missions field confirm that second generation insiders are deeply confused about their faith. They grow up in the mosque, study the Qur’an, and worship like other Muslims. It’s not surprising that their faith is no different than that of a Muslim.</p>

<p><strong>A second concern with the IM is the production of “Muslim-friendly”&nbsp;Bible translations.</strong> Because Muslims are offended by the terms “Son of God,”&nbsp;“Heavenly Father,”&nbsp;and other familial language, some new Bible translations are replacing these terms with more Muslim-friendly ones. Jesus’&nbsp;self-referential statements of “Son of God”&nbsp;are replaced with “Messenger,”&nbsp;“Messiah,”&nbsp;or “only Beloved.”&nbsp;The term “Father”&nbsp;is replaced with “Allah,”&nbsp;“God”&nbsp;or “God, most high.”</p>

<p>For example, the Great Commission passage in Matthew 29:19 is changed from “baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”&nbsp;to “in the name of God and His Messiah and the Holy Spirit.”</p>

<p>One obvious problem with these “translations”&nbsp;is that they aren’t faithful to the original Greek and Hebrew text. But more disconcerting is the audacity to think that mere mortals have the right to change terms that God chose to use when revealing Himself. It’s God’s prerogative to name Himself, and it turns out that it’s for good reason.</p>

<p>For example, the ability to call God “Abba, Father”&nbsp;is a radical concept because it compares our connection with the living God to a child-father relationship. This is precisely one element that is missing in the Islamic understanding of God. The God of the Bible becomes as approachable as a human father. But by abandoning the familial phrase, IM advocates are robbing Muslims of an attribute of God that adds to their deficient understanding of Him.</p>

<p>While it’s true that the terms can be offensive to Muslims, they were also offensive to the first century Jews who recognized that Jesus was equating Himself with God. Apparently Jesus, His disciples, and the apostle Paul didn’t&nbsp;feel the need to replace the terms with more palatable ones. It’s hard to imagine, then, that American missionaries in the 21st century know better what to call Jesus and the Father.</p>

<p>But here’s the great irony. For centuries Muslims have claimed the Bible is unreliable because Christians have corrupted it. With these new “translations,”&nbsp;their charges will finally be proven right.</p>

<p>These are just two concerns with the IM approach. There are many more, equally egregious, that I will continue to write and speak about. But I take no joy in reporting this trend among some evangelicals. I only do so out of concern for the integrity of the Gospel. Please pray with me that the truth would be proclaimed without shame or compromise. And thank you for your partnership that enables me to equip the body of Christ to respond to challenges like this.</p>

<p>For the integrity of the Gospel,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>
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title: Academic Suppression: It’s the New Academic Freedom
topic: Science
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/20/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/academic-suppression-it-s-the-new-academic-freedom
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for March 2008</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>It’s hard to believe a state legislature passed a law forbidding the teaching of evolution. It’s true! In fact, a public high school teacher was found guilty in a U.S. court for teaching Darwin’s theory. But this happened 83 years ago in the famous <em>Scopes Trial</em>.</p>

<p>Convicted teacher, John Scopes, told the court that if he was not allowed to teach evolution, it would be a “violation of [his] ideal of academic freedom.”&nbsp;Things have obviously changed. Indeed, the opposite is true today—it’s virtually a crime to teach anything <em>but</em> evolution to explain man’s origin.</p>

<p>And the academic freedom Scopes hoped for? Well, it exists in our universities today, with a “minor”&nbsp;caveat. You have the freedom to teach what you want so long as you teach what you’re told. You don’t have the freedom to teach anything that suggests that the universe, the earth, or any living thing is the result of an intelligent agent at work.</p>

<p>That’s right. Secular scientists believe intelligent beings are responsible for creating complex things like airplanes and the information in encyclopedias, but intelligence is not responsible for even more complicated things like solar systems, tigers, or the vast amount of design information in DNA.</p>

<p>But can suppressing science amount to academic freedom? The scientific establishment thinks so. I disagree. It’s like the “freedom”&nbsp;inmates enjoy at a prison. They’re “free”&nbsp;to exercise, talk, and build friendships. Of course, if inmates do any of that outside the walls of prison while still incarcerated, they’re penalized.</p>

<p>And penalization is exactly what happens to scholars and scientists who think outside the scientific establishment’s box—who dare to perform scientific research that suggests that intelligence has anything to do with the formation of complex design code (like in DNA), complex machines (like every living thing), or complex planetary systems (like ours).</p>

<p>That’s why I hope you’ll see the new film documentary <em>Expelled</em> (www.expelledthemovie.com) being released in theaters in April. It features Ben Stein (“Bueller?...Bueller?...Bueller?”), who narrates and interviews prestigious scholars, scientists, and journalists who have been threatened, denied tenure, or fired by the scientific establishment for advocating (to any degree) intelligent design.</p>

<p>The film has a very modest goal, one I believe most Americans, Christian or not, can get behind. It’s wrong to suppress scientific research and limit academic freedom simply because one doesn’t approve of certain scientific conclusions.</p>

<p>Despite its reasonableness, this film will require a lot of support to be successful at the box office. It doesn’t have any cool CGI effects or cars transforming into robots, but rather wrestles with and engages important ideas in a fun and refreshing way. That’s why I hope you’ll not only go see it, but also tell those you know about it.</p>

<p>The film’s goal is one I embrace in my work. However, I add the important ingredient of ambassadorship. As stewards of truth and representatives of Christ, we need to not only provide informed responses, but embody a winsome character that commends our message.</p>

<p>I’m thankful for your partnership that enables me to train believers to do this very thing. It’s your gifts that make this training possible. And they have leveraged impact. You empower me, I train thousands, and they impact thousands more. Our goal at Stand to Reason involves training the next generation of Christians to incisively and graciously defend classical Christianity. Our partnership is fulfilling that very purpose.</p>

<p>For His Kingdom,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>
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title: Apologetics Doesn’t Have to Be a Slug Fest
topic: Tactics and Tools
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/20/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/apologetics-doesn-t-have-to-be-a-slug-fest
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for May 2008</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>“An argument is not argumentative,”&nbsp;I told a university audience of 1,200 students and faculty. “An argument is simply an opinion with evidence or reasons to back it up.”&nbsp;When you make an argument, you’re not bickering or being mean-spirited—you’re simply offering your view and reasons for it.</p>

<p>Sometimes when we talk to non-Christians, however, the conversation can turn mean and ugly. But it doesn’t have to. One simply needs to offer an argument with gentleness and respect. That’s what the apostles did. That’s what Jesus did.</p>

<p>So when it comes to apologetics, defending our Christian convictions, there’s no need to start a slug fest. It’s not necessary. We can graciously engage people in conversation and change minds by reasoning with them and praying for the Holy Spirit’s convicting work on their hearts and minds.</p>

<p>At Spring Arbor University in Michigan this past month, I taught that one of the most effective ways to do apologetics is to use the Columbo Tactic. This is the practice of asking carefully selected questions to productively advance the conversation. It’s effective because when you ask a question, you come off as interested, gracious, and unassuming. That’s disarming to many people.</p>

<p>Yet questions can be powerful tools of persuasion. You can use them to gently challenge people’s beliefs or lead them down a line of thinking to make your point. But since questions can be disarming, they generally tone down a would-be slug fest into an engaging exchange of ideas.</p>

<p>Besides the tactics that enable us to engage our culture more graciously, we are also called to be winsome in our conversational character. Being an ambassador of Jesus Christ demands that the manner in which we communicate be warm, friendly, and charitable. The apostle Paul tells Timothy (2 Timothy 2:24-25) that “the Lord’s bond-servant <em>must not be quarrelsome</em>, but be <em>kind</em> to all, able to teach, <em>patient</em> when wronged, with <em>gentleness</em> correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth.”</p>

<p>Obviously, we can’t control the response of every individual we speak to. Some may become offended simply because the Gospel is already offensive. However, let’s not add any more offense to it by being harsh or obnoxious.</p>

<p>The students at Spring Arbor can thank you for this lesson. You made it possible for me to train them last month. The host of the event wrote that “Students are already using this tactic in their witnessing and [Alan’s] talk has generated a tremendous amount of high-quality conversation throughout the campus.”&nbsp;And the next day the school newspaper featured an article about my training, which I’ve included on the front page.</p>

<p>Thanks again for your partnership. It not only inspires me, but also the thousands of believers I train who strive to represent Jesus in a manner that brings honor to His name.</p>

<p>An Ambassador of Jesus,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>
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title: The Real Issue of Scopes
topic: Science
author: Greg Koukl
date: 04/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-real-issue-of-scopes
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Can one question evolution on a nonreligious basis? Greg discusses how the problems with the theory of evolution are rooted in science, not religion.</em></p>

<p>I was reading an article someone sent me from the Orange County Register , July 27, 1994. The title is “Teach Science as Science: A Teacher’s Lawsuit Revisits the Scopes Trial.”&nbsp;This is a reference to the case of John Peloza who has insisted on his right to teach creationism to biology students in the Capistrano Valley Unified School District. This is what the editorial piece alleges. I suspect, and I’m not really up on that situation, that that may be a misrepresentation. My recollection is not that he wanted to teach creation, but that he wanted to critique evolution according to the guidelines of the California educational system. I might be getting two different things mixed up here, but that’s not really so consequential. The basic issue is that this is a piece that says some strong things about this creation/evolution controversy as it touches the educational system.</p>

<p>Let me read to you and then I’d like to respond. “Disturbing Case: Of course, groups pushing narrow religious agendas,” the piece says, “will always have their occasional successes with pliable legislatures. But the Peloza case is especially disturbing because it arises from within the very heart of a school system. Here is a public school science teacher, now reassigned to teach health and physical education, who has rejected the premise of scientific method. The theory of natural selection is not, after all, merely one wild card idea among others competing for acceptance. It is not just a theory but a body of ideas that have been thoroughly confirmed, derived from solid techniques of scientific inquiry. That process should be held up as a model for learning. Young people need to know that the truths we derive about the physical universe must come from reason and scientific experimentation, not dogma. Science cannot be regarded as one possible methodology for determining how things came to be alongside whatever the flat earth society or anybody else might postulate. At a time when religious zealots are conducting stealth campaigns to take over school boards, this challenge from someone on the front lines in the classroom should be resolved with a ringing affirmation from the courts. Educators have a right and a duty to teach science as science.”</p>

<p>That’s the closing half of the editorial piece. There were so many things that were said in here that deserve remark, I could take an hour talking about it. I’m just going to highlight a couple of things. As is frequently the case when newspaper editorials respond to this issue of evolution and creation, not only do they frequently misrepresent the so-called religious side, which I think was seriously done here and I’ll try to correct that, but they misunderstand the nature of science.</p>

<p>Let me respond in this way. With regards to the religious implications of the fight against evolution, clearly the issue has religious implications, but that blade cuts both ways. If Carl Sagan is right, that “the cosmos is all there is, all there was, and all there ever will be,”&nbsp;well, that has profound implications for metaphysics, for religion. And his comment, accepted by many as science, is no less religious in its implications than Peloza’s viewpoint. One point that I’ve made in the past about the relationship of religion and faith to science is that they cannot be kept apart because dogmatic assertions about scientific matters have metaphysical implications.</p>

<p>Anyone, by the way, who looks closely at the details of this debate on a more sophisticated level, a level that the media consistently avoids in their coverage, will discover that the questions raised about evolution pertain to the alleged scientific facts themselves and the interpretation of those facts. This is another misrepresentation in this article. In other words, the objections that are raised by people like Peloza, especially on the sophisticated levels that they ought to be looked at, are objections that pertain first and foremost to science and not to religion. The objections I raise here are scientific questions, not religious questions. Those in the philosophy of science and those who are scientists who object to evolution do not object on religious grounds, principally. They are objecting precisely on scientific grounds.</p>

<p>Now, what about the theory of natural selection? The editorial here says, “The theory of natural selection is not, after all, merely one wild card idea among others competing for acceptance. It is not just a theory but a body of ideas that have been thoroughly confirmed.”&nbsp;Now I presume they mean the theory of natural selection here. As far as that statement is concerned, that natural selection has been proven, so what? So what? That really doesn’t take us anywhere at all. And I’ll tell you why.</p>

<p>Keep in mind, by the way, that my remarks right now have to do with the nature of the debate itself, not the content of the debate. I’m not here arguing in favor of creationism per se , or some kind of design. I’m just talking about this objection to Christians wanting to play in the game, or anyone who believes in some kind of design alternative to the origins question. The Register is saying, no that’s not a legitimate alternative because science teachers should teach science as science, science is equal with evolution, and you can’t bring any of these other religious things in here.</p>

<p>I think that the argument in this sense is miscast. The comment that the theory of natural selection has been proven, gets from me the response “so what?”&nbsp;The theory of natural selection is not in itself at issue. The idea that only the fittest survive in the struggle for existence may be true. Even if I accept that, it is utterly unremarkable and it’s not a point of contention in this conflict of ideas. If evolution were based only on this observation, no one would lift an eyebrow.</p>

<p>The earthshaking suggestion by Darwin was not that the fit survive, but rather how much this observation explains about the physical world. The offense of Darwinism isn’t natural selection per se. I grant them that. Rather, the offense was that purely naturalistic processes alone explain everything—not just minor adaptive variations, but the totality of the biosphere and all its complexity and diversity. Even the mystery of life itself. In fact, so stupendous is the creative power of natural selection that it frequently is referred to somewhat oxymoronically as the “miracle of Mother Nature.”&nbsp;It’s an oxymoron because there is a contradiction there. Mother Nature doesn’t have miracles; she’s purely naturalistic. But that’s the thing that is objectionable—not natural selection. But the way, natural selection is used to explain everything and the questions is: Is that a legitimate scientific inference from the facts?</p>

<p>Now let me underscore the issue here is not religious dogma. The issue is science, in my view, in those who are, as I mentioned, discussing this issue on a more sophisticated level. And educators like Peloza aren’t the only ones that are concerned here. In fact, the best material currently critiquing evolution is not coming from religious people, but from inside the scientific community.</p>

<p>Following the complete failure of the 1988 Origin of Life Conference in Berkeley to produce a plausible scenario for how life itself chemically evolved, Dr. Robert Shapiro, the eminent chemist from New York University and an expert in his field, wrote a book and it was entitled Origins: A Skeptic’s Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth . Now creation here refers to biochemical evolution. He’s a skeptic. In this book, he decimates the six reigning ideas of how life could have evolved from non-life. Michael Denton, in his book Evolution a Theory in Crisis, shows that the original scientific objections to evolution that faced Darwin and were argued powerfully by his colleagues, his own contemporaries, still apply—even after more than 100 years of scientific research.</p>

<p>Both of these books are written by non-religious people, I presume. In other words, they are not making a religious case at all. I don’t know their personal faith commitments at all, but their concerns are strictly scientific. In fact, Shapiro remains an evolutionist hoping that the future will turn up more evidence that the past has not produced. In his book, Michael Denton ends his analysis with this statement: “The Darwinian theory is the great cosmogenic myth of the twentieth century,” and then he adds, “like the Genesis based cosmology which it replaced.”&nbsp;You have no friend of religion here, yet in both cases they offer scientifically strident and compelling arguments against the plausibility of natural processes explaining all of the complexity that we see in our biological world. It’s just not plausible, they argue. And they’re on the inside.</p>

<p>True, evolution is accepted by many, though not all. (I’m speaking of scientists here.) But whether it’s accepted because of scientific evidence or for other more philosophical reasons, which Peloza calls “evolutionary religion,”&nbsp;is precisely what this debate is about. And to cast this debate in a different light, from the editorial, “religious zealots conducting stealth campaigns,”&nbsp;that’s the way they characterized it—I would say they mischaracterized it. To cast it in that fashion is to skirt the issue. To skirt it entirely. It is easier to dismiss as flat earth religion any objections to evolution rather than to engage the issues themselves in public discourse. And some people would say, Well, I don’t want to dignify the opposition by even engaging in reasonable discourse as if this is something that could be discussed reasonably. But once you do that, then you push the other side out of the game and you dogmatically refuse to even consider the options, or to consider even the critique of your own option. And that’s not education.</p>

<p>That’s why I say it’s so much easier just to simply dismiss it, call it a name. “Oh you flat earth people. You are ignorant. What do you know? I don’t even have to talk to you.”&nbsp;Now the Orange County Register editorial suggests that when the challenge comes on the front lines in the classroom “It should be resolved with a ringing affirmation from the courts.” Well, that’s right. Call out the militia. That’s how to resolve this. That will solve the problem. You can assure victory this way. The way to win the game is to run the other team off the field. Use the courts to do that.</p>

<p>It seems to me that maybe the challenges in the classroom, since they are challenges that are scientific—that’s what the real challenge is, that’s the beef, not religious dogma, science—the challenges in the classroom should not be solved in the courtroom because, after all, courts don’t determine what is true. They only determine what is legal. Classrooms, however, are supposedly the arena where truth can be discovered. Maybe knowledge and truth would be better served by an even-handed analysis of the facts in an open debate with full disclosure rather than through the strong arm of the court, deciding which ideas get to play in the game.</p>

<p>Since this editorial cites the first Scopes trial, that’s the way Clarence Darrow argued in the first Scopes trial. Let’s not have the laws and the courts decide, barring one view over another. Let’s have a free play of ideas, and let’s let the best idea win on its own merit. You know something? On that count Clarence Darrow was right.</p>
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title: Sagan and Scientism
topic: Science
author: Greg Koukl
date: 04/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/sagan-and-scientism
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>When science reasons it reasons inductively and it reasons basically the same way as we would reason about the resurrection of Jesus Christ.</em></p>

<p>I saw the <em>Daily Breeze</em>&nbsp;“Parade”&nbsp;and on the cover of the magazine is a picture of Carl Sagan and Anne Druyan. Carl Sagan you know, of course, is of the “billions and billions”&nbsp;fame talking about the cosmos. He has written a new book with Druyan called Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. When you turn the page there’s a picture of a chimpanzee. And the title of this excerpt is called “What Makes Us Different?”&nbsp;It’s really phenomenal reading through this piece and you will do yourself a favor in doing that.</p>

<p>What’s phenomenal in one way is the timing of this because this relates very closely to things we talked about yesterday and have been talking about the last couple of weeks in a couple of different ways. Most obviously the questions that have been raised about the nature of the human soul over the last couple of weeks and also Dr. Moreland’s remarks yesterday as we talked about his book Immortality and the Existence of the Soul. And not only that, but some comments I made a couple of weeks ago on the problem of the death of humanness and the trend, the philosophical trend that is happening in this country that is dehumanizing man. In other words, when asked the question “What does is mean to be human?”&nbsp;the answer increasingly is that it means absolutely nothing at all.</p>

<p>The profound significance of this particular article, and I guess of the book that this article is a portion of by Carl Sagan and Anne Druyan, is that they not only come to the same conclusion that there is no fundamental difference between men and animals qualitatively only quantitatively—and I’ll get into that in a moment—but that they are making these pronouncements with the white coat on, so to speak, as the high priests of the new religion which is scientism. He is making a fundamental statement of truth about the nature of humanity. If that truth is believed then it has radical ramifications for a great variety of different issues in our culture, all that have to do with the nature of humanness at its very core.</p>

<p>I want to speak to this issue in a little more detail and talk about Carl Sagan’s presuppositions and his viewpoint about science. I can’t speak to the whole article, it’s too long, there’s a lot in there. I think those who have been listening to this show for any length of time have been gaining some tools I hope that will allow you to look at this article from a different light and to understand what is being said and why some of the things being alleged are not sound. I would invite you to get a hold of the article and peruse it.</p>

<p>Let me read how this starts. “What does it mean to be human? This question and an attempt to find an answer permeates and propels the important new work Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Carl Sagan and Anne Druyan.”&nbsp;Apparently published by Raymond House. “Pulling together a vast body of scientific information to trace the origins and evolution of life on earth, the authors address some of the fundamental questions of life itself. In this excerpt they examine the behavior of other animals and measure it against human ability.”</p>

<p>Carl Sagan then asks the question, “Why are we so different from animals? Or are we? Most of the philosophers,”&nbsp;and here’s the key paragraph for our discussion, “conventionally judged great thought that humans are fundamentally different from other animals because of an immaterial ’something’&nbsp;for which no scientific evidence has been produced, that resides somewhere in the body of humans and in no one else on earth. Only a few argue, as Charles Darwin did, that the differences between our species and others are only difference of degree.”&nbsp;He goes on then to argue that, in fact, the differences in our species are only differences in degree. Charles Darwin was right and the philosophers who speculated on some immaterial human force that resided in the body were wrong.</p>

<p>But why does he say they’re wrong? He says they’re wrong because science has not produced any evidence that justifies a belief in the soul. There are two questions that I have to ask regarding that statement because it underlies the rest of the article and quite possibly the rest of the book. Sagan is trying to be rigidly scientific in his analysis and he’s saying if we come up with truth in science then we have to accept that truth because it’s the prevailing truth and, even if it has unpleasant implications for the areas of morals and ethics and human value and the like, we still have to face up to the truth.</p>

<p>It assumes a couple of things. First of all, his comments and analysis assumes that science tells us true things. In other words, whatever science says is true. It corresponds to the world as it really is. And the second thing suggests that science is the only thing that gives us truth. Ergo his statement regarding the soul, this immaterial something, because scientific evidence has not been produced to demonstrate that.</p>

<p>Let me take the first point. Does science tell us true things? Now many people presume that that’s the case. I am not suggesting that a person cannot come to a reasonable assessment of something being true by using science. But the implication is that science, because of the scientific method, somehow refines information to a point and focuses it such that we can look at that point and say that this is something that is true and will not change.</p>

<p>You need to understand that there is a tremendous amount of debate within the area of philosophy of science, and it is philosophy of science that asks these kinds of questions, not science. Scientists don’t ask the question “What is science about and what can science do?”&nbsp;It is a second order discipline of philosophy of science that asks these questions. In the area of philosophy of science there’s a tremendous amount of debate as to whether science does tell us true things. As a matter of fact there’s a lot of debate as to whether science is one particular thing at all. Does the scientific method actually exist? And very trenchant arguments have been offered to demonstrate that the scientific method per se, or some particular methodology necessarily that identifies something as scientific, simply does not exist. Instead, what we have is a constellation of procedures and disciplines that when worked together and used inductively can help us to come to some reasonable understanding of truth. Those understandings may be wrong. They are not absolute. But they represent evidence that brings us to a reasonable conclusion.</p>

<p>As a matter of fact, when you look at the history of science it is really a history of replacement of scientific views rather than confirmation. Just a cursory look at the history of science shows that to be true. It seems like it’s not unusual at all to pick up your paper and find that what scientists believed at one time they now believe something entirely different. So if we look at the history of science it doesn’t demonstrate that what science has always presented to us is absolutely true because what science believes is continually changing. That’s one point.</p>

<p>I will make the point that when science reasons it reasons inductively and it reasons basically the same way as we would reason about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It brings different pieces of information to bear on a particular point and if the information is valid then the point is valid. But it’s the same procedure that we use to discuss lots of different things and there’s nothing sacrosanct about the so-called “scientific method”&nbsp;in itself. So don’t fall for the illusion that there is something inerrant about the scientific method and scientific ability at arriving at truth because it is not inerrant at all and there’s a tremendous amount of debate in the area of philosophy of science as to what exactly science can accomplish for us.</p>

<p>So for Carl Sagan, for example, to say with impunity that there must not be a soul because science has not demonstrated any proof for it and come to his other conclusions is a little bit overreaching his bounds in the terms of the limitations of science.</p>

<p>The second point is this, not only is there some question that science always tells us true things, but the second question and implication of his statements is that science is the only thing that gives us truth. People have suggested that there is a soul, philosophers have talked about that. Our conversation yesterday was a philosophical one about the existence of the soul. But then Carl Sagan says that this is something for which no scientific evidence has been produced. The implication is that if there is no scientific evidence then it’s not something worthy of being believed.</p>

<p>Now this notion that only the physical world exists—in our case only the brain exists in regards to personhood, there are no unseen vital forces—is kind of a kid sister to the concept of scientism. Scientism states this: only that which can be proved by science is true. Science can only prove things about the physical world, therefore if it doesn’t prove something about the nonphysical world, which it’s really not equipped to do, then the only rational belief is that only physical things exist and non-physical things like the mind or the soul don’t exist. That is the doctrine of scientism and let me give you two thoughts on that. (Everything is coming in twos here today.)</p>

<p>With regards to his statement that scientific evidence is the thing that really makes something true or not, which is the heart and soul of the concept of scientism, I just learned a little earlier talking to Dr. Moreland that science has after a fashion demonstrated the soul. It doesn’t have a tremendous amount of evidence there but this is an interesting thing to ponder. When the brains of some people are opened they can touch the brain with electrodes to stimulate different memories and the like. This is why some people have argued that memories are merely a chemical kind of response and don’t have any relationship to a self, a separate soul, a person other than the brain. But when scientists have stimulated part of the brain and the patient is conscious, the patient can actually tell whether a memory is being stimulated by the scientist or whether the memory is being brought forward out of their own consciousness. They say, “Hey, you did that. I didn’t.”</p>

<p>This makes a very powerful point. “You stimulated that memory, I didn’t.”&nbsp;Who’s the “I?”&nbsp;The “I”&nbsp;was the person inside there, the “I”&nbsp;is the soul. So there’s a distinction between a chemical response that produces a memory and a volitional response that produces a memory. So it is not entirely true that there is not scientific evidence for the existence of the soul because there is some.</p>

<p>But there’s another point that’s actually quite a bit more important. That’s the fundamental point of whether science is the only road to truth. And there are actually three different ways to refute that. And it’s very straight forward. You can almost sum them up under one concept. The idea is that if science is the only way to truth then science itself is self-refuting because science is built on a series of truths that cannot be demonstrated by science but must be in place even for science to be valid.</p>

<p>For example, is orderliness in the universe an illusion or is that real? Is the external world knowable at all? Are the intellect and the five senses reliable tools to examine the world? Are values like “be objective”&nbsp;or “report data honestly”&nbsp;appropriate in the scientific endeavor? Is nature basically uniform? Do numbers in truth exist? Do the laws of logic apply to reality? All of these things are non-scientific questions but they relate to the issue of truth that must necessarily be in place for science even to be practiced.</p>

<p>So the point I’m making is that if you hold the belief that science is the only thing that is a measure of truth, then science is in hot water because science can’t justify itself. Science is not the sole arbiter of truth. Ethics is another source of truthful information. Philosophy is another source of truthful information. History...Do you know that even mathematics is not scientific? Math is used in science, it underlies science, but you cannot prove math scientifically. So the point is this, its an empty claim by Dr. Sagan that the soul can’t exist because no scientific evidence has been produced to support the idea that there is a soul. There can be other kinds of evidence that are not merely scientific yet be very valid.</p>

<p>What’s really amazing, my friends, is that these things I’m telling you are not new. These are things that have been hashed out by great thinkers for a long time. These are very sound and powerful conclusions that philosophers of science have arrived at when discussing the nature of science. What is unfortunate is that this discussion has by and large been missed by the population and this allows people like Carl Sagan, who should know better, to make statements like he has in this article and book. It’s misleading about the nature of science but people believe it. This is one unfortunate thing about the treatment of scientific issues because people simply aren’t honest about the philosophic issues behind the science. I don’t know if Carl Sagan is trying to mislead here or he doesn’t accept the arguments in the philosophy of science or maybe he just doesn’t know them. Scientists characteristically are not specialists in trying to tell you what science is, they just do it.</p>

<p>I’ll give you one example of what I was talking about with scientism and whether there are other sources of truth outside of science. For hundreds of years, since the time of Kant, there has been an aggressive effort by scientists to prove and demonstrate that the universe is infinite. Part of the reason for that is that if the universe if infinite then they don’t have to acknowledge a creator. This is a self-conscious enterprise, by the way. I’m not reading in motives that aren’t there. These people were aware of what they were doing so much so that at one point even Albert Einstein suggested a universal constant which was completely invented because what he’d been doing up to that time seemed to indicate without any doubt that the universe had a beginning. He introduced this thing that didn’t exist to change his equations to imply that the universe had no beginning at all and was infinite. He later said that that was the worst mistake of his career and abandoned it. Now we all know that the universe had a beginning and that’s what the whole Big Bang is about. I want to make the point that for a hundred years or so there was a strong effort to try to demonstrate that the universe was infinite.</p>

<p>A point that Dr. Moreland made yesterday from a philosophic perspective is really helpful in dealing with this particular issue. There may be things like possible infinites. We think about the numbers that could be infinite. But whether there’s an actual infinite or not is another problem. Can we actually count an actual infinite amount of numbers? Or could there be an infinite amount of time in which matter existed? And Dr. Moreland argued yesterday that was not possible.</p>

<p>It may be a little hard to explain this but simply put, if there is an infinite series of events like there would have to be in the universe if it was infinitely old, it would be akin to trying to start this process to trying to jump off an infinitely high building into an infinitely bottomless pit. The point is that there would be no place for you to even think about jumping because any place you would jump would be a type of terminus, a type of beginning and then it would not be infinite. Any point of departure would be a beginning. So there are serious problems with there even being an infinite chain of events like that or the material order of the universe being infinite.</p>

<p>It’s kind of like if you were in the process of an infinite chain of events, if you tried to move forward in those events, one step forward would flip you one step backwards into eternity and you would never make any progress. There can’t be an actual infinite like in the universe. These are very strong arguments against the universe being infinite and if scientists would have taken this into consideration they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble. It took them 150 years to finally come to the conclusion that there is no infinite universe, something philosophers could have told them for very good reasons a long time before that.</p>

<p>One other thought about Carl Sagan and the application he argues in this piece. It has to do with the difference between man and animals qualitatively. He suggests there is no difference and he makes an argument for animal rights. If man is just a highly developed animal and there is no substantial qualitative difference then animals should have the same rights as humans. Now this you might think would be good because it elevates animals to the level of human. But I want to tell you something, it does not work that way. The other way of saying it is that human have no more rights than animals. So this would not be the ascent of animal rights. It would be the descent and the destruction of human rights.</p>

<p>There’s a very important reason why this is the case. It’s because one always needs to ask the question if one has the right to something else, where do these rights come from? A right is a just claim to something. To suggest that a person has a just claim to something he must make a reference to some standard of justice. Justice is an appeal to a higher authority of some sort. If animals and man are the same and there is just the physical world, it’s fruitless to appeal to any higher order of justice that transcends the physical world that then would give us rights. If we are just merely animals, then nothing would have any rights because there is no transcendent standard that anyone can appeal to in order to justify their right claims. Logic requires them to absolutely abandon the concept of rights.</p>

<p>What’s ironic in this whole discussion is the analysis for man and what ends up happening here. Man become merely material. He becomes a determined individual caught in the flow of cause and effect. As Dr. Francis Schaeffer put it, man becomes “cosmic junk.”&nbsp;The modern analysis of man takes one of two extreme positions. Either man is god, which is the New Age way of looking at things, or man is an animal, he is cosmic junk. In other words, he is everything or he is nothing. The Christian message puts man rights in the middle. He has transcendent value but he is not God Himself.</p>

<p>Anyway that’s some thoughts on Carl Sagan. I encourage you to take a look at the article, especially in light of our recent conversations.</p>
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title: Evolution Sunday: A Paradox in the Making
topic: Science
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/19/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/evolution-sunday-a-paradox-in-the-making
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for March 2007</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>Sunday, February 11, was Evolution Sunday. 613 churches across America paid tribute to Charles Darwin. It was more than a birthday tribute—it was an ecclesial blessing on evolution, the very principle that undermines God’s hand in creation. To date 10,594 church leaders have signed the “Clergy Letter Project,”&nbsp;a letter stating “the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth.”&nbsp;Pastors across the nation came out to preach sermons on the merits of evolution and how evolutionary ideas are in concert with Christian beliefs and do not contradict them.</p>

<p>Either these clergy are grossly misinformed about the nature and purpose of evolution or, worse, they are deliberately attempting to gloss over fundamental differences between two competing worldviews. Either way, it seems like we’re facing a growing problem from <em>within</em> the walls of the church.</p>

<p>Evolutionary theory is an explanation of how life appeared on earth <em>in the absence</em> of any intelligence or divine direction. Any faithful Darwinist will affirm this. Douglas Futuyma wrote, “The human species was not designed, has no purpose, and is the product of mere mechanical mechanisms...[This is] the message of evolution.”&nbsp;George Simpson, in his book <em>The Meaning of Evolution</em>, writes, “Mankind is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.”&nbsp;Their point? Evolution rules out God’s influence entirely. It is a blind and random process that is driven by chance—a process inconsistent with design or intelligence.</p>

<p>How does <em>that</em> harmonize with the biblical doctrine of creation? It doesn’t. It flatly contradicts it. In fact, it’s supposed to. Prior to evolution, atheists were without an explanation of how life emerged on earth. Christians had God, but atheists had nothing. Darwin changed that. He gave atheists a theory that didn’t appeal to God. As Richard Dawkins pointed out, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”</p>

<p>Evolution’s purpose is to challenge the biblical creation model. This is the paradox of Evolution Sunday. It attempts to harmonize two competing accounts of human history. While it may become popular, it can never be intellectually honest.</p>

<p>This only serves to remind me of the importance of my work with Stand to Reason. Every day brings a new challenge and a new opportunity to train believers with the skills to respond to confusing events like Evolution Sunday.</p>

<p>Your prayerful support is critical. However, I’m asking you to keep 2007 in your prayers as I not only continue to serve the body of Christ through my ministry with Stand to Reason, but as my wife and I begin a new chapter in our family’s life with the upcoming birth of our daughter this month. Please pray for a safe and healthy delivery for both mother and baby. Our due date is March 21.</p>

<p>For those of you who faithfully support my work financially, I can’t thank you enough. My salary at Stand to Reason is dependent upon the faithful and generous giving of people like you. Without your support my work would simply not exist.</p>

<p>For those of you who are not yet financial supporters, won’t you consider making a commitment today?</p>

<p>Thank you for your partnership.</p>

<p>For His kingdom,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>
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title: Ambassadors for Christ: More than Just a Clever Title
topic: Christian Living
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/19/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/ambassadors-for-christ-more-than-just-a-clever-title
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for June 2007</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>Did you know you speak for God? No, I’m not mistaking you for a televangelist or the latest self-appointed prophet. If you claim to be a follower of Jesus Christ, then you speak on behalf of God. That’s right, I’m talking to you. It sounds like a big deal—and it is.</p>

<p>If you’re familiar with Stand to Reason, you’re already aware of our emphasis on being an effective ambassador for Jesus. This is more than just a clever catchphrase. It’s <em>our</em> identity and <em>your</em> identity. In fact, the Apostle Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:18—20 that we are all ambassadors for Christ.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>...God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And <strong>he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us</strong>.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Paul makes two important points in this passage:</p>

<p>First, as followers of Jesus Christ, we <em>already are</em> His ambassadors. There’s no option here. We represent Jesus whether we like it or not. Our role is 24/7. We don’t stop representing Christ when we go to our jobs, watch movies, coach our kids’&nbsp;sports, go to the beach, attend bachelor/bachelorette parties, or hang out with our non-Christian friends. We’re Jesus’&nbsp;representatives in every moment, conversation, and event. Whether we represent God favorably or unfavorably is up to us.</p>

<p>Second, Paul says it is <em>just as if</em> God were speaking through us. People can’t see God. They can only see us. People will draw conclusions about our God from how we behave and what we say. We function, therefore, like His mouthpiece. This is not to be taken lightly.</p>

<p>We shouldn’t be surprised by the representative role Paul speaks of. Jesus charged us with the very same task in the passage known as the “Great Commission.”&nbsp;He stated that although all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him, <em>we</em> are to go and make disciples of all nations and <em>we</em> are to teach them everything He has commanded us.</p>

<p>Given this great responsibility, it should be clear why I emphasize the importance of effective ambassadorship every time I teach. Every believer should be mindful of their role as an ambassador of God, especially when they talk about controversial subjects like Islam, abortion, evolution, and homosexuality. It is critical we ask the Holy Spirit to give us wisdom to know what kind of message we communicate about our sovereign, Jesus Christ.</p>

<p>Striving to be an effective ambassador,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>
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title: The Judgment on Judging
topic: Tactics and Tools
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/20/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-judgment-on-judging
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Everyone judges. Not just Christians, but <em>anyone</em> who engages in rational thought. People assess everything in the world based on their beliefs. Then, they make important decisions based on those assessments. That’s what it means to judge.</p>

<p>Comment on someone’s behavior, however, and you’ll be swiftly slapped with the label “judgmental.”&nbsp;Tell a person they’re wrong and you’ll be told “You shouldn’t judge,”&nbsp;or “It’s wrong to judge.”&nbsp;And if they know you are a follower of Christ, they’ll likely invoke Jesus’&nbsp;words, “Do not judge so that you will not be judged”&nbsp;(Matthew 7:1).</p>

<p>Statements like this are often meant to stop the conversation. Once you’re told not to judge, then what’s left to say? Uneasiness settles in. The conversation is over.</p>

<p>But making judgments is what rational beings do. In fact, notice that the statement, “You shouldn’t judge,”&nbsp;is itself a judgment. It’s an assessment that your behavior (of judging) is wrong. So when someone tells you that you shouldn’t judge, they are making a <em>self-refuting</em> statement. They’re guilty of the very thing they’ve accused you of doing—judging.</p>

<p>Jesus’&nbsp;words in Matthew 7:1 are not a prohibition on judging. Nor is His statement self-refuting because He is not condemning all judgments, only <em>hypocritical</em> ones (of which His is not). The context of Matthew 7:1, which is often left out of the quote, says, “Or how can you say to your brother, ’Let me take the speck out of your eye,”&nbsp;and behold, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”</p>

<p>Although the New Testament condemns hypocritical judgments, it commands us to make two other kinds of judgments. The first kind is <em>judicial</em>. This type of judging is intended to pass sentence, as in church discipline (Matthew 18:15-20).</p>

<p>The second kind of judgment is a <em>factual assessment</em>. It is an appraisal of what is wise or unwise, rational or irrational, and moral or immoral (1 Corinthians 5:1-2). Not only is this type of judgment commanded, but it’s something people practice every day. In order to survive in our world, people must make judgments daily.</p>

<p>So here is a helpful tactic to keep in mind when you’re labeled “judgmental”&nbsp;or told “you shouldn’t judge.”</p>

<p>When someone tells you that you shouldn’t judge, your response should consist of only one word: “why?”&nbsp;Almost any answer they give will be an example of them judging you. “Because it’s wrong to judge,”&nbsp;“because judging others is wrong,”&nbsp;or “because you shouldn’t force your morals on others”&nbsp;are all judgments against you (in fact, their initial comment was also a judgment).</p>

<p>If judging is wrong, then why are they judging you? It’s because they can’t avoid making judgments. It’s inescapable unless one remains silent.</p>

<p>At this point, you can <em>kindly</em> show them how they’re engaging in the very thing they’re condemning: “What’s interesting about your reason is that it is itself a judgment. But that’s okay because we all make assessments of what we think is right and wrong. So, if we’re agreed that making judgments is okay, let’s continue talking about...”</p>

<p>You’re showing them the common ground you share and then moving on from there. You keep the conversation going instead of shying away from a deeper, more productive dialogue.</p>

<p>If you’re talking to a believer, then you can point to the biblical commands and examples of New Testament disciples who routinely made judgments (e.g. 1 Corinthians 5:3). That should be sufficient, although the tactic in the above paragraph works too.</p>

<p>Remember, in every conversation, you are an ambassador of Jesus—you represent Him. Your manner should be kind, gracious, and inviting. You want to stimulate conversation, not dampen it.</p>

<p>I know this year will bring many opportunities for all of us to create and maintain a productive dialogue. It’s critical we pray that the Holy Spirit help us to be careful communicators who can recognize obstacles in our conversations and be able to navigate around them. We’ll be a more effective tool in God’s hand if we do.</p>

<p>For the kingdom,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>
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title: The Slippery Slope of the Right-to-Die Movement
topic: Bioethics
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/20/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-slippery-slope-of-the-right-to-die-movement
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for March 2009</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>There’s one fact about you I’m sure of: even though you’ll live forever, someday your earthly body will die. But that’s not really a problem. The real concern is that you may not die instantly. You might linger on after an accident or disease and someone else will be responsible for your care. And if right-to-die advocates have their way, you’ll have a <em>dut</em>y <em>to die</em>—a moral obligation to kill yourself.</p>

<p>That’s the result of the slippery slope to legalize physician assisted suicide. First, the culture grants suffering individuals a right to die. Then, there’s an implicit obligation for those who are a burden on society to take the death doctors’&nbsp;lethal prescription.</p>

<p>Duty-to-die-champion John Hardwig of the University of Tennessee, explains that “A duty to die is more likely when continuing to live will impose significant burdens—emotional burdens, extensive care-giving, destruction of life plans, and yes, financial hardship—on your family and loved ones.”</p>

<p>And in case you don’t kill yourself, you can be sure someone will be happy to do it for you. That’s what has happened in the Netherlands since they legalized euthanasia in 2001. Doctors started by killing terminally ill patients who were competent and asked to be killed. But soon they moved on to patients who were neither terminally ill, nor competent enough to ask for it.</p>

<p>Now, Dutch doctors decide which lives are worth living. Studies show that doctors kill three to four patients <em>each day</em> (though they call it “death with dignity”)<em>.</em> These are people who never ask to be killed but are competent to make their own medical decisions.</p>

<p>You think it couldn’t get any worse, but it does. Pediatricians in the Netherlands are also killing children. The University Medical Center of Gronigen kills around 20 disabled newborns each year. Eduard Verhagen, medical director of the pediatric department, made the following asinine statement in an interview: “You are trained to save the life of a child but with these children the suffering can only be stopped by ending their lives. It takes courage to do that.”</p>

<p>Killing a defenseless and disabled child is not courageous, but cowardice. Courage is fighting to improve the conditions of disabled children who, some in our culture believe, are not worth caring for.</p>

<p>But killing disabled children is the logical absurdity of a culture that buys into the right-to-die movement. Unfortunately, America has begun to buy in. Washington and Oregon have already passed laws making it legal for a physician to prescribe a lethal dose of a drug to a person who wants to commit suicide.</p>

<p>It’s a culture of death that needs the life-saving truth of Jesus. And given the high stakes, I’m committed to protecting vulnerable people from a philosophy that denies the intrinsic value of human life. I’m greatly encouraged to have you on my side, supporting me along the way.</p>

<p>With appreciation of our partnership,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>
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title: Is There a Life Unworthy of Life?
topic: Bioethics
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/19/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/is-there-a-life-unworthy-of-life-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for April 2012</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>I was recently invited to USC to present the pro-life view and debate abortion-choice students in the prestigious Keck School of Medicine.</p>

<p>Since these were medical students who knew the science of embryology, I skipped the basic argument that the unborn is a human being. This proved to be prudent since most—though not all—accepted that view.</p>

<p>Instead, I found myself defending the claim that <em>all human beings</em> are valuable and deserving of life. Some students claimed that deformed children shouldn’t be born. Others said that since unborn humans aren’t developed enough, they don’t deserve the same protections as fully developed humans. Still others said that too many new babies increases the number of children on welfare or contributes to overpopulation.</p>

<p>What I discovered was that many of these future physicians were unwittingly advancing the now-abhorrent view of <em>Lebensunwertes Leben</em>—a German phrase meaning “life unworthy of life,”&nbsp;made famous by the Third Reich, who used it to designate a segment of their population as less than valuable and deny them the right to live.</p>

<p>Though today the phrase is uncommon in our vernacular, the principle still persists—and I found it alive and well in the halls of one of America’s finest medical schools.</p>

<p>No matter their reason to justify abortion, at the end of the day, these medical students were all making the same claim: <em>Not all humans are equally valuable. Some deserve protection, while others do not</em>. This is unjust discrimination, plain and simple. And I didn’t hold back in demonstrating the savage consequences of this view.</p>

<p>Their position, after all, is no different than that of General Ratko Mladic of the Bosnian Serb Army. In 1995, he determined that a class of human beings was disqualified from being valuable simply because of an arbitrary and subjective characteristic: their ethnicity. As a result of his discriminatory views, 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were wiped off the planet through “ethnic cleansing.”</p>

<p>Their position also results in the same kind of discrimination that occurred against African Americans. They were a class of human beings that was disqualified from being valuable simply because of an arbitrary characteristic: their skin color. This led to slavery in America and other barbaric crimes.</p>

<p>And their position discriminates against unborn children. According to these medical students, the unborn is a class of human beings that is disqualified from being valuable simply because of some arbitrary characteristic: they’re not developed enough, or they’re likely to become a burden on the state, or some other irrelevant reason. That’s what justifies killing 3,500 of them each day in the United States alone.</p>

<p>One medical student, who argued with me during my presentation, walked me to my car. On the way, she reflected on my performance and said, “You frustrated me to no end. I guess that means you did a pretty good job making your case.”&nbsp;I didn’t know what else to say except, “Thank you!”&nbsp;I appreciated her honesty. I’m happy to frustrate people so long as it leads them to change their minds.</p>

<p>It was a privilege to get invited to speak to this medical school. You can thank God for that rare opportunity. But I’m also especially grateful for you. Your support allowed me to take advantage of that chance. You placed me in front of that medical school. And with God’s help, we changed some minds that day. Now they’ll see that all human life is worthy of life.</p>

<p>For life,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>
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title: The Muslim Mission
topic: Other Worldviews
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/19/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-muslim-mission
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Reading the Qur’an, going to mosques, listening to Islamic scholars—these all sound like the behaviors of a Muslim. But they also became the activities of 17 Christian high school students during a recent four-day trip. I called it the “Muslim Mission,”&nbsp;where believers were immersed in the world of Islam and engaged Muslims of all stripes.</p>

<p>Why do such a trip? Because training Christians to be prepared and confident enough to witness to lay Muslims and scholars requires more than a clever article or intense lecture. It requires study, practice, and correction. In a word, it requires <em>action</em>. And that’s what the Muslim Mission provided.</p>

<p>Training began many months prior when I role-played a Muslim to a group of unsuspecting Christian students. That experience demonstrated their need to get educated. From there the students heard lectures and read books on Christian apologetics to Islam, including my book, <em>The Ambassador’s Guide to Islam</em>. But up until that point, the students weren’t trained. They just knew a lot of stuff. Something else was needed. They needed to put into practice what they knew by engaging Muslims.</p>

<p>Fortunately, with several million Muslims living in the United States, it wasn’t necessary to fly to a distant country to do cross-cultural missions. All we had to do was drive to a major city. Once we found a mosque, we knew a community of Muslims lived nearby.</p>

<p>We began the trip by meeting Persian converts from Islam to Christianity. They told us about their life as Muslims and how God intervened to bring them to the truth. With the knowledge and confidence that Muslims do, in fact, come to Christ, we took the students to a Muslim neighborhood to practice street evangelism. They had to find and meet Muslims and begin conversations about God, Jesus, and the Bible. This was their first chance to put their skills to the test.</p>

<p>That night we took them to a mosque at the Iranian American Muslim Association of North America. In addition to a tour of the facility, a Shi’ite Islamic scholar presented a lecture on the similarities and differences between Islam and Christianity. This was a step up in difficulty as the students were no longer talking to the average Muslim on the street. The scholar was a UCLA Islamic law professor who previously was an attorney for the Iranian parliament in Tehran. But the students were able to challenge him with good questions.</p>

<p>The following day the training and challenge grew more intense. We drove to a large Sunni mosque where two American girls shared their testimony of how and why they converted from Christianity to Islam. The Christian girls in our group got to meet with them in a private room after their presentation and were excited about the exchange.</p>

<p>But the bigger challenge was the Sunni Muslim speaker at the mosque. He was extremely aggressive. He attacked the reliability of the Bible, the Trinity, and the atonement. The students, however, didn’t stay quiet. They used what they learned to go toe to toe with him and his claims. It was a vigorous exchange.</p>

<p>It was these and other experiences that gave the believers the chance to practice their skills with real Muslims who really disagree with them. It also helped them build their confidence to engage Muslims in the future, wherever they meet them.</p>

<p>But the trip wasn’t merely an academic exercise. Within the first couple of days, the students’&nbsp;hearts grew heavy for the Muslims. These diligent followers of Islam tried so hard to be good—to win Allah’s approval—but ultimately had no confidence they would enter heaven. You could tell from the students’&nbsp;prayers that they longed for their Muslim friends to trust Christ for their salvation.</p>

<p>Now their desire to see Muslims accept Jesus was matched with the proper training to share His message effectively. Islam was no longer foreign to them. Mosques were no longer a mystery. But most importantly, Muslims were no longer strangers. These Christian students were now properly trained ambassadors for Christ to Muslims.</p>

<p>I don’t want you to be unclear about what I’m doing. Like you, I realize there is a war going on. But it’s not a war against Muslims. They are hostages of the enemy. Our battle is against Satan, his army, and his lies. As Paul writes, our weapons “are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God”&nbsp;(2 Corinthians 10:3-5). So never forget. We are at war.</p>
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title: Teaching Muslims the Identity of Jesus...from the Qur’an
topic: Other Worldviews
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/20/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/teaching-muslims-the-identity-of-jesus-from-the-qur-an
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for September 2008</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>Which of these statements is taught in the Qur’an?</p>

<ul>
	<li>Jesus’&nbsp;birth was announced by angels.</li>
	<li>Jesus was born of a virgin.</li>
	<li>Jesus lived a sinless life.</li>
	<li>Jesus performed miracles and had the power to raise the dead back to life.</li>
	<li>After His life on earth, Jesus ascended into heaven to be with God.</li>
	<li>Jesus is the promised Messiah that will return at the end of the age and defeat the anti-Christ.</li>
</ul>

<p>The answer? All of them.</p>

<p>What’s more interesting is the Qur’an does not attribute any of these characteristics or roles to Mohammed, Islam’s most prominent prophet. His birth was ordinary, he wasn’t sinless, he didn’t perform miracles, he died a natural death, and he has no role in end times.</p>

<p>So when sharing the truth of Jesus with Muslims, I teach Christians to start with the Qur’an. Though it doesn’t reveal the full identity of Jesus, it says enough to get them thinking.</p>

<p>Like Christians, Muslims want to get to heaven. So, given the choice of following Jesus or Mohammed, who is more qualified to get them there? According to the Qur’an, it must be Jesus. Not only did Jesus escape death, but He has the power to raise people back to life. And unlike Mohammed, Jesus is still alive in heaven with God.</p>

<p>Using the Qur’an is strategic for other reasons. Muslims can’t argue with it. If you point them to the New Testament, they’ll reject its description of Jesus because they believe men corrupted the Gospel record. But in their mind, the Qur’an is the word of God. So using it immediately lowers defenses. You leverage your argument by using their source of authority to make your point.</p>

<p>Plus, using the Qur’an builds common ground, shows respect for their authority, demonstrates knowledge of their holy book, and is evidence you are willing to traffic on their “turf.”&nbsp;These are the qualities of an effective ambassador for Christ that will help you win a hearing with Muslims.</p>

<p>Eventually, though, you’ll want to move from the Qur’an to the Gospels to get the full identity of Jesus. You can use a “bridge”&nbsp;verse to make the transition. When talking about Jesus’&nbsp;power to raise the dead in the Qur’an (surah 3:49), for example, you can bridge to the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead (John 11:1-43).</p>

<p>This is a powerful move. Although Muslims believe the Gospels are corrupted, they affirm they were a true revelation from God, on par with the Qur’an, originally given by Jesus. So the Gospels are true insofar as they correlate with the Qur’an. By bridging to the story of Lazarus, you move Muslims closer to the full identity of Jesus and build the credibility of the Gospels.</p>

<p>For 1.5 billion Muslims in this world, this is a tragic case of mistaken identity. Jesus is not merely a man with a message, but our God in the flesh and the redeemer of our souls. Any other Jesus is a counterfeit Jesus.</p>

<p>Your faithfulness enables me to train believers how to share the true identity of Jesus in a persuasive and gracious way every month. Thank you for making that happen. Your partnership is essential to this work and I’m grateful to serve with you.</p>

<p>For the real Jesus,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>
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title: The Problemless Problem of Evil
topic: Philosophy
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/19/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-problemless-problem-of-evil
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter from July 2012</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>I had just given a talk at his church when Charlie asked for help. He wanted to respond to His relative who had written an article against God’s existence for a philosophy class. Charlie handed me the eight-page paper and, without reading anything but the title, I knew the problem with the author’s argument.</p>

<p>It’s not that I’m clairvoyant. I could tell the article was arguing that the problem of evil was evidence against God’s existence. Though many believe that’s a compelling argument, most advocates of this view make a common mistake. I assured Charlie that far from being evidence <em>against</em> God’s existence, the presence of evil is evidence <em>for</em> God’s existence.</p>

<p>That’s because there’s one word in the article that is meaningless in light of the author’s atheistic worldview: evil. If God doesn��t exist, what is evil? The only way to determine an action is evil is if there’s an <em>objective</em> standard by which to measure it. But the only way that standard exists is if God exists—something the author rejects.</p>

<p>For example, you grade a bowler by their score. The closer they get to 300—a perfect game—the better the bowler. The farther they are from 300, the worse the bowler. A perfect 300 game is an objective standard. It serves as a scoring system to measure their performance. If it didn’t exist, it would be meaningless to say whether a bowler was good or bad. I could bowl a dozen gutter balls and still be proud of myself.</p>

<p>The same is true with morality. The only way to determine an action is good or evil is to measure it against a perfect standard of behavior. If God exists, then that standard exists. But if God doesn’t exist, then an objective scoring system doesn’t—indeed can’t exist. The author can’t complain about evil because there’s no way to assess that an action has deviated from that perfect standard. He can’t distinguish between a man who helps an elderly lady across the street and one who mugs her.</p>

<p>There’s one question I like to ask atheists that exposes this weakness of their view: Is evil real? This puts them on the horns of a dilemma. If they answer yes, then there must be an objective standard to measure evil. But if there’s an objective standard, then there must be a God. And if there’s a God, then the argument against His existence fails because, well, He exists. The other option for the atheist is to say no, evil is not real. But if evil is not real, then there is no evil to complain about. That makes the “problem”&nbsp;of evil against God’s existence no longer a problem. No matter how the atheist replies, the argument doesn’t succeed in disproving God.</p>

<p>It turns out that the problem of evil isn’t a challenge to God’s <em>existence</em>. It’s a challenge to the God’s <em>nature</em>. It’s not a <em>metaphysical</em> question (Does God exist?), but a <em>theological</em> question (Why does God allow evil?). Either way, it’s a question only theists can ask. Atheists can’t even enter into the discussion based on their worldview.</p>

<p>If the atheist wants to complain about evil, he needs to adopt a worldview that has the metaphysical resources to distinguish good from evil. Atheism can’t do that. He must presume God’s existence before he can complain about evil. Or, as some like to say, he has to sit in God’s lap in order to slap Him in the face.</p>

<p>This is why the presence of evil is evidence <em>for</em> God’s existence, <em>not</em> against it. Our ability to recognize evil as something real is based on our knowledge of an objective standard of morality. Only if there’s a God can that standard exist for us to measure an action as good or evil.</p>

<p>I provided Charlie with a written response. Now he has the resources to understand the issue and respond incisively to his relative. That’s what our partnership produces. And that’s why I’m thankful for your support of what we do together.</p>

<p>In appreciation of your support,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>
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title: No More Free Rides: Enforcing the Burden of Proof Rule
topic: Tactics and Tools
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/19/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/no-more-free-rides-enforcing-the-burden-of-proof-rule
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for May 2007</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>Everyone likes a free ride. It might even feel right to give one. There’s one free ride, however, we need to stop giving.</p>

<p>Here’s the scenario. You’re having a conversation with a friend. They offer a critique or objection to your faith. Instead of <em>them</em> backing up their critique with evidence or reasons, <em>you</em> begin a defensive discourse explaining why their objection is not accurate. And now you’ve done it—you’ve just given someone a free ride.</p>

<p>The problem of free rides can be resolved with a simple, yet powerful concept known as the burden of proof rule. The burden of proof is the responsibility one has to defend their belief, opinion, or view. The rule goes like this: The person that makes the claim bears the burden. In other words, if someone offers a critique, it’s <em>their</em> job to defend their view, not your job to defend against it.</p>

<p>Too often I see Christians bear the burden of proof when they’re not supposed to. This keeps the Christian in the hot seat as they hopelessly try to respond to every crazy objection and story someone can spin. They neglect holding the other person responsible to defend <em>their</em> view. It’s time to stop giving free rides and begin enforcing the burden of proof rule.</p>

<p>For example, a friend might tell you they think all religions are the same. They’ve made the claim so it’s their job to back it up. Ask, “How did you come to that conclusion?”&nbsp;or something akin to that. Then sit back and listen to them defend their view. It’s their job. This is not only a good tactic, it’s also the next proper step in the conversation.</p>

<p>Notice the many benefits of enforcing the burden of proof. First, it puts the burden of proof back where it belongs—on the person making the claim. Second, it makes your job much easier. It keeps you out of the hot seat so you can relax. Third, it shows interest in the other person’s view, which is what a good ambassador should do. Fourth, it gives you valuable insight into their rationale so you know how to respond to their reasons. Fifth, it keeps you in control of the conversation, not in a manipulative way, but in a way that helps productively advance the conversation towards discovering the truth.</p>

<p>I continue to be thankful for the faithful monthly support you give. Each day that I enter a church and train new workers, I see the impact of your help. Let me assure you, people are grateful that we partner together to train hearts and minds to serve Christ. I am humbled to serve with you. Thank you.</p>

<p>In His Service,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>
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title: Eternal Punishment
topic: Philosophy
author: Greg Koukl
date: 04/16/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/eternal-punishment
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Is Hell eternal or everlasting? We have to be careful how we define the words.</em></p>

<p>I don't believe in eternal punishment. Nor do I believe in eternal Heaven. No one goes to Heaven for an eternity.</p>

<p>Now, I know I've got many of you sitting up saying, "Okay, Koukl has finally gone off the deep end. Sounds like heresy to me. Something is rotten in Denmark." Well, I say there is no eternal punishment and no eternal Heaven because I am choosing my words very carefully. I know this raises some eyebrows because I think many of you might suspect what I am talking about is temporary Hell. I don't think Hell is temporary, nor is Heaven temporary, but I don't think it is eternal either. How could that be? It's very simple.</p>

<p>I was recently asked on the air about the nature of Hell and punishment, and if there are different degrees of punishment in Hell. My answer was, yes, there are different degrees of punishment in Hell and this can be shown Scripturally. There are actually two aspects of this punishment: duration and intensity. We know the duration is the same for everyone in Hell because Scripture says it's "forever and ever." Hell is everlasting, not eternal, as we will see in a moment. In other words, it goes on forever and ever. Those judged by God will be banished from His presence forever. We read in 2 Thessalonians 1:9, "These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power." Note that the word destruction doesn't mean, and can't mean, annihilation because it wouldn't make any sense to say they are annihilated from the presence of the Lord eternally. If a thing is annihilated, it doesn't exist at all.</p>

<p>Even though the duration is the same for everybody, the intensity is different for each person. I think this is a function of justice. Those with the greater crimes before God receive the greater intensity of punishment. It is clear that some experience more intense judgment than others. In Matthew 10:15, Jesus said, "Truly I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city." Matthew 11:22 says, "It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you." Jesus said to Pilate, "The one who has handed me over to you has the greater sin." There are going to be different degrees of judgment, which makes sense and seems to comport with the notion of justice.</p>

<p>According to the dictates of <em>lex talionis</em>, which actually comes from the Old Testament, "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," the punishment must fit the crime and not be incommensurate with the crime. You don't cut off somebody's arm for stealing a loaf of bread. You give a punishment equal to the crime. Jesus says there are crimes that are more heinous than others and, therefore, it stands to reason that the punishment will be greater for those crimes that are more heinous. It can't be greater in terms of duration because the duration is the same for everyone. It must be greater in terms of intensity which is supported by Jesus' words and practical reason.</p>

<p>I say "yes" to degrees of punishment, "no" to eternal punishment, and "no" to anyone living any place for an eternity. Having made that clear to the caller, I then received a letter in response from a listener who happened to catch that broadcast. I'll read you the whole thing because it is nicely written. Some of the details of what he said are important for our discussion.</p>

<blockquote>Dear Greg,
<p>Too bad. You blew it Saturday in the discussion of degrees of punishment in everlasting Hell. Since the time is infinite, the amount of punishment is infinite. Your analogy is faulty. Two times infinite is infinite. For example, the set of all positive numbers is infinite and so is the set of all even numbers, even though it would seem reasonable that the set of all positive numbers should be twice as large since it includes all the odd numbers as well. Anything that is infinite is not made larger by adding or multiplying it. That is implicit in the definition of infinite. Your error may stem from thinking of the term infinite quantity which is a misnomer. It is perhaps more accurate to think of infinite as meaning expanding without limits rather than as an extremely large number. You might look at some texts on calculus, particularly the section on theorems on limits as well as infinities.</p>

<p>Yours truly, Robert Lewis, La Mesa, California.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>I thought that was kind of a nice touch at the end suggesting that I read some books on calculus to get straight on this issue. But I haven't made any mistakes; Mr. Lewis has.</p>

<p>First of all, Mr. Lewis' definition of an infinite is wrong. He says, "It is perhaps more accurate to think of infinite as meaning expanding without limits rather than as an extremely large number." My response to that is, infinites cannot expand by their very nature. Nothing that expands can be an infinite because, if it is expanding, then it is increasing its size. If it has a size, it can't be infinite. It is finite. Further, nothing that expands without limits could ever become an infinite because nothing ever attains an infinite size by simply getting bigger and bigger through expansion. So this definition isn't going to work. Expanding without limits is not an infinite, it's a finite size that gets bigger. It can never become an infinite because getting bigger and bigger doesn't eventually qualify it for an infinity.</p>

<p>Let me illustrate that last point. Think of a balloon that expands twice its size every day. When will it be infinitely large? It never will. It will get really big, but it will never cross over into an infinitely large thing. Things that get larger and larger still have a quantifiable size. In this case, the balloon becomes twice the size that it was the day before. If it has a size, then guess what? It's not infinitely large, is it? Anything that starts out finite can get larger and larger without end, but it still never gets infinitely large because a finite thing can never grow into an infinite thing.</p>

<p>Mr. Lewis is right, by the way, regarding the phrase "infinite quantity" being an oxymoron. No amount can be infinite. Amounts by their nature are finite amounts. Lewis' definition of an infinite as something expanding without limit, however, falls prey to the very error that he warns me of.</p>

<p>This misunderstanding causes his critique of my view of suffering in Hell to go belly up. Lewis' objection presumes that someone who suffers forever in Hell will eventually live for an eternity and, therefore, accomplish an infinite amount of suffering.</p>

<p>We both agree all infinites are the same size, but he argues from that point that there is no difference of suffering in Hell. Lewis says this, "Since the time is infinite, the amount of punishment is infinite." This is the key error. Time in the afterlife is not an infinite for any of us. It is merely everlasting and there is a difference. The future goes on and on without end, but like our expanding balloon, it never will become infinitely long. So forever and ever means that it never comes to an end, but a thing that continues to get older and older still has an age. It never gets infinitely old. Even though one lives forever and ever, one never lives for an actual eternity, which is an infinite amount of time, because no matter how old you get, you always have an age.</p>

<p>The confusion is understandable because time, like numbers, is <em>potentially</em> infinite, but the actual expansion into this limitless arena of possibility has an edge to it. It has a size. There are no limits to the possible size of numbers, but any particular number has a quantity. My point was, in Hell some people suffer more than others. The duration of this difference is everlasting, but it never attains to an infinite.</p>

<p>Suppose you and I count together. I count every number and you count every tenth number. For the entire time that we count, your number will always be ten times larger than mine even though we count forever and ever. Though the numbers may be potentially infinite, you and I are always working with finite numbers, not infinite ones. Our amounts are never equal because, no matter how much time we have, neither of us can count to infinity. Every time we add one, we are still dealing with a finite number. We will never be able to get an actual infinite by adding one number after another.</p>

<p>The duration of our future is much like counting, with the numbers representing successive moments of our existence. There may be no limits to the possible age of a being who lives forever, like you and me, but any particular created being always has an age. It gets larger and larger with every moment, but it still has an age. If it has an age, then the duration of its existence is finite and not infinite. Every created being had a beginning so it can never live for an actual eternity. It is temporal, not eternal.</p>

<p>The simple truth is, even though punishment in Hell is forever and ever, it can never become eternal because no matter how far one lives into the future, he always has a quantifiable age. No one will ever endure an infinity of suffering because no one lives that long. Even though they live forever and ever and ever and never die, no one suffers in Hell for an infinite amount of time, and no one enjoys Heaven for an infinite amount of time.</p>

<p>Supposed liabilities to my point of view about variable suffering in Hell based on the nature of infinity simply don't apply because there is a difference between living forever and ever and living for an eternity.</p>
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title: Making an Impact without Knowing Anything
topic: Other Worldviews
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/19/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/making-an-impact-without-knowing-anything
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for July 2007</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>When I heard the knock on the door I knew it was probably the Mormons. It was Saturday afternoon and I had seen a pair of finely dressed people walking around my neighborhood. I guess it was my turn. I answered the door with a bit of trepidation. Sure I know a lot of apologetics, but I don’t know that much about Mormonism. So I decided to use my tactics.</p>

<p>Tactics aren’t about having mega doses of arguments at your disposal. You don’t have to be, like my pastor often says, a brain-on-a-stick. It’s more about knowing how to proceed, what questions to ask, and how to navigate even in uncharted waters. Ultimately, tactics put <em>you</em> in control of the conversation. When I say “control”&nbsp;I don’t mean it in an illegitimate way, but in a productive way that helps you guide people to the truth.</p>

<p>After a brief greeting and a question from my visitor I knew I had to get him off his agenda and onto mine. I had seen this go down all too often: the very knowledgeable and prepared Mormon asks a question and the Christian attempts to respond only to be served another question. The Christian spends most of his time defending his view and back peddling. Or, if the Christian knows a few things, the encounter ends up in a back and forth argument.</p>

<p>My goal from the start was to direct the encounter and prevent my visitor from dragging me onto his turf. So, before answering any questions, I <em>kindly</em> made him aware of the circumstances of our encounter. I pointed out he had just come onto <em>my</em> property, interrupted <em>my</em> day, and was encroaching on <em>my</em> privacy. And <em>he</em> wanted to ask <em>me</em> questions? No. I told him I will ask the questions and he will give the answers.</p>

<p>So I asked him two important questions. You can ask these questions too (or some variation of them).</p>

<ol>
	<li><strong>If you discovered you were mistaken about your faith (Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witness, etc.), would you be willing to change your religion?</strong>

	<p>This question is critical because it exposes their heart. They are presumably there to show you you’re mistaken about your faith and should change it after they show you the truth. They should also be willing to extend you the same courtesy. If not, then I point out their unreasonable stance and thank them for coming to visit. Believe me, I’ve had many people answer “no”&nbsp;to this question. I try to avoid spending my time with people who are not genuine truth seekers and are not willing to follow the evidence where it leads.</p>
	</li>
	<li><strong>Can you offer me three objective reasons or evidences for why you believe Mormonism is true?</strong>
	<p>Notice this question immediately shifts the burden of proof on them, where it belongs. It takes the pressure off you and puts you in the driver’s seat. Remember, they’ve come to you. You’re under no obligation to jump through their hoops and answer their questions. Just be sure to keep them on track and not let them deviate from the question at hand. Mormons often ask you to pray and ask God to reveal the truth to you. This is <em>not</em> an objective reason or evidence. So don’t let them get away with offering it as an answer.</p>
	</li>
</ol>

<p>Notice I said nothing that afternoon that required even a modest education of Mormon beliefs or apologetics. I simply used my tactics. As a result, I was never in a defensive mode. I was able to draw my visitor onto my turf by making them answer the tough questions and shoulder the burden of proof.</p>

<p>Another way I make an impact without knowing anything is by engaging in fact-finding. I ask dozens of questions all related to the theme: what do you believe and why? At Stand to Reason, we call this the Columbo Tactic. This line of questioning serves many valuable purposes:</p>

<ul>
	<li>It educates me about a religion I know little about.</li>
	<li>It allows me to know and understand the person’s unique beliefs about their faith. Remember, not every Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness, Muslim, etc. believes the same thing about their faith as other adherents. Instead of reading a book, I can simply ask them. I’m now less likely to misrepresent their beliefs, especially if they differ from the religion’s established teachings.</li>
	<li>It keeps me in the driver’s seat and out of the hot seat.</li>
	<li>It engages the visitor in meaningful dialog, showing genuine interest in their beliefs.</li>
</ul>

<p>Having shown you how to make an impact without knowing anything, this is not a license to live in ignorance. You can multiply your impact as an ambassador if you know a few key things about different religions or worldviews.</p>

<p>Last month I had the privilege of training 700 high school and junior high students at Santa Fe Christian School in Solana Beach, California. By training these young minds in tactics, I know that they’ll be able to apply these principles in any conversation, with anyone, on any topic, and make a difference for the Kingdom.</p>

<p>It’s what our partnership is all about and I’m grateful to be a part of it with you.</p>

<p>Grateful for your support,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>
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title: Is Intelligent Design Just God-of-the-Gaps?
topic: Philosophy
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/19/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/is-intelligent-design-just-god-of-the-gaps-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for October 2012</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>Centuries ago, scientific knowledge was in its infancy. Although our understanding of the natural world progressed, there were gaps in the explanations. Sometimes a scientist would insert God in this gap of knowledge to explain the unexplainable. But over time those gaps were filled with satisfactory natural explanations. Theists worried that if this trend continued, God would be relegated to the role of passive bystander to creation or worse, a wishful invention of their minds.</p>

<p>Many atheists think that intelligent design makes the same mistake. They argue that we just insert God into aspects of science that are too complex and that we don’t understand. But the opposite is true. Intelligent design isn’t a God-of-the-gaps explanation. Rather, it’s a scientific theory that holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are <em>best explained</em> by an intelligent cause, not a natural or undirected process. In other words, intelligent design makes an inference to the best explanation, something that many fields of science do on a regular basis.</p>

<p>For example, forensic science makes distinctions between natural and intelligent causes. When detectives find a human corpse in a back alley, they look for clues for foul play. It’s possible the man died of natural causes. But bullet holes in his chest would be unmistakable evidence that an intelligent mind was responsible for his death. This conclusion is drawn not by the absence of evidence (a gap in the investigation), but by the presence of it.</p>

<p>Archaeologists make similar distinctions. When they discover an arrow-shaped piece of flint, they reject a natural explanation and reasonably conclude that an intelligent agent produced its shape. Again, they arrive at this conclusion not because they’ve thrown up their hands with no idea how to explain the artifact. Instead, there are unmistakable signs that the object was designed.</p>

<p>Both of these examples engage in a legitimate form of logic known as abductive reasoning. You survey the available clues and then find the explanation that best fits <em>all</em> the relevant data.</p>

<p>The same is true with intelligent design. Scientists have discovered clues in the natural world that point to intelligence. For example, the information-rich molecule known as DNA contains a four character digital code that contains the blueprints to manufacture every part of your body—from the smallest protein to the largest organ. What’s the best explanation for the information in DNA?</p>

<p>Natural forces can’t produce the information coded in the molecule. Whenever we see blueprints for cars, houses, and planes, they are always the product of intelligent agents. By the same reasoning, the blueprints in DNA, which are far more complex than any man-made blueprints, must also be the product of an intelligent mind.</p>

<p>Notice this conclusion is <em>not</em> made by discovering that DNA is complex, determining we can’t explain it, and then deducing that God must have done it. That would be a God-of-the-gaps explanation. Rather, we have evidence that an intelligent mind was at work to produce this information. It’s based on our universal experience of what creates design code. That explanation has the greatest explanatory power—it makes sense of all the details in DNA that need to be explained.</p>

<p>Here’s the irony. Despite the claim that Christians use a God-of-the-gaps approach to account for unexplained data, it’s evolutionists that are sometimes guilty of this mistake. Eugenie Scott, who’s been the Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education since 1987, is a vocal critic of theism and a passionate defender of evolution. She’s written that, “Scientists do not agree on how life began—yet. And ’yet’&nbsp;is a very important word in science. One should not assume that just because something is not currently understood that it never will be understood.”*</p>

<p>According to Scott, the origin of life (abiogenesis)—the massive leap from no life to the first living organism—is unexplainable. Evolutionists can’t account for its origin by natural causes. But, she claims, science will one day fill this gap in knowledge. That’s not an evidence-based conclusion. It’s a science-of-the-gaps approach. They’re inserting science to plug the gaping hole in their knowledge.</p>

<p>Thankfully, the presence of evidence—not its absence—favors intelligent design. We don’t have to be afraid of science. It doesn’t reveal a cold and meaningless universe. The fingerprints of God are all over creation. Science is simply a tool to help us discover what He made.</p>

<p>This month marks my eighth year working for Stand to Reason. I’m privileged to have contributed to the kingdom in many ways. It’s only been possible because you have stood with me. That’s why I’m more excited about the work ahead than I was when I began. We’re a team. So thanks to you, I’ll continue to train effective ambassadors for Christ.</p>

<p>Serving our great Designer,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>

<p>* Eugenie Scott, “Keep Science Free from Creationism,”&nbsp;on National Center for Science Education website, 1994.</p>
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title: Are Homosexuals Going to Hell?
topic: Sexuality and Gender
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/19/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/are-homosexuals-going-to-hell-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for March 2012</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>A homosexual man asked my wife, “Do you think I’m going to Hell?”&nbsp;That’s a tough question. If you say yes, then you sound judgmental. If you say no, it looks like you’re compromising your convictions. Either way it seems you lose. I think, however, the answer is easy: Yes, homosexuals are going to Hell.</p>

<p>But guess what? Liars are going to Hell too. So are gluttons, drunkards, and adulterers. Do you see a pattern here? <em>Everyone</em> is going to Hell.</p>

<p>There’s nothing singular about people who engage in same-sex intercourse. Whether you go to Heaven or Hell has nothing to do with the <em>kind</em> of sin you’ve committed. It’s about moral culpability. Guilty people deserve to be punished and innocent people go free. That’s a basic principle of justice.</p>

<p>The problem is that this question often carries with it an incorrect assumption: Homosexuality is so offensive that it’s unforgivable. Violators go directly to Hell. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. But this is not true. God doesn’t have special rules that govern how to levy punishment on homosexuals.</p>

<p>Perhaps rephrasing the question would help: Can people with same-sex attractions (SSA) go to Heaven? Yes, they can. Even if they’ve engaged in homosexual behavior, it’s still possible to be pardoned for their actions. This is no different than those who are selfish, steal, or commit adultery. People who commit these crimes can be pardoned from the punishment they deserve.</p>

<p>Even though that’s good news, believers are still berated for their moral views on homosexuality. But Christians didn’t make them up. God did. It’s like yelling at the DMV employee for failing your driving test. He’s just telling you the rules of the road. He didn’t make them up. Blame someone else.</p>

<p>Besides, it’s not like God is pointing the finger just at homosexuals. God’s an equal opportunity judger. Some people who went to church last Sunday will be in Hell. Some people who study the Bible will be there too. Why? Those people have also committed crimes that render them guilty. And going to church or reading the Bible doesn’t earn them a pardon.</p>

<p>That’s because we don’t get to make the rules for reconciliation. God does. So being a “good person”&nbsp;doesn’t matter. Seeking to be “sincere”&nbsp;is irrelevant. Trying to be “true to yourself”&nbsp;won’t help. It’s God’s <em>Kingdom</em>: He’s the <em>King</em> and it’s His <em>domain</em>. He decides the terms for acquittal.</p>

<p>He also shows no partiality towards whom He pardons. A churchgoer has no advantage over a homosexual. Each has an equal chance at forgiveness no matter what they’ve done.</p>

<p>This is great news. God is willing to grant us a pardon for our bad behavior. We can accept the pardon and go free or pay the penalty ourselves. It’s our choice. That means a man or woman can live a life of homosexual behavior and still be cleared of their guilt.</p>

<p>Although it sounds too good to be true, people who are exonerated know it’s anything but easy. The process involves an important consequence: We give God a lifetime of allegiance in return for a pardon. That means we’re no longer the absolute arbiter of our life. Rather, we hand over that privilege to the judge who negotiated our freedom.</p>

<p>Fortunately, the judge is good and looks after us. He knows that even though we’re absolved from our crimes and freed from our punishment, justice has not been completed. Our guilt has been lifted, but needs to be placed on another. So, the judge makes arrangements with a willing substitute to bear the blame: His next of kin.</p>

<p>The substitute is agreeable to trade his innocence for our guilt even though a transaction like that isn’t normally allowed. In this instance, however, the substitute is able to make the trade because the judge sanctioned the deal. It’s also fair because He’s willing and He’s willing because He’s family. It’s a family affair.</p>

<p>Who wouldn’t take a judge up on that offer? Who wouldn’t be grateful to his next of kin for His trade? God has done everything possible to keep people out of Hell. Some people just aren’t willing to accept the terms.</p>

<p>I’m not here to declare who is going to Hell and who isn’t. That’s not my point, nor is it for me to decide. That’s God’s job.</p>

<p>Instead, I want to offer some tactical advice. Sometimes you can’t answer a question like the one my wife faced with a simple yes or no. It’s not because you’re avoiding the difficult question, but because you don’t want to give a misleading answer. Plus, you want to make sure the person is asking because they genuinely want to listen to your response and not just pose a gotcha question.</p>

<p>So I suggest you rephrase the question with the following: Can homosexuals go to Heaven? Then you can clarify an important truth. Everyone is guilty (the bad news), but everyone has the same chance to avoid punishment (the good news).</p>

<p>Trying to share this news with homosexuals isn’t always easy. That’s why I’ve been writing a new book for Stand to Reason’s <em>Ambassador’s Guide</em> series—like the one I wrote on Islam. This one will be on homosexuality. The purpose of the book is to equip believers to know the truth, but speak it with compassion.</p>

<p>In fact, I spent two weeks in February writing a large portion of it. I’d like to ask you to pray for me as I finish and publish it this year. Writing is always a challenge for me—both in finding time and also writing well. Not only will <em>I</em> appreciate your prayers, but I know the people who read the book will appreciate them too since they’ll be using it to help them be effective ambassadors on a very controversial topic.</p>

<p>With thanks,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>
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title: Taking the Easy Route after Rape
topic: Bioethics
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/19/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/taking-the-easy-route-after-rape
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for January 2012</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>My friend, Susan, chose the easy route when she found she was pregnant. Susan was raped. She thought about going to the local abortion clinic. Except the head of the pro-life club—the one Susan had joined at her Christian university—was a frequent protester outside. How could Susan walk past her friend and then into the clinic? But without an abortion, she’d feel guilty, shameful, and embarrassed once her Christian friends and family found out. Given the option of a quick abortion or enduring a nine month pregnancy with the rapist’s child, Susan chose the <em>easy</em> route. She chose life.</p>

<p>“Easy”&nbsp;was the word she used. It caught me off guard. <em>How can she call that easy?</em> The physical demands of pregnancy and childbirth are difficult. There’s morning sickness, backaches, the pains of childbirth, and all the possible complications. Then there’s the psychological component: the stigma of being an unwed mother, the humiliation of rape, feelings of guilt, and the anger at the man who hurt her.</p>

<p>And after giving birth, you either endure the gut-wrenching turmoil of handing over your child to an adoption agency or begin the arduous task of parenting a newborn—as a single mom.</p>

<p>So, why did my friend refer to her decision as the “easy”&nbsp;route? Two reasons. The first was her understanding of the logical reasoning and arguments against abortion. She believed that, despite being raped, having an abortion was the wrong choice.</p>

<p>I remember being challenged with this question by a student during my debate against a women’s studies professor at California State University in San Marcos, CA. I explained that rape doesn’t justify abortion. Here’s how I knew. I asked the audience, rhetorically, if a mother can kill her three-year-old girl who is conceived through rape. No, because rape doesn’t justify killing a three-year-old. If you can’t kill a three-year-old girl because she was conceived through rape, then you can’t kill that same girl because of rape if she’s still inside her mother’s womb. It’s the same girl; it’s just she’s not born yet in one case.</p>

<p>Some abortion-choice advocates protest this reasoning by pointing out that I’m talking about two different things. The three-year-old is a born girl and the one inside is not. That’s a big difference. But notice now that they’re changing the distinction. It’s no longer a matter of being raped or not, but whether the child is born or not. This proves that rape is not the real issue. Abortion-choice advocates think that the unborn is not a human being like the three-year-old girl. They just use rape as an extreme example because of its powerful rhetorical effect.</p>

<p>Here’s another way I look at this question. Imagine a woman is raped, gets pregnant, and the rapist is caught. Would we allow the woman to shoot and kill the rapist? No. If we don’t allow the woman to shoot the rapist who’s <em>guilty</em>, then why would we allow the woman to kill the child who’s <em>innocent</em>? Why should the child pay for the crime of her father?</p>

<p>Yes, my friend was victimized. But she realized that it would be wrong to then turn around and victimize another completely innocent person—her own daughter.</p>

<p>Susan knew this. She decided that to carry her child to term was easier because these apologetic arguments simplified the logic of her predicament. They provided a powerful moral compass during a tumultuous time.</p>

<p>But there was a second reason that Susan felt her decision was the easy route. She avoided the heartache of abortion. Rape creates a long-term, painful memory of a past event. And the child may be a reminder of that for years to come. But an abortion adds a second painful memory—that of killing your own child. It often leaves a woman broken and guilty. It neither un-rapes her nor erases the memory of that event.</p>

<p>Instead, women who abort often remember what the birth date would have been had their child survived. Each year that day reminds them of not one crime, but two: the rape and now the abortion. That leads many women into anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. Susan didn’t want that. It would only make her situation more difficult.</p>

<p>So my friend chose life to avoid the heartache of abortion. Now, her daughter, Mandy, is a beautiful, six-year-old girl. Although Susan wasn’t ready to be mother, she found loving Christian parents who were. Susan still gets to see Mandy and they’ve developed a loving relationship.</p>

<p>It is often thought that a woman who has become pregnant through rape only needs emotional support. Logical arguments are said to be largely irrelevant. But it turns out that Susan was able to work out her dilemma through moral reasoning. Apologetic arguments she learned at her pro-life club, combined with her friend’s emotional support, gave her a foundation to make the right choice.</p>

<p>But Susan knew it was also the <em>easier</em> choice. If Susan chose abortion, she’d be consumed with guilt and shame for untold years. Instead, her choice to give Mandy life also gave herself life. Not only was her daughter able to live, but Susan was able to live—live with herself for making the right and easy choice.</p>

<p>This is why I do what I do. The pro-life skills I teach around the country are designed to help people like Susan. It gives them the logical tools to ground their thinking when emotions are blowing them in every direction. And your partnership helps me do that. Not only are you equipping the Susan’s of this world, you’re also helping to save the Mandy’s.</p>

<p>For life,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>
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title: Marriage Equality Already Exists
topic: Sexuality and Gender
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/19/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/marriage-equality-already-exists
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for June 2012</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>President Obama became the first sitting U.S. President to support same-sex marriage. While many Americans were angered, others were jubilant. His coming out caused a tidal wave of discussion around the country. Many of those dialogues ended up finding their way to me. I’ve been flooded with requests to help people sort through the legal and moral issues. One challenge that keeps recurring is the claim that the current marriage law violates the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment.</p>

<p>The clause reads, “No state shall...deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”&nbsp;The amendment was adopted in 1868, in part, to provide African Americans, Chinese Americans, and other racial minorities the same privileges and protections that every other citizen enjoys. Now same-sex marriage advocates are invoking this clause in their fight for “marriage equality,”&nbsp;a phrase intended to imply that homosexuals don’t have the same marriage rights as heterosexuals. But marriage equality already exists.</p>

<p>There is nothing unfair about current marriage laws. Homosexuals have the <em>same rights</em> and the <em>same restrictions</em> as heterosexuals. For example, there is no legal right granted to a heterosexual that does not apply <em>in exactly the same way</em> to every homosexual. Both can marry in any state. Both can receive the benefits that come with legal marriage. Heterosexuals and homosexuals are treated equally.</p>

<p>There is also no legal restriction for homosexuals that does not also apply <em>in exactly the same way</em> to every heterosexual. Neither can marry their sibling or parent. They can’t marry someone already married. Both are prohibited from marrying a child. And neither has the freedom to marry someone of the same sex. The pool of people available to marry is reduced equally for heterosexuals and homosexuals alike.</p>

<p>The marriage law applies in the same way to every person, no matter their orientation. Everyone is treated equally.</p>

<p>So when someone approaches me with this challenge, I ask them a question: What right does a heterosexual have that a homosexual doesn’t also have regarding the marriage law? Then I wait for an answer. But they usually don’t answer <em>that question</em>. Instead, they often ignore what I asked or raise another point. I don’t let them do that. If they’re claiming that homosexuals aren’t equally protected under the marriage law, then they need to cite an example.</p>

<p>The most common answer is that heterosexuals can marry the person they love, while homosexuals can’t. But there are two problems with this response. First, love is not part of the marriage laws. The government doesn’t care about your feelings or whether you’re in love. That’s irrelevant. Its purpose is to ensure the would-be couple is eligible to marry.</p>

<p>Second, while it’s true that homosexuals can’t marry any person they love, the same is true for heterosexuals. There isn’t a person in the United States that has unfettered freedom to marry anyone they love. You might love someone who is already married, but you can’t marry them. There are all sorts of people you can love—children, same-sex friends, parents, siblings, comatose friends—that you can’t marry. And, again, the restrictions are exactly the same for both heterosexuals and homosexuals.</p>

<p>It turns out, ironically, that allowing same-sex marriage won’t create marriage equality after all. It will give homosexuals a special pass to marry according to their desire—a right no one else has. The demand for same-sex marriage isn’t primarily about the right to marry. It’s a demand for the social approval of homosexuality. And that’s a subject I’ve taken up in earnest this year.</p>

<p>I’ve written over a dozen blog posts on the Stand to Reason website addressing various challenges pertaining to homosexuality. I’ve also been writing a new book on homosexuality that will be published by Stand to Reason later this year. Your partnership has made this possible. Thank you for your prayers. Thank you for your financial support. Without you, I couldn’t be on the front lines making a case for the Kingdom.</p>

<p>With thanks,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>
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title: Stepping Up to the Plate
topic: Christian Living
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/20/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/stepping-up-to-the-plate
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for December 2009</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>I began a recent event by telling the audience I wasn’t glad to be there. I paused during the awkward silence. Then I explained why: I was there to talk about abortion. And I don’t like talking about abortion. It’s an ugly topic. Even regular church attendees get upset about it. But I was there to train pro-lifers to fight this grisly practice.</p>

<p>Right now brave men and women in our armed forces are engaged in combat on the other side of the world. They don’t want to be there either. But they realize that since a battle is being fought, someone must step up to the plate and take action.</p>

<p>Then there’s you. You know the battle being fought. You recognize the importance to train Christians. You see the need to act. And you’ve stepped up to the plate. Your prayer and support has fueled my work this year.</p>

<p>And what a year it’s been. I gave 60 presentations to over 2,100 people, not including radio interviews that reached well beyond that number. I’ve had the privilege of impacting adults, youth, high school and university students, private school and homeschool kids, Christians, and non-Christians.</p>

<p>Many of these talks weren’t just lectures. They involved question and answer sessions, role-play, and real-world interaction with people hostile towards the Christian worldview. In other words, I was involved in genuine training that equipped Christians with the capability and confidence to share their faith.</p>

<p>I also demonstrated to secular audiences that Christianity can compete in the marketplace of ideas. On the topic of abortion, I debated audiences at the University of Southern California and Central Michigan University. It provided a powerful opportunity to model the thoughtful and winsome approach of an ambassador—something I teach Christians to do in their own engagements.</p>

<p>And I presented a biblical and secular case against homosexuality to a room full of Christians <em>and</em> homosexuals. As you can imagine, we had a spirited question and answer time.</p>

<p>Every one of these events presented unique challenges. As I faced each one, I had the confidence of knowing that you are praying and supporting me. Our work together yields a greater result than anything you or I could do alone.</p>

<p>I know you would be greatly encouraged to hear the testimony of individuals across the country who desperately need and appreciate the unique training we give them. It is a gift that keeps on giving. Because long after I’ve left, these Christians are better prepared to share their convictions.</p>

<p>As the Christmas holiday approaches, I’m reminded of another gift that makes everything we do pregnant with meaning. It’s God’s gift to us. In a world crowded with men who would want to be god, there is only one God who would become man. It’s God stepping up to the plate to meet a need that we could not.</p>

<p>Mindful of His gift to us,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>
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title: Answering a Case for Same-Sex Marriage
topic: Sexuality and Gender
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/19/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/answering-a-case-for-same-sex-marriage
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for February 2012</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>Every now and then a challenge comes along that leaves you unsettled. Not because you don’t <em>know</em> it’s wrong, but because you don’t know <em>why</em>. For many Christians, that challenge came this past December when a three-minute YouTube video went viral, reaching nearly 20 million views. Most content on that site isn’t worth taking seriously. But this was different.</p>

<p>The video was of a 19-year-old University of Iowa student, Zach Wahls, appealing to the Iowa House of Representatives to pass a measure in favor of same-sex marriage. He claimed that although his two lesbian mothers raised him, he turned out healthy and successful. And he gave proof: He’s an Eagle Scout, he scored 99% on the ACT, and he operates his own small business. All this was offered as evidence that same-sex parents can raise healthy children. Because, according to Zach, “The sexual orientation of my parents has had zero effect on the content of my character.”</p>

<p>But the substance of his speech was only part of the appeal. Zach’s impassioned plea was nothing short of sensational. He dressed impeccably, looked handsome, spoke eloquently, and calmly painted a portrait of his loving family whom he claims the state deems second-class citizens. Frankly, I was worried after I watched it. It was a perfect delivery.</p>

<p>In fact, Google declared his video the number one most watched political video of 2011, besting President Obama’s speech about Osama bin Laden’s death. He even caught the attention of lesbian star, Ellen DeGeneres, who brought him on her national television show. By every measure, Zach Wahls’s video was a hit.</p>

<p>But it hit Christians hard. Disconcerted friends kept asking me, ���Have you seen that Zach Wahls video?”&nbsp;I could hear the concern in their voice. They watched it and were taken aback. They knew it was wrong, but didn’t know why. And they were looking for a way to move past the emotion, unpack the ideas, and clarify the falsehood.</p>

<p>There was enough concern over Zach’s speech to warrant a response, so I produced a 14-minute video and posted it on YouTube. My goal was modest: to provide a fair, calm, and reasoned response to the claims made by Zach <em>for the sake of Christians</em>. I was primarily concerned for believers who were bewildered by Zach’s charm, cleverness, and rhetorical skill.</p>

<p>As you might expect, I received a lot of hostile feedback. Foul-mouthed commentators called me names and lobbed insults at me, but ignored most of my reasoning. I can live with that. It comes with the job and especially the subject matter.</p>

<p>But by many measures my video was a success. It was viewed thousands of times in a matter of weeks. People reposted it on their websites because they said it responded to a challenge that was unanswered up until then.</p>

<p>Here are just two of the many comments that were sent to me.</p>

<p>“This is an amazing response. I’m not an emotional driven person, so Zach Wahls appeals for same-sex marriage made me roll my eyes and want to give a curt response. However, you presented the counter-argument in a very simple and beautiful response. Bravo! I will use this method in the future.”</p>

<p>“This was presented very intelligently, persuasively, &amp; respectfully. You made many points I had never thought about. At first the length of your video worried me that there would be a lot of unnecessary information that could be summed up more concisely. I was very surprised to see the exact opposite. It’s amazing how Zach’s speech could say so much to move the heart in one direction in such a short amount of time, but to educate and truly inform the mind it takes a bit longer. Great presentation.”</p>

<p>Of course, it’s the not the praise of men that I seek, but sometimes it’s an indication that a need has been met. And this work fits my mission: to train Christians to articulate their convictions in a winsome and gracious way. That is something that God commanded and Jesus modeled.</p>

<p>Because you partner with me, we are able to equip believers to share their faith. They are now more capable and confident in their ability to communicate the Gospel and remove barriers to it. Thank you for your willingness to work with me. It’s a privilege to serve our King with you.</p>

<p>For His kingdom,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>
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title: The Final Nail in the Embryonic Stem Cell Coffin
topic: Bioethics
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/20/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-final-nail-in-the-embryonic-stem-cell-coffin
content:
            <div> 
		<p>What do Nancy Reagan, Michael J. Fox, Mary Tyler Moore, and Christopher Reeve all have in common? They have all aggressively promoted embryonic stem cell research (ESCR). And why not? Scientists believe embryonic stem cells hold the potential to cure diseases like Parkinson’s, cancer, blindness, and countless other conditions. Who wouldn’t want <em>that</em>?</p>

<p>There’s one critical problem. ESCR kills human embryos. This doesn’t bother many scientists who disqualify unborn human beings from personhood: <em>Kill the human embryos. Get their stem cells. Do the research</em>.</p>

<p>But for scientists (and other Christians) who value human life at the earliest stages of development, this is a moral dilemma. They want to cure diseases in humans, but not at the expense of killing other humans.</p>

<p>Today, however, this dilemma is solved. All the potential for curing the diseases mentioned above now exists without killing human embryos. That’s because the future of stem cell research is not with <em>embryonic</em> stem cells, but with <em>adult</em> stem cells.</p>

<p>Adult stem cells are just like embryonic ones, except they are safely removed from an adult’s skin, bone, muscle, or other tissue. No one is killed. Although this eliminates the ethical controversy, scientists still prefer embryonic stem cells because they can be coaxed into developing into <em>any</em> tissue type in a human body, making their potential to cure diseases greater. Adult stem cells, however, can only develop into a few different kinds of tissue.</p>

<p>Here’s what’s amazing. Despite the limited ability of adult stem cells to differentiate into many cell types, they have been used to treat human disease and disability for nearly ten years. I’m not talking about animal studies, but human studies. People have regained sight, their hearts have gained strength after a heart attack, and their cancers have been subdued. Today, 73 diseases and conditions have been treated in <em>human</em> patients with adult stem cells.<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1">1</a></sup></p>

<p>Guess how many diseases have been treated with embryonic stem cells as of today? Zero. Not a single human being has ever been treated with embryonic stem cells obtained by killing human embryos.</p>

<p>But wait, there’s more. Harvard researchers recently made a startling advance in adult stem cell research. They found a way to transform an adult stem cell into an embryonic stem cell by simply manipulating a few genes.<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2">2</a></sup> Scientists now have the best of both worlds: They have all the potential of treating disease with embryonic stem cells without the need to destroy human embryos. Let’s pray the scientific community shifts its focus to the more promising adult stem cell research.</p>

<aside class="footnotes">
<hr>
<ol>
	<li id="fn:1">www.stemcellresearch.org/facts/CheckTheScore.pdf <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:1">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:2">“Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Generated Without Viral Integration,”&nbsp;<em>Science</em>, September 2008. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:2">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
</ol>
</aside>
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title: Same-Sex Marriage: It’s Time to Discriminate
topic: Sexuality and Gender
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/20/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/same-sex-marriage-it-s-time-to-discriminate
content:
            <div> 
		<p>I think discrimination is great. I think we should discriminate based on age, sex, disability, and sexual orientation. And I bet most Americans agree with me.</p>

<p>We should discriminate against people of certain ages. No person under the age of 21 should be allowed to purchase a handgun. Agreed? I want to discriminate against women too. We should restrict them from using certain medications...like Viagra. And don’t forget the disabled. I insist we discriminate against the blind and prevent them from obtaining driver’s licenses. Finally, let’s discriminate against same-sex couples by refusing to issue them marriage certificates.</p>

<p>Not all discrimination is bad. In fact, we do it every day. Discriminating is simply making a distinction. The question becomes, is the distinction legitimate or not? Can we discriminate against the blind by restricting their access to driver’s licenses? Of course we can.</p>

<p>That’s because we make the distinction between people who are qualified to drive a car and those who aren’t. The blind are different than those who can see in a way that disqualifies them from driving. They’re not the <em>same</em> as sighted people—they’re <em>different</em>. That’s not unreasonable and no one is complaining this is unfair discrimination.</p>

<p>Is it fair, then, to discriminate against same-sex couples? Yes, because there’s a legitimate distinction between homosexual and heterosexual couples. No amount of judicial power can make them the same.</p>

<p>The difference is significant. Same-sex marriage, by design, will always deny a child their mother or father. It also makes mothers and fathers interchangeable. So a mother offers no <em>unique</em> contribution to her children. She is just a warm body. A man could accomplish all her parenting functions just as well.</p>

<p>This is not only counterintuitive, it flies in the face of decades of research that demonstrates children do best when they are raised by their biological mother and father. For example, studies show that fatherless children suffer from higher incidents of mental illness, educational failure, substance abuse, criminal behavior, sexual abuse, and other problems.</p>

<p>The fact that not every opposite-sex couple will have children doesn’t change anything. Marriage creates, by design, the environment in which children will grow up. We shouldn’t intentionally create a parenting model that is inadequate to raise healthy children. But that’s what happens when we endorse same-sex marriage.</p>

<p>Lesbian parent Rosie O'Donnell candidly revealed her motivation behind same-sex parenting. When asked by her son, “Mommy, why can’t I have a daddy?”&nbsp;Rosie answered, “Because I’m the kind of mommy who wants another mommy.”<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1">1</a></sup> Notice that it’s about her and what <em>she wants</em>—not her <em>son’s needs</em>. The motivation is selfish.</p>

<p>Advocates of this revisionist model argue that marriage is merely a social construction, something we can change as culture changes. That’s impossible. Gregory Koukl writes that, “It is not culture that constructs marriages or the families that marriages begin. Rather, it is the other way around: Marriage and family construct culture. As the building blocks of civilization, families are logically prior to society as the parts are prior to the whole. Bricks aren’t the result of the building because the building is made up of bricks. You must have the first before you can get the second.”<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2">2</a></sup></p>

<p>That’s why government protects and privileges opposite-sex marriages and families. They provide tax incentives, inheritance rights, and other advantages to protect families that produce the next generation and create civilization itself. No society, in all of human history, has ever granted these privileges and protections to same-sex couples. Doing so is a social experiment that uses children as guinea pigs.</p>

<p>Except with this experiment, we already know the outcome. We’ve already seen the harmful effects of fatherless and motherless children in our culture. Same-sex marriage simply makes government (read: you and me) sponsor these brave new families.</p>

<aside class="footnotes">
<hr>
<ol>
	<li id="fn:1">Diane Sawyer (Anchor), “Rosie’s Story: For the Sake of the Children: Rosie O’Donnell’s Crusade on Behalf of Gay Parents Seeking to Adopt Children,”&nbsp;ABC News: <em>Primetime,</em> (March 14, 2004). <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:1">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:2">http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&amp;id=6801. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:2">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:3">Starting June 17, 2008, California became the second state to allow same-sex marriage. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:3">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
</ol>
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title: An Inconvenient Truth: The Unborn Is a Human Being
topic: Bioethics
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/19/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/an-inconvenient-truth-the-unborn-is-a-human-being
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for January 2007</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>Jennifer, a staunch pro-choice advocate from Atlanta, thought for a brief moment about the pastor’s question: “If it could be proven to you that the unborn is a human being, would that change your mind about your abortion?”&nbsp;Jennifer quickly responded, “no, it wouldn’t change anything...I’m not a murderer.”</p>

<p>I was watching FX’s TV show called “30 Days”&nbsp;and the episode featured Jennifer, a pro-choice activist, living for 30 days at a Christian, pro-life maternity home. At one point, Jennifer was talking to a pastor who heads up the maternity home. Of course, it came as no surprise to me that Jennifer wouldn’t change her mind about her abortion even if she learned her unborn baby was a human being.</p>

<p>Earlier in the program, the TV show host explained that Jennifer chose to have an abortion because she wasn’t ready to become a mother and having a baby would have hampered her career. This was the real reason she wouldn’t change her mind. Believing the unborn is a human being would have been an inconvenient truth. Becoming a mother (although she already was one if she was pregnant) would have cost her too much. Instead, her solution was to kill her child, but believe, contrary to the evidence, that she was just terminating a mass of cells.</p>

<p>Rather than face the challenging life situation of bringing an unwanted child to term, she made her difficult life problem just go away. It seemed like the easy route and the right choice. It’s not the right choice, but the temptation for many Americans faced with difficult life problems is to short cut the solution at a grave, moral expense.</p>

<p>Of course, forgiveness is an option for Jennifer and millions of others. God is eager to forgive the sin of abortion. He has many times already.</p>

<p>As we approach the 34th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade this January 22, let’s not forget the tragic reality of nearly 50 million babies who have lost their lives due to this Supreme Court decision. 3,500 more babies die in the U.S. every single day (500 more than died on September 11). In the time it takes you to read this newsletter about 14 abortions occurred.</p>

<p>We work against incredible odds and the stakes are high. But we also serve a God who is able to accomplish anything through His people. Here are some ideas to help stop the killing.</p>

<ul>
	<li>Remember to pray this month not only for the laws of this country to change, but also for the hearts of people to change so we can one day keep abortion illegal.</li>
	<li>Pray for organizations that are pro-life (like Stand to Reason and others) that seek to change the hearts and minds of people as well as laws that allow abortion.</li>
	<li>Financially support organizations and individuals that are pro-life.</li>
	<li>Become equipped to dialogue on abortion so you are prepared to make a thoughtful defense for your views.</li>
</ul>

<p>For the sanctity of life,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>
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title: “Translating” Christianity
topic: Christian Living
author: Greg Koukl
date: 04/11/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/-translating-christianity
content:
            <div> 
		<p>April 1, 2012</p>

<p>It was not the first time I’d faced this particular challenge. It happened in Egypt two years ago. Here it was again, facing me in Italy six weeks ago.</p>

<p>I’m always concerned about being able to connect with a new audience. But the task of building bridges and bonding quickly with strangers in a foreign country is especially daunting.</p>

<p>And I was a stranger. In a strange land. In a different time zone. In a different culture. With a different people who spoke a different language.</p>

<p>What would they make of me? Would they think me funny—that is, humorous—or funny—that is, odd? How would phrases like “put a stone in their shoe”&nbsp;translate? (Not well, as it turned out.) Would they care about “Christianity worth thinking about”&nbsp;the way I did? If not, could I get the fire flickering in spite of the cultural divide?</p>

<p>These were my concerns—and my fears—as I faced a group of about 50 that first night at the Bacoli Brethren Church in Naples, Italy. I had the content. They had the need. Would I be able to bridge the gap and connect the two?</p>

<p>First, it helps to have a good translator, which I had. He not only translated, he interpreted. He conveyed my meaning, but he also captured my spirit—my energy, my conviction, my urgency. Two minds delivering the same message, phrase for phrase, at the same time, with the same vigor. It’s work—but it worked. I could see it in their faces.</p>

<p>Which brings me to the second thing I had going for me. The dear people before me were not complete strangers. They were brothers and sisters in Christ. We shared the most vital of all connections: the bond of the Spirit.</p>

<p>That’s what I could see in their faces—words of truth connecting with hearts that loved the truth. In the most important way we were not distant, but close. They were warm, attentive, and alert, hungry for a more effective approach to engaging others with their convictions about Christ.</p>

<p>After speaking for an hour, I took questions from the audience for 15 minutes and then took more questions afterwards one on one (with the translator) for another half hour. It was a great kickoff.</p>

<p>I sensed the same thing at my Saturday conference on “Tactics”&nbsp;(Columbo) at Il Faro (“The Lighthouse”) International Baptist Church. Once I got rolling, I found the group wonderfully responsive. I was relieved—and thankful. Maybe it was the trench coat and plastic cigar...</p>

<p>Sunday’s sermon on “Credo: The Story of Reality”&nbsp;was longer than usual for this church (50 minutes with translation), but no one stirred. I’m always amazed to see how riveted groups are when presented with a clear characterization of the “big picture”&nbsp;of the Christian story.</p>

<p>My whole experience in Italy reminds me how important translation is: communicating the right content in the right way. This is no small challenge, and it’s something we are constantly assessing at STR.</p>

<p>For example, right now we’re in the process of upgrading our entire website—including over 1,000 pages of content—to make it easier to find what you need. Our blog already has a terrific new look I believe makes it a more enjoyable read (check it out).</p>

<p>It’s a big endeavor, but one well worth the effort to keep you on the cutting edge with first-rate material. Once again, we have the content and you have the need. How do we effectively bridge the gap and connect the two? That’s the question we’re always asking ourselves.</p>

<p>We know that our content is critical, but so is the way we “translate”&nbsp;it to you—through articles, blog posts, podcasts, and curriculum—all available at str.org. Though the costs of technology grow as we reach more people around the world, those investments really pay off.</p>

<p>Always standing with you,</p>

<p>Gregory Koukl</p>
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title: Got Ten Seconds?
topic: Bioethics
author: Stand to Reason
date: 04/03/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/got-ten-seconds-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>That’s plenty of time to defend your pro-life views</em></p>

<p>One morning at 1:30 AM, a car carrying five young attractive women pulled alongside mine at a stoplight on Pacific Coast Highway. They were in a rather rowdy mood, and were yelling out the open window to a man on the corner, “Get us a pizza!”&nbsp;Then one blond in the back seat turned her attention to me, making a motion with her arm for me to roll down my window. This might be interesting, I thought, as I obliged. Following is the conversation that ensued:</p>

<p>“What does your bumper sticker mean?”</p>

<p>“Which one?”*</p>

<p>“We can do better than abortion? What does that &amp;%$# mean?”</p>

<p>I fumbled for a response. “Um...?”</p>

<p>“Have you ever been pregnant?”&nbsp;one of the others asked?</p>

<p>“You don’t even know what your bumper sticker means?”&nbsp;the first woman chided. “Well, I think it’s pretty self-explanatory.”&nbsp;Then as they turned the corner, one fired her final volley: “What would Jesus do?”</p>

<p>Now, these may not have been the most formidable opponents to the pro-life cause. But as I drove home, I was a bit embarrassed because I did not have the quick answer ready for the situation. When I closed the garage door, I went upstairs and a short brainstorming session produced a number of possible responses. One of those responses is especially useful in other situations as well. It can help you to express your pro-life views, defend them with evidence, and ask your audience to come to the appropriate moral conclusion; all within ten seconds. I call it the 10-second Pro-Life Apologist:</p>

<p>If the unborn is growing, it must be alive? If it has human parents, it must be human? And living humans like you and I are valuable aren’t they?</p>

<p>Notice we are not only saying “I’m pro-life!”&nbsp;We’re giving the substance of that moniker: the unborn are human beings who are valuable. But in these three sentences we are doing something else that is just as important: we are giving reasons for others to take us seriously. We are seeking to persuade with evidence. And we’re giving that evidence in sound bite form—this keeps the listener engaged and the conversation moving forward. It puts the ball back into their court in a gracious but incisive way.</p>

<p>Certainly the 10-second Pro-Life Apologist is not the only tool you should have in your toolbox. You should be ready to make a sophisticated case for your pro-life views by reducing the issue to only one question, showing there is no significant difference between the newborn and the unborn, and responding to attacks on your character and appeals to relativism. You should also be able to make a more substantive case that the unborn is a living whole human organism distinct from the mother along with reasons to think a functional view of human value is inadequate. In any case, the 10-second Pro-Life apologist will give you a rock-solid starting point anytime you are asked to make sense of your view on abortion.</p>

<p>Sometimes opportunities come with a strict time limit. The person you are talking to interrupts, or changes the subject, or leaves to catch the bus. You don’t want to be caught by surprise when you are presented with a chance to stir up thought on the issue of abortion. But as we’ve seen today, you can easily get them thinking. All you need is 10 seconds!</p>

<p>By Steve Wagner</p>

<p>*At the time, my car had two stickers: “SOME CHOICES ARE WRONG”&nbsp;and “WE CAN DO BETTER THAN ABORTION.”</p>
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title: What Counts as Evidence?
topic: Tactics and Tools
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 04/04/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/what-counts-as-evidence-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>You’ve probably heard at least one atheist say, “There’s no evidence for Christianity.” It may not be that they’ve never looked into the question and listened to our arguments. The problem may simply be that they’re illegitimately disqualifying circumstantial evidence from consideration. Jim explains in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Cold-Case-Christianity-Homicide-Detective-Investigates/dp/1434704696/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2WEUJVG17PL4O&amp;dchild=1&amp;keywords=cold-case+christianity&amp;qid=1586399661&amp;sprefix=cold-case%2Caps%2C254&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank"><em>Cold-Case Christianity</em></a>, from his experience as a detective, why this is a mistake:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>It’s not a coincidence that I was a nonbeliever before I learned anything about the nature of evidence. In those days, as I was evaluating the claims of Christianity, I demanded a form of evidence (direct evidence) that simply isn’t available to anyone who is studying historical events. I failed to see that rejecting (or devaluing) circumstantial evidence would prevent me from understanding anything about history (when eyewitnesses of a particular event are unavailable for an interview). If I continued to reject (or devalue) circumstantial evidence, I would never have been able to successfully prosecute a single cold-case killer. All of us need to respect the power and nature of circumstantial evidence in determining truth so that we can be open to the role that circumstantial evidence plays in making the case for Christianity….</p>

<p>When discussing evidence with skeptics, we don’t need to concede that a particular fact related to the Christian worldview is not a piece of evidence simply because it is not a piece of <em>direct</em> evidence. Even though a particular fact may not have the individual power to prove our case in its entirety, it is no less valid as we assemble the evidence….</p>

<p>When defending our belief in the existence of God, the resurrection of Jesus, or the validity of the Christian worldview, we may need to take some time to explain the nature, role, and power of circumstantial evidence.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The <a href="http://www.justia.com/criminal/docs/calcrim/200/223.html" target="_blank">instructions</a> for jurors in California read, “Both direct and circumstantial evidence are acceptable types of evidence to prove or disprove the elements of a charge, including intent and mental state and acts necessary to a conviction, and neither is necessarily more reliable than the other. Neither is entitled to any greater weight than the other.” That might come as a surprise to our atheist friends!</p>
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title: Are Our Lives Our Own?
topic: Theology
author: Greg Koukl
date: 04/03/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/are-our-lives-our-own-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Is life a gift with a transcendent purpose to be fulfilled, or do we own ourselves and have the right to do with our bodies whatever we please? This question can be answered in part with a little reflection. Why do we feel compelled to talk someone out of suicide? Why try to dissuade them? The reason is that we have an intuitive sense that life has transcendent purpose. We're so sure of this that we try to stop people from killing themselves and "wasting" their lives.</p>

<p>A life can only be wasted if it has a purpose that is never fulfilled. If there is no purpose in life, there is no tragedy when a child is struck down in infancy, or when high school students are killed in a plane crash, or when 39 people commit suicide to fulfill a cultic hope.</p>

<p>Notice that the notion of "untimely death" here has no relation to the person's own subjective goals. The goal of a suicidal person is to die, a purpose he fulfills if he takes his life. An infant who dies unexpectedly has no goals or aspirations of his own. Yet in both cases we have this nagging suspicion that something is wrong.</p>

<p>Our sense of tragedy lies in our conviction that these people did not fulfill some larger purpose in life, one bigger than their own temporal wants and desires. If such a purpose exists--and our intuitions suggest that it does--then it isn't the case that our lives are our own to do with as we please.</p>

<p>God has made it clear that we are not the masters of our own lives. Our existence is not a thing we own, but a sacred life we are entrusted with. The commandment "Thou shall not murder" forbids us to take an innocent human life. It applies to taking our own lives and not just lives of others.</p>

<p>There's a reason for this. The fifth commandment was given not because murder violates personal liberty by taking something that belongs to someone, his life. That's covered in the seventh commandment, "Thou shalt not steal." Instead, it prohibits the unwarranted destruction of a human being because he's made in the image of God (see Genesis 9:6). Murder is primarily a crime against God.</p>

<p>Our lives are not our own, they’re a gift with a purpose to be fulfilled.</p>
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title: Evolution: Philosophy, Not Science
topic: Science
author: Greg Koukl
date: 04/16/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/evolution-philosophy-not-science
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Greg shows that Darwin’s General Theory of Evolution has nothing to do with science.</em></p>

<p>I’m mystified by the opening sentence of an article in Friday’s <em>Union Tribune</em> (October 25, 1996). It says, “In his most comprehensive statement yet on evolution, Pope John Paul II insisted that faith and science can co-exist.”</p>

<p>So far, so good. I agree with the Pope wholeheartedly on this first point. If you heard my opening address at our conference on Science and Faith, you’d know <em>why</em> I think they can co-exist if they are properly defined. (How science and faith are defined is an important part of answering the question.)</p>

<p>I part ways with the Pope in his next statement. He said that “Charles Darwin’s theories are sound as long as they take into account that creation was the work of God.��</p>

<p>That’s an odd thing to say, it seems to me. I mean no disrespect here at all to Pope John Paul II. But doesn’t that strike you as odd? It seems to me that Charles Darwin’s theories—scientific theories, theories about the origins and development of things—are either sound or not sound. If they’re not sound, you can’t baptize them by bringing God into the picture and miraculously make them sound. And if they are sound in themselves, then you don’t need to add God to make them work, do you? It’s already doing fine on its own. Which is the point of evolution: mother nature without father God.</p>

<p>I don’t think evolution works at all. I don’t think Charles Darwin’s theories are sound, so I’m not in the least bit tempted to baptize them with some form of theistic evolution.</p>

<p>By definition, evolution offered an explanation for how things got to be the way they are <em>without God</em> (I’m referring to what’s known as the “general theory of evolution”). This is why it made such a splash. Do you think that if God could be worked into the evolutionary picture, then evolution would have taken off the way it did? Of course not.</p>

<p>Richard Dawkins, author of <em>The Blind Watchmaker</em> and one of the world’s preeminent evolutionists, was right when he said that Darwin made the world safe for atheism. But if Darwinism can be easily baptized with theism, how can it be that Darwin made the world safe for atheism? It’s precisely <em>because</em> evolution seemed to explain things that used to require the existence of God to explain them that Darwinism became so popular and accepted within ten to fifteen years after <em>Origin of Species</em> was published in 1859. It’s precisely <em>because</em> God is out of the picture that evolution is so appealing.</p>

<p>When you listen to evolutionists like Harvard paleontologist Stephen J. Gould, he’s very willing to admit you can believe in God and also be an evolutionist. No problem. But that doesn’t mean Gould approves of theistic evolution. Gould means that plenty of his friends believe in God, but their belief in God is a religious thing they do in their closets, inside their homes and behind the closed doors of the churches. They don’t mix religion and science, God and evolution, fantasy with fact.</p>

<p>Gould’s attitude is typical of other evolutionary scientists. Believe in God if you want. Practice your religious alchemy in the privacy of your own home if you must. Just don’t pretend that it has anything to do with the <em>real</em> world. When it comes to the real world, the fact of the matter is that God was not involved in the process. Life evolved through non-directed, materialistic processes. Stephen J. Gould and everyone else who writes on this issue makes that very clear.</p>

<p>When people try to fit God into the process of evolution, that’s when evolutionists like Gould stand up and say, “Wait a minute, you don’t understand evolution if that’s what you think actually took place. Evolution is by chance, not design, and you can’t have design by chance.”</p>

<p>Theistic evolution means design by chance. That’s like square circles, ladies and gentlemen. There is no such thing.</p>

<p>The real question is whether the evidence supports evolution or not, not whether we can baptize evolution with the word “God”&nbsp;so Christians feel comfortable.</p>

<p>To put it simply, lest there be any confusion about the matter, evolution must be dealt with scientifically, on its own merits. Is it an adequate explanation of the origin of things?</p>

<p>I think it’s wholly inadequate. Contrary to the Pope’s views, the more knowledge we get, the more problems we see with the origin of life by evolutionary means—the more problems we see with the change from one kind of life into another by evolutionary means.</p>

<p>The passage of time and the increase of knowledge haven’t helped evolution; they’ve hurt it. Evolution was popular early on precisely because there was so little information about the process. Now we know much more about the details of biochemistry and genetics, and information theory, and the incredible complexity of even the simplest living thing. It’s become evident that evolution is just not capable of explaining life.</p>

<p>You want proof for that? Here, it’s very simple. This is my handy-dandy evolution refuter. It’s the simplest way I know to right to the heart of the problem, proving that evolution is not based on fact, but on philosophy.</p>

<p>For evolution to be a fact, you must have two things, minimally. First, you’ve got to have life coming from non-life—abiogenesis. Second, you’ve got to have a change in that life from simple forms to complex forms over time. You must have the kick-off, and you must have the rest of the game.</p>

<p>Now, here’s my question: How did life come from non-life? How did the game get started by evolutionary means. Does anyone know? Guess what? Nobody knows. Oh, there are some ideas and people have suggested some possible ways, but nobody has sketched out any way that really answers the question. There are so many problems and complications. There are competing models that have been suggested, but they’re just starting places. They’re just ways of saying, “Let’s start here, and we’ll see where it leads.”&nbsp;There are <em>possibilities,</em> but no one knows how it happened, or even how it could have happened in enough detail to be compelling.</p>

<p>Now, here’s the kicker. If you don’t know <em>how</em> it happened by naturalistic, evolutionary processes, how do you know&nbsp;<em>that</em> it happened by naturalistic, evolutionary processes? Evolution is claimed to be a fact, but you can’t have the fact of evolution unless you have the fact of abiogenesis. Yet nobody knows how such a thing could ever take place. And if life can’t <em>be shown</em> to have come from non-life, then the game can’t even get started.</p>

<p>Then why do we call evolution a fact when evolution can’t even get off the ground, based on the information we have right now. The answer you get is always the same: <em>Because we’re here. It must have happened</em>. That’s called circular reasoning, friends, based on a prior commitment to naturalism that won’t be shaken by the facts.</p>

<p>Which proves that this is not about science, it’s about philosophy.</p>
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title: Using Questions to Begin Conversations
topic: Tactics and Tools
author: Greg Koukl
date: 04/11/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/using-questions-to-begin-conversations
content:
            <div> 
		<p>February 1, 2012</p>

<p>“That’s me!”</p>

<p>This is the response I’ve been getting from many who read last month’s Solid Ground feature, <a href="/w/the-third-column" target="_blank">“The Third Column.”*</a> When I described what I saw the Holy Spirit doing in the lives of thousands of rank-and-file Christians around the country—people just like you—many readers immediately connected.</p>

<p>And it got them excited. Which is precisely what I wanted to happen. I hoped to encourage them, and you.</p>

<p>I wanted you to see yourself as a vital participant in God’s project of advancing His Kingdom through the kind of thoughtful Christianity we’ve always promoted at Stand to Reason. I wanted you to see the strategic role you play in the unique circumstances God has placed you in, whatever they may be.</p>

<p>But something still might be holding you back. You’re nervous. You’re unsure of yourself. You’re uncertain about stepping out. Opportunities present themselves, but you’re not able to muster the courage to face the challenge, to stand up in the line of fire.</p>

<p>Well, I know exactly how you feel, because I’ve been there many times myself. Courage doesn’t come easy for us because very little in our lives demands we develop it.</p>

<p>We don’t hunt for food. We don’t fight off wild animals. We don’t battle barbarians at the gate. Nothing requires most of us to ever risk life or limb. So, how do we develop the courage we need? Two things come to mind: knowledge and action.</p>

<p>First, knowledge breeds courage. The more you know, the braver you’ll be. This truth applies to every daunting challenge.</p>

<p>Do you like to take tests? Hardly anyone does. But would you feel better if you knew the questions in advance and you knew the answers cold? That changes things, doesn’t it?</p>

<p>Here’s how to put the principle into play. Certain challenges to your Christian convictions come up with regularity. The ones you fear the most will be the ones that demand the most courage, and you may not feel up to the task.</p>

<p>So make your job easier by taking the edge off the fear. Develop a good answer to the issue—one you can deliver in a tactically sound way (with a thoughtful opening question, for example)—and your courage will soar. You won’t fear the test because you’ll know the answers in advance.</p>

<p>Simply put, the more we know, the more confident we’ll be, the braver we’ll feel when facing a daunting task. Knowledge breeds courage.</p>

<p>Second, action also breeds courage. There have been times I’ve been shaking in my boots as an opportunity began to develop before me. Then I discovered that if I forced myself to take one small step forward to engage, I felt better. Action steadied my nerves.</p>

<p>I watched a western last week where the good guys were outnumbered five to two facing off for a gunfight in the middle of town. But the pair had a plan. Once the groups had squared off in the street, the two stepped out confidently towards the line of five. It was a bold move, but it changed the outcome dramatically.</p>

<p>Again, using an apt question for your first step is a perfect opener. It gets you moving forward while at the same time tossing the ball in the other person’s court, so the pressure is no longer on you. Action breeds confidence.</p>

<p>Here’s one more tip I’ve found helpful: Small acts of courage prepare us for larger ones. Paratroopers jump from platforms before they leap from airplanes. They don’t step out first at 10,000 feet—too frightening. They build their nerve little by little.</p>

<p>When we step out on the small challenges, we increase our ability to face more difficult situations in the future. If we shrink back, we feed our fear instead of our boldness.</p>

<p>Whatever fears you feel, face them head on armed with these three truths: Knowledge breeds courage, action breeds courage, and small acts of courage prepare you for larger ones. It will help you play your part in the third column.</p>

<p>On your side,</p>

<p>Gregory Koukl</p>
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title: Who Are You to Judge?
topic: Theology
author: Brett Kunkle
date: 04/16/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/who-are-you-to-judge-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Drinking. Premarital sex. Abortion. Homosexuality. Same-sex marriage. Christians have so many hang-ups with the behavior of non-Christians, don’t they? It all seems so judgmental. Christians have enough problems of their own, so why worry about others? Even Jesus warned against this. “Do not judge so that you will not be judged”&nbsp;(Matthew 7:1). Who are Christians to judge others?</p>

<p>According to David Kinnaman, president of the Barna research group and author of <em>UnChristian</em>, this is the perception of an emerging generation of non-Christians. “Nearly nine out of ten young outsiders (87 percent) said that the term judgmental accurately describes present-day Christianity.”<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1">1</a></sup></p>

<p>For many young Christians, this common objection to Christianity packs some punch. But why? Our culture is swimming in a sea of moral relativism that prohibits moral judgments (that is, if you want to be a consistent moral relativist). Against this relativistic backdrop, to identify some behavior as morally wrong is <em>itself</em> wrong. The self-contradictory nature of such thinking is obvious, but sadly, relativism blinds its adherents.</p>

<p>So how should Christians think about judging? First, we must ask what one means by “judging.”&nbsp;The dictionary distinguishes several definitions. To judge can mean to pass legal judgment, like a judge sentencing a criminal at the conclusion of a courtroom trial. There’s nothing wrong with this kind of judging.</p>

<p>“Judging”&nbsp;can also mean to form an opinion or conclusion about someone or something. These are assessments or evaluations. A coach judges the skill level of a player trying to make the team. A mom judges the nutritional value of food she serves her family. A plumber judges a clogged sink to fix it. Such judgments or assessments are made all the time, everyday. Again, nothing wrong with this kind of judging.</p>

<p>But Jesus definitely suggests some sort of judging is wrong, so what was He talking about? Well, if you really want to know, never read a Bible verse. To determine the meaning of a single verse, you must read the surrounding verses. Context is king. When we look at the rest of Matthew 7, we actually discover Jesus doing the very thing most Christians think He has forbidden.</p>

<p>In verse 6, He warns, “Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine...”&nbsp;He calls out “false prophets”&nbsp;(v. 15) and says there will come a day when he will say to some, “Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness”&nbsp;(v. 23). Ouch, those are harsh <em>moral</em> judgments. So clearly, not all judging is out-of-bounds for Jesus. The context makes clear Jesus is after a particular kind of judgment:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,”&nbsp;and behold, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye (vv. 2-5).</p>
</blockquote>

<p>When Jesus warns, “do not judge,”&nbsp;He doesn’t mean we should never assess moral behavior. Rather, he warns against self-righteous and hypocritical judgments. When you judge, take the log out of your own eye <em>first</em>. Jesus is not saying it is never right to judge, He is explaining how we are to judge rightly.</p>

<p>Indeed, Jesus’&nbsp;Gospel starts with judgment: “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil”&nbsp;(John 3:19). Jesus points to the reality of our sin and the appropriate punishment—the bad news. Thankfully, Jesus’&nbsp;message ends with good news, His promise of mercy and forgiveness. His just judgment is removed from our heads as “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”&nbsp;(Romans 8:1).</p>

<p>In today’s relativistic culture, we must help an emerging generation of Christians think through such challenging objections from non-Christians who want to reject moral accountability and ultimately the moral lawgiver Himself. However, we must also help young Christians engage the culture with the truth of the Gospel as effective ambassadors, who not only have knowledge, but wisdom and character as well. We must teach them to stand for moral truth without being self-righteous. We must model truth <em>with</em> grace, just like Jesus (John 1:14).</p>

<aside class="footnotes">
<hr>
<ol>
	<li id="fn:1"><em>UnChristian</em> (BakerBooks: Grand Rapids, MI, 2007), 182. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:1">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
</ol>
</aside>
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title: The Vanishing Pro-Life Apologist
topic: Bioethics
author: Greg Koukl
date: 04/03/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-vanishing-pro-life-apologist
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em><strong>There's a growing taboo infecting crisis pregnancy centers around the country. Pro-lifers are getting tight-lipped on abortion. Here's why even CPC's are shying away from speaking frankly about the moral crime of the century.</strong></em></p>

<p>The last few years have witnessed a stunning development in the pro-life movement. More and more crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) refuse to discuss abortion. A new wave of pro-life leaders insist that victory will not be gained in the court of public opinion if the debate centers principally on the morality of abortion.</p>

<p>Paul Swope calls it "a failure to communicate" when right-to-lifers focus primarily on the unborn instead of on the felt needs of women. "The pro-life movement must show that abortion is actually not in a woman's own self-interest," he says, "and that the choice of life offers hope and a positive, expanded sense of self." Reframing the debate in these terms will enable the movement to "regain the moral high ground in the mind of the American public."<sup><a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a></sup></p>

<p>Swope's Caring Foundation has produced a series of pro-life television ads that employ this philosophy. The message is clear: Focus on the life of the mother, not the death of the child.</p>

<p>Pro-life feminist Frederica Matthews-Green agrees. "Pro-lifers will not be able to break through this deadlock by stressing the humanity of the unborn....That is a question nobody is asking. But there is a question they are asking. It is, 'How could we live without it?' The problem is not moral, but practical."<sup><a href="#fn2" id="ref2">2</a></sup></p>

<p>Swope and Matthews-Green are not suggesting we frame the debate in terms of the felt needs of women in the <span style="text-decoration: underline;">narrow</span> context of crisis counseling. It's certainly appropriate to inform a woman of the physical and psychological consequences of choosing abortion. Rather, they insist the pro-life movement <em>in general</em> must speak less of the unborn and more of the woman in order to break the alleged deadlock.</p>

<p><strong>If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em</strong></p>

<p>While it's true that appealing to self-interest might dissuade some abortion-minded women from killing their babies, it's hard to image how this could be an effective general strategy. Here's why: It's almost always in a woman's short-term self-interest to abort. This is precisely why the pro-abortion side has been effective. A focus on felt needs favors death, not life.</p>

<p>How can we "regain the moral high ground in the mind of the public," to use Swope's words, if we retreat from the moral debate? The whole point of an ethical argument is to give reasons why a woman ought not pursue selfish interests. Felt needs are the problem, not the solution.</p>

<p>This approach completely sabotages the pro-life position. Crisis pregnancy centers do not exist to handle pregnancy. Hospitals and clinics do that. CPCs handle <em>crisis</em> pregnancies, those that are vulnerable to termination by abortion. In a sense, CPCs don't exist for the woman, but for the child whose life is in danger. The idea is to dissuade women from having abortions precisely because abortion is a moral tragedy. If not, then why oppose it?</p>

<p>What kind of morality does this tactic leave us with? Such a posture implicitly promotes the vice of selfishness instead of the virtue of sacrificial motherhood. Ideas have consequences, and this one may have, as Frank Beckwith observes, "the unfortunate consequence of increasing the number of people who think that unless their needs are pacified they are perfectly justified in performing homicide on the most vulnerable of our population."<sup><a href="#fn3" id="ref3">3</a></sup></p>

<p>There's a second danger. If self-interest is the answer to prenatal inconveniences, on what grounds do we oppose self-interest as the answer to post-natal problems? The 1989 <em>Report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights</em> revealed that the practice of withholding food and water from babies born with developmental handicaps--many of which are correctable--has become more prevalent. The Commission revealed that 63% of pediatric surgeons think if a newborn has developmental handicaps, it is ethically justifiable to let her starve to death.<sup><a href="#fn4" id="ref4">4</a></sup></p>

<p>I'm not surprised. It's in the mother's self-interest. It's easier than raising a handicapped child.</p>

<p>Shifting the focus away from the unborn is not only unnecessary, it's morally disastrous. What's at stake here is the legitimacy of the entire pro-life case. Our position <em>just is</em> a moral one, period.</p>

<p>Abandoning the ethical foundation for a trendier message means <em>the pro-life movement no longer has any reason to exist</em>. Instead, we choose relativism. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.</p>

<p>Although Swope and Matthews-Green would never deliberately espouse such a thing, the net effect of their view is to concede the politically correct philosophy that moral questions, like religious ones, are matters of private belief and personal preference.</p>

<p>When morality is reduced to personal tastes, people exchange the moral question, "What <span style="text-decoration: underline;">is</span> good?" for the question, "What do I want?" Instead of morality constraining our self-interest ("I want to do that, but I really shouldn't"), our self-interest define our morality. The tail wags the dog. This effort at ethical decision-making is really nothing more than thinly veiled self-interest--happiness as ethics.<sup><a href="#fn5" id="ref5">5</a></sup></p>

<p>There is a better way. Swope and Matthews-Green are wrong about our failure to communicate with the public at large. A pro-life message centered principally on the moral question of abortion can prevail in the court of public opinion if it's properly understood and properly articulated.</p>

<p>This entails three steps: 1) restoring meaning to the word abortion, 2) carefully discrediting misstatements of fact from abortion advocates, and 3) simplifying the abortion debate for the general public by focusing on the one question that really matters.</p>

<p><strong>A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words</strong></p>

<p>Clearly, the word "abortion" has lost almost all meaning to most Americans. Many imagine a rather benign procedure that does little more than extract a formless tissue mass from the mother's uterus. Gregg Cunningham, director of the Center for Bioethical Reform, points out, "until you level the playing field, you may as well be talking about stock options."</p>

<p>Our challenge is that we live in a culture that thinks and learns visually. This profoundly effects how people resolve moral issues.</p>

<p>In his book <em>Amusing Ourselves to Death</em>, cultural critic Neil Postman notes that with the advent of television, America shifted from a word-based culture--characterized by a coherent, orderly arrangement of facts and ideas--to an image-based one obsessed with feeling, intuition, and pictures.</p>

<p>If I say the name Richard Nixon, what comes to mind for many is an image of a disgraced president making the victory sign with outstretched arms in the air. We remember almost nothing of his words beyond "I am not a crook." We are transfixed by a four hour movie--even a bad one--yet it's nearly impossible to keep parishioners engaged for a 20 minute sermon.</p>

<p>The word "abortion" has also lost meaning under the prevailing influence of postmodern philosophy. Loosely defined, postmodernism says that the truth about reality is forever hidden from us, that there is no objective knowledge. Instead, all we can do is tell stories which, if believed, give the storyteller power over others.</p>

<p>For example, President Clinton defended his veto of the partial-birth abortion ban with stories, not facts. Three women told how the procedure benefited them.</p>

<p>Absent from the President's defense was any moral justification, nor did he offer any evidence to refute the fact that most are performed on perfectly healthy mothers carrying perfectly healthy babies. In short, he simply changed the subject: Instead of offering stories to <em>support</em> his case, he offered stories <em>in place of</em> a case.</p>

<p>How do we restore meaning to the word "abortion" with people who think and learn visually, who are wooed by stories and anecdotes and not by arguments? Abandoning our core message is not the answer, especially when so many Americans have yet to seriously consider it.</p>

<p>Instead, we must visually awaken moral sensibilities. Pro-lifers must move the debate from the abstract question of choice of the mother to the concrete issue of the death of the child by using visual aids that allow people to <em>see</em> what abortion is.</p>

<p>As part of his research for an article on abortion for <em>Harpers Magazine</em>, Verlyn Klinkenborg visited an abortion clinic. There he beheld the remains of a ten-week-old preborn child. He recorded his candid impressions in his article, "Violent Certainties:"</p>

<blockquote>
<p>I felt a profound and unmistakable kinship with the foot and hand in the tray, a kinship so strong it was like the rolling of the sea under my feet....I was surprised by my own sadness, by the sense of loss that I felt. Strangely, I couldn't tell what I was sad for, but I suspect that I was sad for myself, pathetic as that sounds, as though I was looking at a homuncular version of myself scattered in that basin.<sup><a href="#fn6" id="ref6">6</a></sup></p>
</blockquote>

<p>At the same time, Klinkenborg's ability to sympathize with the mother diminished radically:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>I found it so much easier to be moved by the sight of the disembodied hand the size of a question mark gleaming under fluorescent lights, than it was to be moved by the woman from whom it had come, who was without work, without money, without education, without birth control....In that tiny, naked hand there was the imputation of innocence.<sup><a href="#fn7" id="ref7">7</a></sup></p>
</blockquote>

<p>The national debate on partial-birth abortion is another case in point. It seriously undermined public support for legalized abortion for one reason: It was visual.</p>

<p>The percentage of those who thought abortion should be legal under any circumstances dropped from 33 percent to 22 percent.<sup><a href="#fn8" id="ref8">8</a></sup> Why? Because for the first time in 25 years, the debate was about the act of abortion itself and how it affects the unborn. Pro-abortion columnist Naomi Wolf wrote, "When someone holds up a model of a six-month-old fetus and a pair of surgical scissors, we say, 'choice,' and we lose."<sup><a href="#fn9" id="ref9">9</a></sup></p>

<p>Pro-lifers showed the seven-minute video <em>Harder Truth</em> to a legislative committee during debate on the bill. Although it contained no partial-birth footage, the pictures of babies killed through D&amp;E and suction abortion were more than adequate to shift discussions from "choice" to the procedure itself.</p>

<p>In a dramatic turn of events, New Jersey legislators--including liberal Democrats--vigorously supported limits on abortion. "'Legislators and the public were revolted by the procedure,' said John Tomicki...who showed videos of the procedure in legislative committees. 'It was the first time we brought charts into the legislative chambers--the first time we showed videos. And the response was tremendous.'"<sup><a href="#fn10" id="ref10">10</a></sup></p>

<p>Cynthia Gorney, author of <em>Articles of Faith</em>, a new book about the abortion wars, says that serious damage was done to the pro-abortion side. "With partial-birth, the right-to-life movement succeeded for the first time in forcing the country to really look at one awful abortion procedure."<sup><a href="#fn11" id="ref11">11</a></sup></p>

<p><strong>Emotion or Reason</strong></p>

<p>Some discourage using graphic visual aids on grounds it substitutes emotion for reason. This objection misses the point. The question is not, "Are the pictures emotional?" They are. The real question is, "Are the pictures accurate?" We ought to avoid empty appeals to emotion, those offered in place of good reasons. If, however, pictures substantiate the reasons rather than obscure them, they serve a vital purpose. Truth is the issue.</p>

<p>Pro-abortion columnist Naomi Wolf observes, "The pro-choice movement often treats with contempt the pro-lifers' practice of holding up to our faces their disturbing graphics....[But] how can we charge that it is vile and repulsive for pro-lifers to brandish vile and repulsive images if the images are real? To insist that the truth is in poor taste is the very height of hypocrisy."<sup><a href="#fn12" id="ref12">12</a></sup></p>

<p>Educators universally acknowledge the value of such visual tools when used properly. Movie theaters provided free screenings of <em>Schindler's List</em>--during school hours--to over 2,000,000 students in 40 states, in spite of its graphic content.</p>

<p>School officials reasoned that students could not have informed discussions of the Holocaust unless they saw it.<sup><a href="#fn13" id="ref13">13</a></sup> Pictures of mutilated bodies stacked like cordwood communicate the horror of the death camps in a way no lecture can. Denying these tools to those who discuss the abortion holocaust is intellectually dishonest and foolish.</p>

<p>Regarding graphic visual aids, pro-lifers make one of two mistakes. They either spring them on audiences with no warning, or they don't use them at all. There is a third alternative--use them wisely.</p>

<p>When using dramatic visual aids like <em>Harder Truth</em>, explain to your listeners in advance that the video contains graphic pictures. Advise them to look away if they prefer not to watch. When talking to a Christian audience, mention that our Lord is eager to forgive the sin of abortion, and that our purpose is not to condemn anyone, but rather to clarify what is actually at stake.</p>

<p>Don't miss this critical point about: The partial-birth abortion debate injured the pro-abortion cause precisely because it focused solely on what abortion does to the unborn, not on the felt needs of the woman.</p>

<p>Pro-lifers had done two things right. First, they forced abortion advocates to do the one thing they don't want to do, defend killing babies. Abortion advocate Katherine Kohlbert admitted that if the debate is on what happens to the unborn, her side will "get creamed."<sup><a href="#fn14" id="ref14">14</a></sup></p>

<p>Second, they marshaled documented evidence to show that their opponents were lying. A pro-life strategy that combines graphic imagery with hard-hitting facts and arguments can win in the court of public opinion. This leads to the next step.</p>

<p><strong>Fact or Fiction</strong></p>

<p>Pro-lifers fail to make an impact when they don't use good documentation to expose the fictions of pro-abortionists.</p>

<p>The goal of abortion advocates is to achieve confusion to secure the status quo, which is that any woman can kill any baby at any point in her pregnancy for any reason at all. The goal of pro-lifers must be to bring clarity to the confusion in order to change the status quo--a much harder task. Merely expressing opinions is not enough to dispel layers of misinformation.</p>

<p>Physically holding up documents is a powerful way to call into question an opponent's credibility. It forces the issue back to the facts and puts the burden of proof where it belongs--on the abortion advocate who is making the assertion. The very best way to discredit abortion advocates is to use articles published in their own journals to make your point.</p>

<p>There is nothing more convincing--and potentially embarrassing to opponents--than holding up pro-abortion sources to refute their misstatements of fact.<sup><a href="#fn15" id="ref15">15</a></sup> William Rusher, a veteran of hundreds of debates, writes: "The demonstration that one of an adversary's factual assertions is untrue has a double impact: Not only is that particular support for his argument removed, but in a more general way the credibility of the entire remainder of his factual presentation is undermined."<sup><a href="#fn16" id="ref16">16</a></sup></p>

<p><strong>Only One Question</strong><sup><a href="#fn17" id="ref17">17</a></sup></p>

<p>Finally, pro-lifers fail to persuade when they don't clarify the only issue that matters: the status of the unborn. Instead, they get sidetracked on discussions about choice and privacy. They have debates about the risk of back-alley abortions, the hardship of teen pregnancy, the trauma of pregnancies due to rape and incest or the abuse of unwanted children.</p>

<p>Responding to any of these issues, however, requires an answer to a prior question about the nature of abortion itself. On this question there's an unusual silence.</p>

<p>The apparent "complexity" of the abortion issue can be cleared up by asking just one question. Imagine that your child walks up when your back is turned and asks, 'Daddy, can I kill this?' What is the first thing you must find out before you can answer him? You can never answer the question "Can I kill this?" unless you've answered a prior question: <em>What is it?</em>"</p>

<p>Abortion involves killing and discarding something that's alive. Whether it's right or not to take the life of any living thing depends entirely upon what it is. The answer one gives is pivotal, the deciding element that trumps all other considerations.</p>

<p>Let's put the issue plainly. If the unborn is not a human person, no justification for abortion is necessary. However, if the unborn is a human person, no justification for abortion is adequate.</p>

<p>The following dialogue illustrates this approach:</p>

<blockquote>
<p><strong>Abortion advocate:</strong> Abortion is a private choice between a woman and her doctor.</p>

<p><strong>Pro-Lifer:</strong> Do we allow parents to abuse their children if done in privacy?</p>

<p><strong>Abortion advocate:</strong> That's not fair. Those children are human beings.</p>

<p><strong>Pro-Lifer:</strong> Then the issue isn't really privacy, is it, but rather "Is the unborn a human being?"</p>

<p><strong>Abortion advocate:</strong> But many poor women cannot afford to raise another child.</p>

<p><strong>Pro-Lifer:</strong> When human beings get expensive, may we kill them?</p>

<p><strong>Abortion advocate:</strong> Well, no, but aborting a fetus is not the same as killing a person.</p>

<p><strong>Pro-Lifer:</strong> So, once again, the real question is, "What is the unborn? Is a fetus the same as a person?"</p>

<p><strong>Abortion advocate:</strong> Why do you insist on being so simplistic? This is a very complex issue involving women who must make agonizing decisions.</p>

<p><strong>Pro-Lifer:</strong> The decision may be psychologically agonizing for the mother, but morally it's not complex at all. It's wrong to kill innocent human beings simply because they're in the way and can't defend themselves.</p>

<p><strong>Abortion advocate:</strong> Killing defenseless human beings is one thing; aborting a fetus is another.</p>

<p><strong>Pro-Lifer:</strong> So we're agreed: If abortion actually killed a defenseless human being, then the issue wouldn't be complex at all. The question is, "What is the unborn?"</p>

<p><strong>Abortion advocate:</strong> Enough with your abstract philosophy. Let's talk about real life. Do you really think a woman should be forced to bring an unwanted child into the world?</p>

<p><strong>Pro-Lifer:</strong> The homeless are unwanted. May we kill them?</p>

<p><strong>Abortion advocate:</strong> But it's not the same.</p>

<p><strong>Pro-Lifer:</strong> That's the issue, isn't it: Are they the same? If the unborn are truly human like the homeless, then we can't just kill them to get them out of the way. We're back to my first question, "What is the unborn?"</p>

<p><strong>Abortion advocate:</strong> But you still shouldn't force your morality on women.</p>

<p><strong>Pro-Lifer:</strong> You'd feel very comfortable "forcing your morality" on a mother who was physically abusing her two-year-old, wouldn't you?</p>

<p><strong>Abortion advocate:</strong> But the two cases are not the same.</p>

<p><strong>Pro-Lifer:</strong> Why not?</p>

<p><strong>Abortion advocate:</strong> Because you're assuming the unborn are human, like a two-year-old.</p>

<p><strong>Pro-Lifer:</strong> And you're assuming they're not. You see, this is not really about privacy, or economic hardship, or complexity, or unwantedness, or forcing morality. The real question is, "What is the unborn?" Answer that question and you've automatically answered the others.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>When pro-life debate has faltered, it's because the focus has been shifted, deftly changing the topic to anything but the real issue: What is the unborn?</p>

<p>Establishing the humanity of the unborn is not a sufficient condition for ending the abortion debate, but it is a necessary one. It's not all we have to do, but it's something we must do. And it can be done effectively if we follow some simple guidelines.</p>

<p>Our reluctance to advance moral arguments is a tacit admission we either don't have a moral case to offer or that the moral case simply doesn't matter because it's not relevant. In either instance, pro-lifers have not just abandoned the high moral ground, they've abandoned the fight altogether. This we cannot do.</p>

<p>Gregg Cunningham sums it up: "I'm glad that there are women who can be loved into loving their babies, but I won't allow that fact to blind me to the reality that there are many other women who will kill their babies if they can't be made more horrified of abortion than they are terrified of a crisis pregnancy."<sup><a href="#fn18" id="ref18">18</a></sup></p>

<p>Focusing on the felt needs of the mother is not the answer. The mother is not at risk. The baby is.</p>

<hr>
<p><sup id="fn1">1. Paul Swope, "Abortion: A Failure to Communicate," First Things, April 1998, 31-32.<a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">?</a></sup></p>

<p><sup id="fn2">2. Frederica Matthews-Green, Real Choices (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 1994), 32.<a href="#ref2" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.">?</a></sup></p>

<p><sup id="fn3">3. Frank Beckwith, "Taking Abortion Seriously," unpublished paper, 1997.<a href="#ref3" title="Jump back to footnote 3 in the text.">?</a></sup></p>

<p><sup id="fn4">4. "Medical Discrimination Against Children With Disabilities," A Report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, September 1989, 106.<a href="#ref4" title="Jump back to footnote 4 in the text.">?</a></sup></p>

<p><sup id="fn5">5. Adapted from Gregory Koukl and Francis Beckwith, Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air, (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1998).<a href="#ref5" title="Jump back to footnote 5 in the text.">?</a></sup></p>

<p><sup id="fn6">6. Verlyn Klinkenborg, "Violent Certainties," Harpers Magazine, January 1995, 46-7.<a href="#ref6" title="Jump back to footnote 6 in the text.">?</a></sup></p>

<p><sup id="fn7">7. Ibid., 47.<a href="#ref7" title="Jump back to footnote 7 in the text.">?</a></sup></p>

<p><sup id="fn8">8. USA Today, CNN/Gallup Poll, 1997. Cited in Ruth Padawer, "Partial-Birth Battle Changing Public Views," USA Today, 17 November 1997.<a href="#ref8" title="Jump back to footnote 8 in the text.">?</a></sup></p>

<p><sup id="fn9">9. Naomi Wolf, "Pro-Choice and Pro-Life," New York Times, 3 April 1997.<a href="#ref9" title="Jump back to footnote 9 in the text.">?</a></sup></p>

<p><sup id="fn10">10. "Trenton is Turning From Its Longtime Support of Abortion Rights," New York Times, 22 February 1998.<a href="#ref10" title="Jump back to footnote 10 in the text.">?</a></sup></p>

<p><sup id="fn11">11. "Arguing at a Fever Pitch," Newsweek, 26 January 1998, 67.<a href="#ref11" title="Jump back to footnote 11 in the text.">?</a></sup></p>

<p><sup id="fn12">12. Naomi Wolf, "Our Bodies, Our Souls," New Republic, 16 October 1996.<a href="#ref12" title="Jump back to footnote 12 in the text.">?</a></sup></p>

<p><sup id="fn13">13. John Davies, "Moving Pictures," Times Education Supplement, 16 September 1994, A-24. See also Social Education, October 1995, 365-366.<a href="#ref13" title="Jump back to footnote 13 in the text.">?</a></sup></p>

<p><sup id="fn14">14. "Abortion Rights Leader Urges End to Half Truths," American Medical News, 3 March 1998. The full quote was as follows: "I urge incredible restraint here, to focus your message and stick to it, because otherwise we'll get creamed. If the debate is whether the fetus feels pain, we lose. If the debate in the public arena is what's the effect of anesthesia, we'll lose. If the debate is whether or not women ought to be entitled to late abortion, we'll probably lose. But if the debate is on the circumstances of individual women...then I think we can win these fights."<a href="#ref14" title="Jump back to footnote 14 in the text.">?</a></sup></p>

<p><sup id="fn15">15. Stand to Reason provides a manual replete with such documentation. It's entitled, Making Abortion Unthinkable: The Art of Pro-life Persuasion, by Scott Klusendorf.<a href="#ref15" title="Jump back to footnote 15 in the text.">?</a></sup></p>

<p><sup id="fn16">16. William Rusher, How to Win Arguments More Often Than Not (Landham, MD: University Press in America, 1981), 96.<a href="#ref16" title="Jump back to footnote 16 in the text.">?</a></sup></p>

<p><sup id="fn17">17. Material adapted from Gregory Koukl, Precious Human Unborn Persons (Stand to Reason, 1997).<a href="#ref17" title="Jump back to footnote 17 in the text.">?</a></sup></p>

<p><sup id="fn18">18. Personal correspondence, April 1993, on file.<a href="#ref18" title="Jump back to footnote 18 in the text.">?</a></sup></p>
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title: Philosophical Theology: Christology
topic: Philosophy
author: Melinda Penner
date: 04/05/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/philosophical-theology-christology
content:
            <div> 
		<p>By Melinda Penner</p>

<p>There are a number of issues that must be considered to address the intelligibility of the incarnation. First, the groundwork of metaphysics must be laid. What are a nature and a person? Is it possible for one person to have more than one nature? How can three persons of the Trinity be individuated in one substance? Second, we must turn to concerns regarding the compatibility of two natures in one person. Can the divine and the human co-exist in one individual? The problems of knowledge, will, and temptation must be answered plausibly. We will consider these issues and conclude that the incarnation is metaphysically possible and belief in it is rational. I will present a model for these answers consistent with Christian orthodoxy.</p>

<p>I have long been impressed at the philosophic and theological sophistication of the early church councils as they addressed the challenges raised to and in the church. The ecumenical councils draw the parameters around orthodox faith, and any solutions postulated must be found within these limits. There are also philosophic categories that seem somewhat clear and must be respected when attempting to synthesize the information from the Bible about the incarnation. These are my concerns as I attempt to describe a rational account for the incarnation, and I find that it is possible to answer the questions within these constraints. The solution to the incarnation must affirm that Jesus is one person with divine and human natures, and the second person of the Trinity.</p>

<p>A person is a category of immaterial conscious substance. There seem to be three types of persons that we know of: God, angels, and humans. Persons are essentially souls. There are some capacities that are common to all persons: cognition, rationality, affect, volition, desire, perception, and morality are examples. The substance person cannot be analyzed in functional terms or the properties it possesses; rather it is constituted by a set of ultimate capacities and the universals it exemplifies, regardless whether or not they are ever realized. The mere possession of the capacities and universals counts for personhood.</p>

<p>Jesus is a person in virtue of being God, therefore He is of the same type of conscious being as humans. It would not be appropriate or possible for Jesus to become a non-person, for instance an animal or a non-conscious thing.</p>

<p>Substances possess properties and remain identical to themselves through time and change. Joshua Hoffman and Gary S. Rosenkrantz define substance in their book <em>Substance: Its Nature and Existence</em>:</p>

<p>X is a substance = df. X is an instance of a concrete category, such that: it could have a single instance throughout an interval of time (non-minimal).<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1">1</a></sup></p>

<p>A substance can be instantiated as an individual, concrete particular, a member of a general kind, that is traceable through a duration of time.<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2">2</a></sup> The instantiation of a substance possesses the properties predicated of it. A substance is a natural kind that is marked off by “a set of its ultimate capacities that are possessed by it solely in virtue of the substance belonging to its natural kind.”<sup id="fnref:3"><a href="#fn:3">3</a></sup> Membership in the natural kind is constant through a person’s existence, it tells us what a thing is, and the individuation of the kind is the ground of identity through change.</p>

<p>A substance cannot loose its essence and continue to exist. This is necessarily true if Jesus is to remain identical to the second person of the Trinity through the incarnation. The Council of Nicaea affirmed that Jesus was of one substance with the Father and the Spirit; He shared in the identical personal natural kind and continued to throughout the incarnation.</p>

<p>Persons qua persons are immaterial substances, but it is a unique property of human persons that they possess material bodies, thus it must be a property of the nature and not personhood. A nature is a set of essential properties that further mark off what sort of thing an individual is. There are three kinds of persons that we know of: God, angels, and humans. The further distinction between these kinds of persons is the natures they possess.</p>

<p>Orthodoxy holds that all of God’s properties are essential, but angels and humans have essential properties in virtue of their natures and accidental properties in virtue of their individual existence. Among God’s necessary properties are perfection, omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. Jesus could not lose these and continue to be identical to the second person of the Trinity.</p>

<p>In determining what are the essential properties of human nature, we must take into consideration the distinction between what is universal to all humans versus what is essential to all humans. Thomas Morris points out that it is universal that all human persons live on the surface of the earth, but that does not mean that it is essential that they do.<sup id="fnref:4"><a href="#fn:4">4</a></sup> Humans could live in a space lab for their entire bodily duration and still be human. It is also the case that all humans sin, but that is a universal property not an essential one since it is possible for humans to live without sin. Morris points out a further distinction that follows from this, “In order to be fully human, it is not necessary to be merely human. An individual is merely human just in case it has all the properties requisite for being fully human...and also some limitation properties as well.”<sup id="fnref:5"><a href="#fn:5">5</a></sup> This distinction will be helpful in solving issues of apparent incompatibilities between divine and human natures. Jesus is fully human, all that humanity was meant to be; the rest of the members of the human race are merely human, limited by the influence of sin.</p>

<p>The best test I can think of for determining what is essential to human nature is to ask the question: Is it possible for human beings to exist without a particular property? When this test is administered to many properties that appear to be essential to humanity, it becomes clearer that most properties are probably contingent on the kind of bodily, earthly existence we experience now. For instance, I began thinking that sexual interest and emotional needs for relationship were essential; however, it seems very likely from the Biblical witness that humans will not function sexually in the after life, nor have the kinds of emotional needs for others that we have now. It could be that these contingent needs are precursors to more ultimate satisfactions that we will experience in Heaven. Many nature property candidates fall by the wayside in the conceivability test.</p>

<p>The properties that seem to be essential to human nature are those that the professor presented in class, with one exception in my opinion. A substance S has the essence or nature of humanity iff(df):<sup id="fnref:6"><a href="#fn:6">6</a></sup></p>

<p>1. S is a person (a soul).</p>

<p>2. S is or has been embodied as a living organism of the natural kind <em>homo sapiens</em> (with a micro-structural blueprint, which marks it as a natural kind) such that:</p>

<p>2.1 normally, S apprehends objective reality (universals and particulars; tokens and types) perceptually</p>

<p>2.2 S’s development (the realization of S’s higher-order capacities) is (at least partly) tied to the development of S’s body</p>

<p>The one point of disagreement in the form of the definition given in class is the spirit capacity for relationship with God. I think this is a better candidate for a capacity of persons because the two examples of persons we know of besides God do have relationship with Him (and actually He has relationship with the other persons of the Trinity). And if it is a capacity of persons to behave morally, and morality seems to be necessarily grounded in God’s existence, then it appears that all persons would have the capacity for relationship with God to ground their morality and the obligation feature that follows.</p>

<p>It has been suggested that the definition of human nature would be improved with the qualification that embodiment is only possible. I think that it is an essential property of human nature to be or have been embodied, not possibly embodied. If the incarnation was necessary in any way (and there appear to be several good reasons why it was) then bodily existence is necessary for humans, otherwise Jesus could have taken on human nature and remained immaterially existent. Since it seems that His physical incarnation was likely necessary, then it seems reasonable to conclude that physical embodiment is not accidental to human nature.</p>

<p>With this metaphysical framework set, we can propose an analysis of what a human being is. A human is:</p>

<p>1. a personal substance</p>

<p>2.that possesses the set of essential properties of human nature, and</p>

<p>3.is embodied in its usual state of existence.</p>

<p>Jesus was fully human by this analysis.</p>

<p>God is also a substance, but instead of the usual one-to-one correspondence of persons and substance that we are familiar with, God is three persons in one substance. The divine nature, shared by all three persons of the Trinity, is able to be instantiated only once. God is a union of three persons.<sup id="fnref:7"><a href="#fn:7">7</a></sup> The witness of the Bible is that God is one (Deut. 4:35). It also seems necessarily true that there can only be one being with the divine essence if God’s maximal attributes are understood in a comparative sense.<sup id="fnref:8"><a href="#fn:8">8</a></sup> God’s attributes cannot be exceeded or rivaled by any being.</p>

<p>Though unique, there appears to be no incoherence to the concept. This substance has the essential properties of divine nature. Each person of the Trinity is a center of consciousness with His own personal capacities.</p>

<p>Jesus was a preexistent personal soul with a divine nature that added a human nature, and thus a body, to His substance. Again, though it is a unique case for a person to have two natures, it seems possible for two personal natures to be coexemplified as long as their essential properties are not mutually exclusive. Because the second person of the Trinity had the same personal substance as the incarnated Jesus, they are identical persons. Though this person added a new nature, His essential properties did not change. Because natures are essential properties which cannot be lost without going out of existence, Jesus continues to have two natures. The incarnation was not a temporary event.</p>

<p>There are some particular objections to the coexemplification of certain properties of divinity and humanity that must be considered. Appealing to Morris’&nbsp;distinction between universal and essential properties, and between fully human and merely human can answer these sorts of objections, such as contingency and omniscience. Contingency is universal in most cases of humans in virtue of being created beings, but it does not seem to exclude the idea of an infinite being taking on a human nature.</p>

<p>Omniscience is another particular case that seems to be incompatible with limited human nature. Limited knowledge also does not have to be essential to humans. Limited knowledge may be a result of being contingent beings, not human qua human. It also may be a limitation of embodiment in unglorified form. It certainly seems likely that in Heaven with glorified bodies and an eternal amount of time to learn, that our set of knowledge will increase beyond what is imaginable now.<sup id="fnref:9"><a href="#fn:9">9</a></sup></p>

<p>But what of the reverse: Can God limit His knowledge? Jesus seemed to exemplify genuine limits on His knowledge at times. There are examples in the Gospels where Jesus’&nbsp;intent seemed to be to learn propositional knowledge. This seems to be the natural implication in Luke’s statement that “Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men”&nbsp;(Luke 2:52). There are other cases where Jesus seems to truly acquire propositional knowledge (John 11:34; 18:34).</p>

<p>How could the omniscient divine mind be contained by a limited human mind when joined in the one person of Jesus? Aquinas’&nbsp;solution was that Jesus the man fully realized all of the latent capacity for knowledge that is natural for a human to have, but He was not omniscient.<sup id="fnref:10"><a href="#fn:10">10</a></sup> Proximity to the divine essence inspired the full realization of the human capacities. In addition, Jesus exemplified the state of body and soul common in the after life when the greater capabilities of the soul will not be limited by the present conditions of physical union to the body. Jesus’&nbsp;soul dominated His physical restrictions to realize it’s fullest potential. Though this solution gets Jesus a larger stock of knowledge than the usual human being, even an optimally functioning human mind is only finite and not omniscient.</p>

<p>One solution would be to suggest that Jesus had two minds, but the mind seems to be the rational capacity of the soul. Two minds would mean Jesus had two souls and two identities, and that is metaphysically unacceptable based on the account laid out earlier. Morris characterizes the relation between the two minds of Jesus as asymmetrical: As God, He was aware of the human mind, but as a man, He was not aware of the divine mind and functioned as if it were the only one He possessed.<sup id="fnref:11"><a href="#fn:11">11</a></sup> Morris proposes that Jesus had two centers of consciousness. He believes that while Jesus was one person, there were two <em>hypostases.</em> Though Morris does recognize the burden of solving the apparent problem of synchronic identity, I do not believe his metaphysical characterization can accomplish that. Richard Mull defines <em>hypostases</em> as a self-subsisting person, not simply a center of consciousness.<sup id="fnref:12"><a href="#fn:12">12</a></sup> This is the language the ecumenical councils used to affirm the unity of Jesus’&nbsp;person (<em>hypostases)</em> with two natures. It does not appear that a satisfying metaphysical account can be given for the two minds view that also affirms one personal identity.</p>

<p>Richard Swinburne seems to endorse a similar view in <em>The Christian God</em> and cites Thomas Morris, as well. Swinburne characterizes his version of the two minds view as two separate belief tracks, the human belief track being unaware of the divine belief track.<sup id="fnref:13"><a href="#fn:13">13</a></sup> The belief tracks operate in the nature, so that Jesus had a divine way of thinking and acting and a human way of thinking and acting. Each nature also has a separate will. However, I do not believe Swinburne gives enough justification to override the previous metaphysical account of the personal substance possessing the rational and volitional capacities constituting one rational individual.</p>

<p>The other possibility is that Jesus had one mind and one intellect and did not make use of His omniscience. This would be consistent with the kenosis by addition advocated by Millard J. Erickson.<sup id="fnref:14"><a href="#fn:14">14</a></sup> When Jesus added human nature to His personal substance in the kenosis, He willingly chose not to make use of His divine attributes during His duration on earth. He retained His divine essence, but added human nature and chose to live with human limitations. But as Erickson points out, the divine also limited the human nature in that it prevented Jesus’&nbsp;human nature from be merely human. The influence of the divine nature helped Jesus to live fully as a human without any of the limitations of sin and contingent creation.</p>

<p>On this view, then, Jesus willed to limit the knowledge He made use of as a man to a subset of His divine knowledge. But as fully human and not merely human, Jesus’&nbsp;realized the ultimate cognitive capacity natural to humans. In this way, the second person of the Trinity remained omniscient, but also lived as a limited human during His mission.<sup id="fnref:15"><a href="#fn:15">15</a></sup></p>

<p>A question that has challenged the orthodox view of the incarnation since the early first millennium is the nature of Jesus’&nbsp;will. How many wills did Jesus have? Constantinople III concluded that Jesus had two wills and rejected monothelytism. This is the only issue of the first six ecumenical councils that I am aware of that I take issue with their conclusion because I believe it was based on an ill-conceived metaphysic. Constantinople was wrong in locating the will in the nature. The will is an active power that is a capacity of soulish creatures. More specifically, persons have rational wills; this is true of different beings that belong to the category of persons, including humans, angels, and God. So the will seems to be a soulish capacity, and the rational will is a capacity of persons. All persons also have natures, but their natures are unique to each kind, so it seems reasonable to place the will in what is common to all who have one. If a person is a soul, then Jesus had only one will. He had one will as the preexistent second person of the Trinity and did not add another when He added a human will.</p>

<p>How do we reconcile Jesus’&nbsp;words, “Father, if Thou art willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Thine be done”&nbsp;(Luke 22:42)? This verse was a primary motivating factor in the Council’s conclusion. It appears that Jesus’&nbsp;human will was in conflict with the divine will. A few of things should be said regarding this.</p>

<p>First, Jesus’&nbsp;human will was never in opposition to the divine purpose because, due to His impeccability, Jesus’&nbsp;human will was in perfect subordination and coordination with the divine will. This is another example of the divine influencing the human nature to be fully human.</p>

<p>Second, Jesus may not have been using “will”&nbsp;in a technical sense, but rather was referring to a desire. It could be that since different kinds of persons have different kinds of desires that desires are influenced by dispositions in the nature. The nature is what gives the personal faculties their unique essence, so different kinds of persons would have different kinds of desires because of their different natures. As an embodied human being, Jesus had a disposition to be fearful of the suffering and death that lay ahead of Him. Swinburne points out that it is not necessary to act on a desire, especially when there is also a countervailing stronger desire. Jesus’&nbsp;desires influenced by His divine nature would always be stronger than those influenced by His human nature. Swinburne says, “A divine individual could not have what we normal humans so often have—a strong desire, not outweighed by a contrary desire, to do an action less good than the best available.”<sup id="fnref:16"><a href="#fn:16">16</a></sup> What Jesus expressed in His prayer was a real human desire to avoid the cross, yet His will to carry out His mission remained constant and unmoved by the influence of His divine nature.</p>

<p>Third, this prayer to the Father is consistent with the conclusion that each person of the Trinity has their own will. The second person of the Trinity submitted His will to the Father’s. This does not imply disagreement; the wills of the Trinity are perfectly consonant and are always concurrent with one another because they share the same nature and same desires.</p>

<p>On this account, Jesus was saying, “Not my desire, but Yours be done.”&nbsp;His human desire was different than the Father’s, but because of His single will, which is perfectly coordinated with the Father’s and the Spirit’s, He did not act on that desire. Instead He acted on the overriding desire of His divine nature to carry out the work of salvation.</p>

<p>Another challenge of the incompatibility of the coexemplification of the divine and human is temptation. The testimony of the Bible is that Jesus was tempted (Luke 4:2), but Scripture also tells us that God cannot be tempted (James 1:13). This must be reconciled if the incarnation is to be found rational.</p>

<p>It is possible that there is an equivocation on the term “temptation”&nbsp;in these passages. Reflecting on the background concepts of Jesus’&nbsp;human nature and God’s nature is helpful. God is perfect without defect; it is impossible for sin to appeal to God. Therefore, God cannot be tempted. However, as a human, Jesus could be tempted in a different sense because of the weaknesses innate in human nature.</p>

<p>Sin never was attractive to Jesus since He was God, but as a human being He recognized possible means of fulfilling desires He possessed as a human being. The presentation of an unviable means could cause the experience of the unfulfilled desire to be more difficult. There is an innate weakness in the nature of being a contingent being that is aggravated by the presentation of illegitimate means of fulfillment. So even if Jesus knew that He would not sin, He still struggled with the weaknesses made more poignant by the options made available to Him. The temptation was directed to the vulnerability of these innate weaknesses and caused the struggle with unfulfilled desires. For example, the fear of the cross was real and natural for a human being, and there was the struggle with this fear to go through with it, though it was certain He would. After 40 days without food, Satan’s suggestion to turn the stones into bread was not a means attractive to Jesus, but it would still heighten the struggle to continue His fast. The temptation goes to the struggle with the legitimate desire, not the illegitimate means to fulfill it.</p>

<p>Temptation is essentially an internal attraction to an object so it would be possible to be tempted without sinning. The object may be a good object of desire or a wrong one. The circumstances of fulfilling that desire may be proper or they may not. Jesus could be tempted to a good object of desire in a context that would make it wrong if He were to follow through on His desire. For instance, He could have been attracted to a woman, but He didn’t act on that attraction because He was not married to her. And the desire qua desire isn’t necessarily lust. So that attraction, the essence of temptation, can be extracted from the other circumstances that would make it a sin. Jesus could be tempted (experience an attraction to a good object of desire) without sinning. It is usually the case with humans that other factors, internal and external, are concurrent with the desire that almost always makes sin simultaneous with temptation. In addition, normally the conditions to sin are present for human beings, but for Jesus there were no conditions under which He would sin because of His impeccability. His sinlessness was not de facto, but metaphysical. Yet the essence of temptation is the desire and He could experience that without the conditions or opportunity to sin or the concurrent factors that usually accompany temptation for humans. Further, Jesus knew He could not sin but, as a human being He felt the tug of His desires that He could not fulfill.</p>

<p>Another option is that Jesus did not know He could not sin, and He feared He might. Jesus may have voluntarily limited His access to His divine knowledge, including His knowledge of His divine identity. But the text seems to indicate that by the time of His ministry He was aware of His divinity and should have known that it was impossible for Him to sin.</p>

<p>Swinburne offers another option. He points out that Jesus willingly limited the exercise of His divine capacities in a way that made Him operate in a limited way and feel limited.<sup id="fnref:17"><a href="#fn:17">17</a></sup> Swinburne also points out the difference between sinning and not doing the greatest good.<sup id="fnref:18"><a href="#fn:18">18</a></sup> It is wrong to be attracted to sin, but it is not wrong to have a desire to do a good that is not the greatest good possible. As a man, Jesus was never tempted to sin, but He could be tempted to not perform the best action, especially when this exploited a natural human weakness.</p>

<p>This very well could characterize Jesus’&nbsp;request in the Garden of Gethsemene. The only weakness I find in this option is that when Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness, the options offered were in fact sinful, not just a lesser good. But this could be an explanation for other temptations Jesus experienced.</p>

<p>I must admit that this issue provides the least satisfactory answers for me. Temptation as the aggravation of unfulfilled desires does not seem to capture temptation as we experience it. Temptation qua temptation seems to be an attraction to the object. Swinburne’s characterization seems to best capture this feature. The intelligibility of the incarnation does not require a satisfying answer, only a rationally possible answer and that has been offered.</p>

<p>It has been demonstrated that particular objections to the coexemplification of the divine and human natures can be answered; and I believe the analysis offered provides grounds to believe that similar objections can be answered reasonably. It has been shown that it was possible for Jesus to willingly limit Himself to experience life as a human, and yet remain God with His essential attributes. It is possible to be a personal substance with two distinct natures. Jesus was fully man, not a mere man; He exemplified human nature operating at its fullest potential. Jesus was able to accomplish His mission and show us God’s great intent for humanity.</p>

<p>The concept of the incarnation bears up under philosophic scrutiny. The ancient creeds of Christendom and the articulation of one of the most fundamental Christian doctrines is found to be rational and commendable.</p>

<aside class="footnotes">
<hr>
<ol>
	<li id="fn:1">Hoffman, Joshua, and Gary S. Rosenkrantz, <em>Substance: Its Nature and Existence</em> (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 50. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:1">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:2">Richard Swinburne gives a similar definition of substance. Swinburne, Richard, <em>The Christian God</em> (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 13. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:2">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:3">Moreland, J.P. and Scott Rae, <em>Body &amp; Soul: Human Nature and the Crisis in Ethics</em> (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 73. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:3">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:4">Morris, Thomas, <em>The Logic of God Incarnate</em> (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1986), 63. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:4">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:5">Morris, 65. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:5">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:6">DeWeese, Dr. Garry, Philosophical Theology lecture, Talbot School of Theology, Spring 2001. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:6">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:7">Space does not allow me to consider here Richard Swinburne’s deductive argument for the Trinity, nor the arguments against modalism. Swinburne, 170. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:7">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:8">Hoffman, Joshua, and Gary S. Rosenkrantz, “Omnipotence,”&nbsp;Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro, Eds., <em>A Companion to Philosophy of Religion</em> (Oxford, Blackwell Publishers, 1997). <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:8">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:9">It seems doubtful to me that we will ever have an infinite amount of knowledge like God, since it seems native to divinity to simply know an infinite number of propositions and not have to learn then, and given the fact that though we will live for an eternity, we will never have lived for an infinite amount of time to learn an infinite number of things. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:9">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:10">Thomas Aquinas, <em>Summa theologiae III</em>, q.10, a.2,c &amp; ad 2um, found in McCord Adams, Marilyn, <em>What Sort of Human Nature?,</em> (Milwaukee: Marquette University, 1999), 52. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:10">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:11">Morris, 104. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:11">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:12">Muller, Richard A., <em>Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms</em> (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1985), 223 and 291. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:12">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:13">Swinburne, 208. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:13">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:14">Erickson, Millard J., <em>The Word Became Flesh</em>, (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1991), 555. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:14">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:15">I think that omnipotence could be analyzed in a very similar way. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:15">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:16">Swinburne, 195. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:16">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:17">Swinburne, 203. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:17">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:18">Swinburne, 205. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:18">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
</ol>
</aside>
</div>

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title: Mastering an Argument
topic: Tactics and Tools
author: Greg Koukl
date: 04/11/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/mastering-an-argument
content:
            <div> 
		<p>August 1, 2012</p>

<p>When I was asked recently during a live Christian TV show why I send bi-monthly mentoring letters to Christians like you, an insight suddenly dawned on me.</p>

<p>Some of the training material we send you (Solid Ground, for example) is principally aimed at building your mind (“knowledge”), while mentoring letters like this are targeted at your method (“wisdom”) and your manner (“character”)—not so much the “what,”&nbsp;but the “how to”&nbsp;of being a seasoned diplomat for Christ.</p>

<p>It occurred to me that it might help if you had some insight into how I come up with summaries like this one—the “how to”&nbsp;process I go through to sketch out a response to tough issues like same-sex marriage. Here are the steps I follow you can apply to a variety of objections.</p>

<p><strong>First, I need to have a basic grasp of the issue itsel</strong>f. I need to survey the thinking so I know “the lay of the land.”&nbsp;How have others approached this question? What objections have been raised? How have the challenges been answered? Are the answers good ones? I’m not trying to be an expert here, just informed on the fundamentals of the controversy.</p>

<p><strong>Second, I need to state the essence of the issue simply and clearly.</strong> How would I sum up the core consideration, the hinge-pin concern, in unambiguous language? The goal at this stage: Simplify the issue. Remove the distractions. Since the same-sex marriage dispute pivots on the meaning of marriage, I simplified the issue this way:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>There are only two kinds of answers to the question, “What is marriage?”&nbsp;Either marriage has a fixed, natural purpose, or it does not. Either marriage is something particular, or it is nothing in particular and therefore anything we want to make it.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>This step is critical. It gives me a starting point that cuts through the distractions and cuts to the chase immediately.</p>

<p><strong>Third, I need to make my argument.</strong> How do I answer the basic issue? What is my rationale? Where is my evidence? Again, clarity is key here. I spend a lot of time working with the words, removing the ambiguities to make my case forcibly and persuasively. Here is the basic view I defend in the key-card:</p>

<p>Marriage is a natural, long-term pairing between a man and a woman that is protected, privileged, and celebrated by culture because of the unique and vital role it plays in civilization: As a group, as a rule, and by nature, marriage relationships produce the next generation.</p>

<p>Then I carefully articulate my reasons, defending this view so that a fair-minded person will think, “I may not agree just yet, but those points make a lot of sense.”</p>

<p><strong>Fourth, I need to answer objections.</strong> These must be objections actually being raised and must be addressed reasonably and fairly, but with as much economy as possible. If I get too wordy, the response will be harder for me to remember, and won't have as much impact on others. If I can work in simple, common-sense illustrations, all the better.</p>

<p><strong>Finally, with cultural issues (as opposed to in-house, theological issues) I try to take an “external”&nbsp;approach.</strong> I don’t base my argument on the Bible, but on a rationale that those outside Christianity can relate to, regardless of their attitude towards Scripture.</p>

<p>Even taking the “external approach,”&nbsp;I will quote Jesus, but I do not appeal (directly) to Him as an authority. I appeal, rather, to a common-sense observation He made. I invoke an authority figure who is almost universally respected, but my rationale does not trade on any religious doctrine. This makes my argument attractive to the largest audience.</p>

<p>Remember, I’m not coming up with all the content on my own. I don’t have to be inspired with clever responses or creative insights when people smarter than I have already done the heavy lifting. Instead, I collect the good stuff and condense it into something handy that I can use. With a little practice, you can do the same.</p>

<p>With you in the fight,</p>

<p>Gregory Koukl</p>
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title: A Useful Tactic
topic: Tactics and Tools
author: Greg Koukl
date: 04/11/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/a-useful-tactic
content:
            <div> 
		<p>June 1, 2012</p>

<p>A couple of years ago I suggested an approach to dealing with challenges that I used in my national radio debate with American atheist Michael Shermer. I explained that sometimes it’s better to move <em>towards</em> an objection rather than away from it, to <em>embrace</em> a charge, rather than run from it.*</p>

<p>I want to suggest a second move that is kin to the first and just as powerful to advance your case when the opportunity presents itself. Why not <em>embrace</em> an idea the skeptic affirms, when appropriate, then <em>use it to support your own case</em>.</p>

<p>For example, Big Bang cosmology is almost universally accepted among the secular population, though some in the Christian community are uncomfortable with the idea. Even so, what if we simply granted their point for the sake of argument because there’s an advantage in it for us? What’s the advantage? As I’ve often quipped, a Big Bang needs a Big Banger. Some powerful personal intelligence outside of nature and beyond the space-time continuum had to “pull the trigger.”&nbsp;The alternative—the universe popped into existence out of nowhere caused by nothing—is ridiculously counter-intuitive, by contrast. That’s how the maneuver works.</p>

<p>With this approach you’re essentially saying, “Even if you’re right on this point, that turns out to be evidence for our view.”&nbsp;In situations like these it’s going to be hard for your challenger to take exception with your facts, once he’s already affirmed them.</p>

<p>STR speaker Alan Shlemon uses a brilliant example of this approach when speaking with Muslims. In many ways, this is a tough group to make headway with—unless you find something they already believe that can give you some leverage.</p>

<p>For Muslims, the key issue is authority. Whatever God says in the Quran, they believe. They say the Bible—unlike the divinely preserved writing of Mohammed—has been corrupted. Therefore, the Quran is reliable; the Bible is not.</p>

<p>Here’s how Alan proceeds. Why not, for the sake of argument, agree with the Muslim? Acknowledge the Muslim’s claim to the Quran’s authority and then look closely at what the Quran says about the Bible. Does the Muslim’s supreme source of truth lend any credibility to the Christian Gospel, for example?</p>

<p>It does, as it turns out. A lot.</p>

<p>First, the Quran expresses a high view of Jesus. He was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, and performed miracles. More to the point, though, the Quran teaches—in more than a dozen passages—that the Bible is the Word of God. It’s the “scripture which He sent to those before [Mohammed]”&nbsp;(Surah 4:136). And if our Scripture is given by God, then it is impossible for it to be corrupted, according to the Muslim’s own theology.</p>

<p>In a word, the Quran—a Muslim’s undisputable source of authority—actually endorses our authority as the pure and uncorrupted Word of God. At the time Mohammed wrote this surah, the great ancient codices of the New Testament we use as the foundation for our own modern translations—Alexandrinus, Sinaiticus, and Vaticanus—had already been in circulation for hundreds of years.</p>

<p>Alan laid out this argument in more detail at a recent STR conference. Once again, I was impressed with his tactical expertise. I was also impressed with Alan’s skill as a communicator and noted what a privilege it was to have him as a colleague at STR.</p>

<p>Standing firm by grace,</p>

<p>Gregory Koukl</p>
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title: The Nazi Doctors
topic: Bioethics
author: Greg Koukl
date: 04/03/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-nazi-doctors
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>We are in the process of redefining what it is that has inherent worth in our culture from human beings just simply because they are humans that have worth, to states of existence having worth.</em></p>

<p>If you were asked to give a list of those things that have value, you might be hard pressed to do so. Very simply, value is those things that have worth. Something is valuable if it has worth. And there are actually three different categories of value. It’s a helpful way to understand value theory. When we say that something has value, it can have the first type of value which is intrinsic value.</p>

<p>Intrinsic value is something that has value in itself. The value or worth that it has is inherent in its very existence. For example, love is something that most people would consider has intrinsic value. Love is something that is valuable in itself. Health is something that is valuable in itself. Happiness is something that has intrinsic value. Mercy or virtues or dozens of things are ends in themselves and have value. That’s intrinsic value.</p>

<p>Then you have a separate category of value that is not intrinsic value, but it’s called instrumental. You have intrinsic value, you have instrumental value. What’s instrumental value? Something that has instrumental value is only valuable in that it leads to something else that has intrinsic value. A classic example of something that has instrumental value is money. Money itself is not valuable, but it’s valuable in that it can get something that has intrinsic value. Money might get you happiness. Money might get you pleasure. Money might get you friendship. Money might buy you mercy. In other words, the money has value in that it leads to something else that is valuable in itself. This is very important because something that has instrumental value is valuable in a very tenuous way.</p>

<p>When I was in Thailand now ten years ago I worked in a Cambodian refugee camp. One of the souvenirs that the Cambodian kids would try to peddle to the relief workers were these now worthless pieces of paper called Cambodian “reil.”&nbsp;Cambodian reil was the currency of Cambodia and when Pol Pott and the Khmer Rouge, the Communist Cambodians came into power in 1976, they obliterated the currency system and attempted to go back to the rice standard of currency. Rice was the standard of exchange, not worthless money. That’s exactly what happened. When money was no longer capable of buying those things that themselves had intrinsic value—money, food, etc.—the money itself became worthless. At one point it had instrumental value. But after it no longer could buy that which had intrinsic value it became worthless. And the kids had piles of what would have been a king’s ransom of reil that was now utterly worthless because it could not purchase that which had intrinsic, innate, inherent value anymore.</p>

<p>Now I use this little description of types of value because there are very important things happening in our society that pertain to those two things. There is a third category that I’ll mention in passing, that is those things that have intrinsic value and instrumental value. In other words, health may have intrinsic value to some, but if you’re healthy you can also have other pursuits because of your health that also have value. So some things have both intrinsic and instrumental value.</p>

<p>But the most important thing I want to focus on is just these two concepts of intrinsic and instrumental value. Here’s where it cashes out. I have contended here on this program for quite a while that there is a shift in the way people think about human value. It used to be that human beings had intrinsic value, they were valuable in themselves. Now there is a shift going on heralded by the “quality of life”&nbsp;argument which really places the nexus and focus of value not on human beings per se, but on experiences or conditions or states of living that human beings can have, such that pleasure or getting better, health or making a contribution to society, being happy, being fulfilled, having a meaningful life are the states of existence that themselves have inherent value. And human beings are increasingly being reduced to creatures that don’t have inherent value, but instrumental value in that they are valuable to the degree that they lead to these other experiences that themselves are inherently valuable. Just like the Cambodian reil, if a human being who has instrumental value and can no longer lead to pleasure, fulfillment, satisfaction, health, making a contribution to society, once those things that do have intrinsic value have been removed, then the human being becomes worthless. This is my deep concern.</p>

<p>We are in the process of redefining what it is that has inherent worth in our culture from human beings just simply because they are humans that have worth, to states of existence having worth. If that’s happening, and in my view it is incontestable that such a thing is happening, that is the foundation of the entire quality of life argument, it is also the foundation of the euthanasia argument, so-called mercy killing. It is also the argument that Dr. Kervorkian uses, though he brings in another aspect of medicine into this. If this is happening, then a radical shift is taking place in our thinking and our culture.</p>

<p>The shift is attendant with and also encouraged by a shift in language and the incorporation of the medical community in this change of philosophic notions. In other words, how do we change people’s philosophic notions about this? What we do is change their language and we also use what has been considered a highly respected profession and we hitchhike on that respect and confidence that we have in the profession and we redefine something in our culture. The redefinition is going on, friends. And this is where the book <em>The Nazi Doctors</em> comes in. I’d like to tell you what Robert J. Lifton reflected on as he interviewed many of those people that were a part of the medical community and also victims of the medical community during the height of National Socialism in Germany.</p>

<p><em>The Nazi Doctors</em> was published in 1986 by Basic Books. He’s written a number of books. He says in the introduction of the book, “My goal in this study is to uncover psychological conditions conducive to evil.”&nbsp;(p. 12) Then he says a couple of pages later, “My argument in this study is that the medicalization of killing—the imagery of killing in the name of healing—was crucial to that terrible step. At the heart of the Nazi enterprise, then, is the destruction of the boundary between healing and killing.”&nbsp;(p. 14) Now this quote needs to be repeated. Here is his main thesis after all of this study from 1979 to 1986, seven years of traveling all over the world interviewing doctors that were part of the process and also those who were victims of the process. His goal is to show the psychological conditions that are conducive to evil. His thesis is that “the medicalization of killing—the imagery of killing in the name of healing—was crucial to that terrible step. At the heart of the Nazi enterprise, then, is the destruction of the boundary between healing and killing.”&nbsp;He calls it “<em>killing as a therapeutic imperative</em>.”&nbsp;[Emphasis in the original] (p. 15) He then goes on to say that “This reversal of healing and killing became an organizing principle of the work, and I came to suspect the relevance of that reversal for other genocidal projects.”&nbsp;(p. xii-xiii) Right at the heart was a reversal of killing as killing, to killing as healing.</p>

<p>Now on February 14, 1992 I watched “20/20”&nbsp;on ABC. Dr. Kervorkian was being interviewed. Dr. Kervorkian, “Dr. Death,” “Jack the Dripper,” you know who he is. When he was asked about why he did this he made this very telling comment. He said, “<em>A doctor is a servant and I’m here to serve the needs of the patient</em>.”&nbsp;What’s curious about this remark is that traditionally doctors have been healers, care-givers. Their role has been defined in terms of giving life to their patients. When patient’s needs were considered, the chief need of the patient was to stay alive. When a doctor says do what I tell you. I’m concerned with your needs. What he’s saying is do what I’m telling you because I’m trying to keep you alive and that which I direct you to do will promote health. Doctors are there to keep people alive, to give care, to promote health. “Needs”&nbsp;used to mean saving their life. Dr. Kervorkian says that meeting a patient’s needs is killing them. Dr. Kervorkian is saying that sometimes, using Robert Lifton’s words, sometimes killing is a therapeutic imperative. Dr. Kervorkian has redefined what the role of doctors and the role they play in our society.</p>

<p>To put it simply, Lifton’s goal was to discover what psychological changes or ways of thinking would ultimately result in indescribable evil. His answer was that one of the things that could cause that was turning to killing as a therapeutic imperative, thus erasing the distinction between healing and killing.</p>

<p>If one is encouraged, Lifton argues, to see killing as healing of any kind, whether it be a type of individual healing, a type of social healing, or a type of cultural cleansing, then you are on the threshold of indescribable evil.</p>

<p>Furthermore, this evil has the capability of incredibly sublime rationalization. Lifton notes the recollection of survivor physician Dr. Ella Lingens-Reiner, who pointed to the chimneys in the distance and asked a Nazi doctor, Fritz Klein, “How can you reconcile that with your Hippocratic Oath as a doctor?”&nbsp;He answered, “Of course, I am a doctor and I want to preserve life. And out of respect for human life, I would remove a gangrenous appendix from a diseased body. The Jew is the gangrenous appendix in the body of mankind.”&nbsp;(p. 16)</p>

<p>Listen very carefully to what this man has said. He said that he killed Jews out of respect for human life. The tragic thing is that he really believed that he was respecting life by killing Jews. Tell me, how is that different from the rhetoric of the euthanasia issue now? We kill out of so-called respect for life.</p>

<p>It’s no accident that the medical profession played a crucial role then and is playing a crucial role now in this shift, in this rationalization, in this destruction of the boundary between killing and healing. Doctors were the obvious choice of a profession to use to propel this transition of thinking from killing as killing, to killing as healing. Lifton notes, “It is they who work at the border of life and death, who are most associated with the awesome, death-defying, and sometimes death-dealing aura of the primitive shaman and medicine man. As bearers of this shamanistic legacy and contemporary practitioners of mysterious healing arts, it is they [the doctors] who are likely to be called upon to become biological activists.”&nbsp;(p. 17) So even in our culture we are using doctors and the “aura of this shamanistic legacy, these awesome death-defying, and sometimes death-dealing”&nbsp;individuals. We are using them as biological activists.</p>

<p>One last observation about this whole process. Lifton identifies the sequence that led to this shift in thinking about human beings. The sequence has five steps:</p>

<ol>
	<li>coercive sterilization</li>
	<li>killing “impaired”&nbsp;children</li>
	<li>killing “impaired”&nbsp;adults</li>
	<li>killing “impaired”&nbsp;inmates of concentration camps [notice how the numbers of people qualifying for death is broadening]</li>
	<li>mass extermination, mostly of Jews</li>
</ol>

<p>Lifton observes that “sterilization doctrine...set the tone for the regime’s medicalized approach to ’life unworthy of life.’”&nbsp;(p. 25)</p>

<p>Now I don’t believe that we are following the same sequence that he identifies here because coercive sterilization does not happen in this country. Some of you may be saying that if I’m suggesting a slippery slope to the same kind of thing, logically thinking the mass extermination of people here, then why aren’t we seeing that same sequence of events happening in our culture? My point is we are in fact seeing that, but we don’t see it being initiated by coercive sterilization.</p>

<p>Lifton’s point was that sterilization was a practice that set the tone for the medical approach to dealing with life that is considered unworthy of life. We don’t have sterilization here, but we have something else that fits the bill, that was the first step of this whole series of events that we see in process right now. It wasn’t sterilization in our country, it was abortion.</p>

<p>Abortion seems to fulfill the same function as coercive sterilization did but for slightly different reasons. Just as sterilization was viewed as a healing act, abortions are considered “therapeutic.”&nbsp;Abortion is different in that it is not meant to cull out the genetically undesirable, but rather the merely unwanted. Even so, both seem to be the first step that lay the philosophic foundation for the steps that follow. For the Nazis, it was sterilization that was the first step that led to killing impaired children and then killing impaired adults. In our culture, abortion has served that function because clearly since 1973 we have moved towards the unofficial, though widespread, killing of impaired children and now the attempt to legalize the killing of impaired adults, though unofficially that is going on (Dr. Death).</p>

<p>There is a slippery slope, my friends, and we are on it. I hope you are thinking soberly about these issues and that you aren’t merely dismissing these reflections as the wide-eyed speculations of a religious right-winger. I am trying my best to approach this in a sober fashion and to demonstrate for you that there is a very dramatic parallel in the way we view human life to what happened forty years ago. If we follow the sequence, the five step sequence of the Nazis, we are already significantly into the third stage. The kick-off was just a bit different, but nonetheless significant in that it changed the way human beings were viewed as having a life unworthy of being lived. And we are seeing human beings having less and less intrinsic value in themselves, but merely instrumental value, that which leads to something that has intrinsic value. Once that which has instrumental value does not lead to something intrinsically valuable, that thing, in this case human beings, becomes worthless, just like worthless Cambodian reil.</p>

<p>At least that’s the way I see it.</p>
</div>

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title: Homosexuality Is Unnatural: An Is-Ought Fallacy?
topic: Sexuality and Gender
author: Greg Koukl
date: 04/16/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/homosexuality-is-unnatural-an-is-ought-fallacy-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Understanding the teleological argument and the is-ought fallacy helps us to answer an important question about what the Bible says regarding Homosexuality.</em></p>

<p>Recently a caller to the radio told me about a conversation he’d had about homosexuality. The caller made the teleological argument, that looking at what the natural functions of the male and female reproductive organs are for, we can draw certain conclusions about how they should properly be used. The person he was talking with challenged his argument that you can’t get an “ought”&nbsp;from an “is.” The challenger seemed to be saying that just because it is that way in nature doesn’t mean that we can derive a moral rule from it. The caller asked if the challenge was incorrect and how to respond to it.</p>

<p>On the principle the challenger is correct in describing the is-ought fallacy. But rather than working against the teleological argument, that principle works against a common argument in favor of homosexuality, which is, if homosexual interests are natural to someone, they are therefore morally acceptable. That is an example of an is-ought fallacy.</p>

<p>The is-ought fallacy, first articulated, by David Hume is put simply as you can’t get an ’ought’&nbsp;from an ’is.’&nbsp;The more precise way of characterizing it is this; You cannot have a syllogism that has a moral term in the conclusion if there is no moral term in the premises. To be a valid argument, the conclusion has to follow from the premises. You can’t have anything in the conclusion that isn’t already set up in the premises. Hume identified this particular fallacy in arguments that were based on mere descriptive elements but had a conclusion with moral terms in it. That is the is-ought fallacy.</p>

<p>People sometimes argue in favor of homosexuality by arguing that their inclination is natural, and if it’s natural, then we shouldn’t be making any moral objections about it. If that is their argument they are guilty of is-ought.</p>

<p>First of all, I’m not entirely sure what they mean by ’natural.’&nbsp;If they mean it occurs in nature, then everything is natural. Even concrete is natural because it occurs in nature. So a clarification needs to be made on that particular point. Blindness occurs in nature. Is blindness natural?</p>

<p>It seems like they’re just simply making a description: This is the way it is; therefore it is okay, in the moral sense of the word. They are presuming some moral state of affairs based on a mere description, and that’s an example of the is-ought fallacy.</p>

<p>If they want to work on repairing the flaw in their argument, they’re welcome to try that. It would involve introducing a moral term that can be substantiated into the premise to arrive at a conclusion with a moral term. They might say, “If a thing is natural, then it’s moral. This is natural for me, therefore it’s moral.”&nbsp;Now, there’s a valid argument. I don’t think it’s sound, but at least it doesn’t commit the is-ought fallacy.</p>

<p>Let’s look at the teleological argument based on function. The teleological argument isn’t about just the way a thing works, but the way a thing is intended to work—purpose. My pen functions a certain way. It doesn’t just function that way by accident. It was intended by someone to function with a purpose. For those who are not familiar with this, teleology means ’end.’&nbsp;A telos is ’end’&nbsp;as in ’goal.’&nbsp;Something is intended for a purpose and it’s used for that purpose.</p>

<p>So if I intend to go from Los Angeles to Napa which is north of Los Angeles but I get in my car and head south on the 405 to the 5, and then head down towards the Mexican border, you can see that I am going the wrong direction. But, of course, the word “wrong”&nbsp;here means that I am not moving towards my goal. I am not accomplishing the goal that I intended to accomplish. I am actually moving in a way that’s inconsistent with my goal, and therefore we can call it the wrong direction.</p>

<p>I’m not actually using a moral ’wrong’&nbsp;in this particular illustration, but notice how you can understand right or wrong in terms of teleology, depending on what the goal is. If I have a loose screw on the refrigerator and I choose a butter knife to tighten the screw, I’m going to ruin the butter knife because I’m not using it for its intended purpose. It’s not made to function as a screwdriver, even if it can be used that way in a pinch. It will get bent or can slip out and scratch the refrigerator. It wasn’t fulfilling its telos, its purpose, or its function, and therefore it was being used wrongly.</p>

<p>With that as a foundation, let’s look at whether the teleological argument against homosexuality suffers from the is-ought fallacy.</p>

<p>One way of arguing against homosexuality is to say that males were not intended to have sex with other males, and we can tell that by the way sexual organs appear to be intended to function. Because men were not intended to have sex with other males, and they do so, then they are violating their natural teleology, their natural function. But notice that in the nature of the argument we are making a moral claim implicitly up front. We’re saying, We ought to use things the way they were intended by their Maker to be used, consistent with their teleology. This isn’t that way, therefore it’s wrong. It’s not arguing merely on how bodies are naturally, but how they are intended to function naturally. The teleology is the moral term in the premises.</p>

<p>Incidentally, this is the very argument that is being used in the Bible in both the Old Testament and the New Testament regarding homosexuality. In the book of Leviticus, it talks about homosexuality being a capital crime, and an abomination. Leviticus 18:22, “You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.”&nbsp;The purpose of sex is for a man and woman, so it’s abomination when that intended function is violated by homosexual sex.</p>

<p>In Romans 1:26, the New Testament says, “For this reason, God gave them over to degrading passions, for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural,”&nbsp;that is, different than what God intended. “And in the same way, also, men abandoned the natural function of the woman, and burned in their desire towards one another.”&nbsp;The translation used here is the New American Standard Bible because I think the NIV is woefully inadequate in the way it translates this passage from the Greek.</p>

<p>Paul is saying that when it comes to sexual desire, women were made for men, and men for women, and that’s the functional relationship that God designed them for. They are violating this functional relationship by instead sexually desiring one that was not intended. And, in fact, the wording about male homosexuality is, “They abandoned the natural function of the woman.”&nbsp;So the woman that God provided for them, they are abandoning that for something that, in God’s teleology, is unnatural. So that’s the way our natural law argument works in these two passages.</p>

<p>Of course, this trades on the notion that human beings, in this case, were made for certain ends. And if a person wants to deny God, then we weren’t made for certain ends, and that’s a way to get out of this argument. So does this argument work for people who are not theists?</p>

<p>The <em>appearance</em> of design suggests <em>genuine</em> design. The appearance of teleology suggests genuine teleology, and so examples of teleology in the natural realm point to the existence of God. That’s what a teleological argument for God’s existence amounts to—the argument from design. So the teleology, to me, is evidence for God, and that entails certain moral obligations to the God that created with purpose.</p>

<p>Let’s just say somebody says, “I don’t believe that.”&nbsp;I say, okay, you’re welcome to not believe it, but then you can’t argue teleologically. In fact, you can’t even argue that if it’s natural, it’s okay, because you’re arguing a certain teleology: that if you find it in nature, that means it’s morally acceptable. You can’t help yourself to the teleological argument if you don’t believe in God.</p>

<p>What you ought to be saying if you don’t believe in God is, It’s just molecules clashing in the universe. There is no right and wrong, so you have no justification for claiming that I’m wrong. Now, that would be consistent—the relativistic view of a materialistic universe. But, of course, then they can’t complain their “rights”&nbsp;because rights don’t have any place in a purely naturalistic system. Rights are part of teleology, endowed with creation.</p>

<p>It really is an issue of consistency of worldviews here, as you can see. But I think a more precise understanding of the teleological argument and the is-ought fallacy helps us to answer the original challenge the caller had.</p>
</div>

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title: Promises, Promises Bible Promises Worksheet
topic: Tactics and Tools
author: Guest Author
date: 04/05/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/promises-promises-bible-promises-worksheet
content:
            <div> 
		<div class="Section1">
<p><em>A comprehensive look at what a Bible promise is, how we should understand its contextual meaning, a detailed look at the parts of a promise, and a step by step analysis of particular biblical passage examples to help guide you through the exercise.</em></p>

<h2>I. Guiding principles</h2>

<p><strong>A. What is a promise?</strong></p>

<p>1. A promise is a binding pledge from one person to another to do, or not to do, some specific act. In Scripture, the central promise-giver is God.</p>

<p>2. The person to whom the promise is made has a right to expect the promise to be fulfilled.</p>

<p>3. Before anyone can “claim”&nbsp;a promise, however, he must be certain the promise is for him.</p>

<p>4. This is determined by looking closely at the details of the promise itself and applying two foundational principles of sound interpretation.</p>

<p><strong>B. First principle: The correct meaning of any biblical passage is the meaning the author had in mind when he wrote it.</strong></p>

<p>1. God is the principle author of scripture. He has an idea in his mind that he conveys through the ordinary conventions of language.</p>

<p>2. If we ignore these conventions, we can have no confidence in our conclusions.</p>

<p><strong>C. Second principle: Context is king.</strong></p>

<p>1. We discover the author’s intent by paying attention to language—the words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs and how they relate to each other grammatically.</p>

<p>2. We also note the historical setting—the specific circumstances and the cultural background of the writer and recipient. That is also part of the context.</p>

<h2>II. The Parts of a Promise</h2>

<p><strong>A. Who?—The particular people the promise is made to</strong></p>

<p>1. The promise may be for a specific person or group, or it may be for anyone.</p>

<p>2. Ask the question “Am I the person the promise is made to?”</p>

<p>3. If the promise is to a group (e.g. Jews, Gentiles, Christians) ask, “Am I part of that group the promise is made to?”</p>

<p><strong>B. What?—The particulars of the promise</strong></p>

<p>1. Specify what the promise actually commits to, what will happen when the promise is fulfilled</p>

<p>2. Ask, “What is promised? What will happen or not happen?”</p>

<p><strong>C. Why?—The requirements or conditions of the promise</strong></p>

<p>1. Identify the requirements or conditions that the recipient must fulfill to qualify for the promise, often signaled by an “if/then”&nbsp;clause.</p>

<p>2. Ask, “Do I meet the requirements?”</p>

<p><strong>D. When—The promise time</strong></p>

<p>1. The promise may be for a particular time (“...at this time next year...”) or for any period of time.</p>
</div>

<div class="Section2">
<p>2. Ask the question “What is the time of the promise?”</p>

<h2>III. Sample Exercises</h2>

<p><strong>A. Instructions</strong></p>

<p>1. With each passage below, answer the four questions: Who? What? Why? When?</p>

<p>Who is the promise given to? Identify the person or the group.</p>

<p>What is promised? What will happen or not happen?</p>

<p>Why? Is the promise conditional, and if so, what are the conditions?</p>

<p>When is the promise for, a specific time or anytime?</p>

<p>2. Be sure to get your answers by looking carefully at the words of the promise itself&nbsp;<em>in light of the larger context of the passage</em>.</p>

<p>3. Keep in mind that in order to answer all the questions you may have to read the entire chapter or more to be faithful to the context.</p>

<p>4. In the first example I filled in the answers for you so you can see how it works.</p>

<p><strong>B. John 3:16—“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”</strong></p>

<p>Who is the promise given to? “Whoever”</p>

<p>What is promised? What will happen or not happen?&nbsp;“They shall not perish. They shall have eternal life.”</p>

<p>Why? List the conditions or requirements of the promise. “Believe in Him (Jesus).”</p>

<p>When is the promise for, a specific time or anytime? “Timeless”</p>

<p>That was easy. Here’s another easy one (they’ll get harder).</p>

<p><strong>C. Genesis 9:8-11—Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”&nbsp;And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come.”</strong></p>

<p>Who is the promise given to?</p>
</div>

<div class="Section3">
<p>What is promised? What will happen or not happen?</p>

<p>Why? List the conditions or requirements of the promise.</p>

<p>When is the promise for, a specific time or anytime?</p>

<p>Now for a more tricky one...</p>

<p><strong>D. Joshua 1:9—“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.”</strong></p>

<p>1. This scripture was printed on the cover of biblical materials given to our troops fighting in Iraq. Do our soldiers have the right to claim this promise, and is God obligated to respond if they do? Let’s find out.</p>

<p>2. First, answer the four questions below by using only Joshua 1:9 in isolation from its context (the way many Christians read it). I’ll answer the first one for you.</p>

<p>Who is the promise given to? “you”</p>

<p>What is promised? What will happen or not happen?</p>

<p>Why? List the conditions or requirements of the promise.</p>

<p>When is the promise for, a specific time or anytime?</p>

<p>3. Notice that if we read only Joshua 1:9, the verse seems to be an unconditional and timeless promise, to any person or persons (“you”), of God’s continued protection and help. If the “you”&nbsp;refers to men in the military in general, they can expect God to fulfill His promise. But we really don’t know who God is talking to simply by looking at Joshua 1:9. Instead, we need to examine the larger context to understand what is really going on. Let’s do that next.</p>

<p>4. Read the larger context (Joshua 1:1-9) and answer the same questions.</p>

<p>Who is the promise given to?</p>

<p>What is promised? What will happen or not happen?</p>
</div>

<div class="Section4">
<p>Why? List the conditions or requirements of the promise.</p>

<p>When is the promise for, a specific time or anytime?</p>

<p><strong>Do you see how the context changes everything?</strong></p>

<p>Here are a few more passages you might want to look at and apply our four questions to. Be forewarned, what you discover about the Jeremiah 29 and 2 Chronicle 7 passages may be painful.</p>

<p>John 1:12</p>

<p>John 8:32 (note 8:31-36)</p>

<p>John 3:18</p>

<p>Romans 8:28-29</p>

<p>Jeremiah 29:11 (The context begins at the beginning of the chapter).</p>

<p>Jeremiah 24:4-7</p>

<p>2 Chronicles 7:14 (The full context starts in chapter 6. Make note of the details of Solomon’s prayer in 6:17-27 in light of God’s response in chapter 7.)</p>

<h2>IV. Wrapping Up...</h2>

<p>We can only legitimately claim a biblical promise if it is rightfully ours.</p>

<p>We know if a promise applies to us by answering four questions: Who? What? Why? When?</p>

<p>If the promise is for us, and we have satisfied the conditions, and the promise is for our time, then we can count on God to keep His word.</p>

<p>If not, then we must leave the promise to its rightful owner and profit from the text by learning what we can from God’s faithful dealings with them.</p>

<p>* Adapted from the “Understanding Scripture”&nbsp;syllabus, by David B. Koukl</p>

<p>“Promises, Promises”&nbsp;©2010 David B. Koukl</p>

<p>Stand to Reason, 1-800-2-REASON</p>
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title: Are Blacks Human Beings?
topic: Bioethics
author: Greg Koukl
date: 04/02/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/are-blacks-human-beings-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>The question “Are Blacks human beings?”&nbsp;is so bizarre it’s almost comical. Who could ask such a thing today? Yet the question is still being asked, this time with a twist.</em></p>

<p>Are Blacks human beings? Believe it or not, there was a time when the Supreme Court’s answer to this question was no, not if they were slaves.</p>

<p>It was 1856. Dred Scott, a Black slave, had been taken north of the Mason-Dixon line into Illinois and Wisconsin where slavery was prohibited by the Missouri Compromise.</p>

<p>Scott sued for his freedom and lost. The Supreme Court ruled that the Compromise was unconstitutional. Congress, they said, had no authority to limit slavery in that way.</p>

<p>In the Court’s mind, the choice to own slaves was an individual decision, a private matter for each citizen to struggle with apart from interference by the state. If a person, in an act of conscience, chose not to keep slaves, that was his own decision, but he could not force that choice on others. Every person had a private right to choose.</p>

<p>Dred Scott, as a slave, was declared chattel—human property. He was a possession of his owner, and the owner had a right to do whatever he wanted with his assets. Three of the justices held that even a Negro who had descended from slaves had no rights as an American citizen and thus no standing in the court.</p>

<p>A civil war and 100 years of oppression stood between the slave as property and the slave as human being.</p>

<p>Today the dream of Black America has come true, by and large. Slavery is a thing of the past and Blacks are well into the mainstream of American life. In a climate of civil rights and civil liberties the question “Are Blacks human beings?”&nbsp;sounds so bizarre it’s almost comical. Who could ask such a thing today?</p>

<p>The question, however, is still being asked, this time with a twist: Is an unborn baby a human being? Characteristically, our answer as a nation has been the same as Dred Scott’s Supreme Court. No, the child is the property of the woman who carries it. A woman has a right to do whatever she wants with her own property. Abortion is a private, individual decision that cannot be denied by others. Every person has a right to choose.</p>

<p>Much of the justification for this position focuses on the confusion about when life begins. However, the scientific community is of one mind on this. Biologically the life of a new organism always begins at conception.</p>

<p>When a cat conceives, what kind of life is stirring in its womb? What kind of being is living there? It’s not a dog being, is it? It’s not a salamander being, or a mosquito being. A close look at its genetic structure shows that there’s only one kind of being growing there, a feline being, a cat being.</p>

<p>If the biological life of any being begins at conception (as scientists agree), then any termination of pregnancy kills the life of an individual being, however rudimentary its development may be. If the cat’s pregnancy is aborted, a kitten will die.</p>

<p>When a human conceives, what kind of being has just started a new life? There’s only one answer: a human being. From the very first day a small, individual, human being is developing in his mother’s womb. If her pregnancy is terminated, a life is lost, the life of a human being. There’s no way around it.</p>

<p>In the case of humans, however, a new category has been added, distinct from biological life: personhood. When does this human being become a protected member of the human community?</p>

<p>Whether any baby is a “person”&nbsp;or not is a question for the lawmakers to decide. The legal concept of personhood is malleable. Lawmakers define who is protected by the law and who is excluded. The law says, for example, even a company can be a person in the case of a corporation. On the other hand, in 1856 Black slave babies were not persons according to the Taney Court.</p>

<p>In 1973, the Blackmun Supreme Court, in the spirit of Dred Scott, relegated the unborn child to the status of chattel—mere human property. Their decision, however, will not change the fact that with every aborted pregnancy a living being loses its life. A human being.</p>
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title: Is Faith a Blind Leap?
topic: Theology
author: Brett Kunkle
date: 04/16/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/is-faith-a-blind-leap-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>According to New Atheist Sam Harris, “Faith is generally nothing more than the permission religious people give one another to believe things strongly without evidence.”* Coming from an atheist, this view is not surprising. But when it comes from believers? Recently, I heard a Christian argue, “Providing a reason for your faith is ultimately fruitless, regardless of how logical your reasons might be. Faith is believing <em>without</em> reasons or evidence.”&nbsp;Again, I’m not surprised. Disappointed, but not surprised.</p>

<p>Atheists and believers alike share in this gravely mistaken view of faith. For both, faith is a blind, arbitrary leap in the dark that has no relationship to reason, evidence or knowledge. With the barrage of intellectual challenges from a secular culture pounding away at Christianity, believers think this view protects and preserves faith. Rational and scientific objections to God, Jesus, and the Bible lose their force if we retreat into the fortress of faith, right? Wrong.</p>

<p>Rather than securing the faith of our young people, this view undermines it. First, it is a flawed view of faith, contrary to the biblical teaching. In Acts 17:2-4, we find Paul with Jews in the synagogue, where he “reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and giving evidence”&nbsp;for Jesus. The result? “And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, along with a large number of the God-fearing Greeks and a number of the leading women”&nbsp;(v. 4). Notice the connection between faith and reason.</p>

<p>In I Corinthians 15, Paul binds our faith with the facts of Jesus’&nbsp;resurrection, arguing, “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain”&nbsp;(v. 14). Furthermore, “if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless...”&nbsp;(vv. 16-17). Those who trust in a dead Jesus “are of all men most to be pitied”&nbsp;(v. 19). Faith is futile when divorced from fact.</p>

<p>Second, this view doesn’t do justice to our human nature, which bears the image of God. Like God, human beings have a rational mind, and as a result, we seek to make sense of the world around us. We are evidence-gatherers by nature, as we search for the truth. Blind faith doesn’t sit well with the human intellect, and when young believers are told they must make a choice between faith and fact, oftentimes faith is abandoned.</p>

<p>We must continue to fight this false view of faith in our homes, churches, and youth groups. We must teach the biblical view of faith as trusting in what we have good reasons to believe is true, and then show students we <em>do</em> have good reasons to think Christianity is true.</p>

<p>*<em>Letter to a Christian Nation</em> (New York: Vintage Books, 2008), 110</p>
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title: The Doctrine of the Trinity at Nicaea and Chalcedon
topic: Theology
author: Melinda Penner
date: 04/05/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-doctrine-of-the-trinity-at-nicaea-and-chalcedon
content:
            <div> 
		<div class="Section1">
<p><em>An in-depth look on how the early church took both the Bible and rationality seriously and used the Bible as the authority and source of doctrine in working out the details of the doctrines of the Trinity.</em></p>

<h2>Introduction</h2>

<p>The formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity is a history of the refinement of terms and philosophical categories. Proper terminology was a primary issue of the ecumenical councils of the fourth and fifth centuries, and so was precision of thought and the philosophical categories used to characterize the Trinitarian and Christological doctrines. The Council of Nicaea resolved the question of Jesus’&nbsp;deity, but led to further dissent about Jesus’&nbsp;human and divine natures. These issues culminated in the expression of the doctrine at Chalcedon.</p>

<p>The impressive thought and debate that went into the Councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon produced biblically sound, but also intellectually virtuous doctrines. F.F. Bruce expresses the importance of accurate language in the creeds: “Inasmuch as the deity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity are embedded in the New Testament, although not explicitly formulated there, we must make the effort of wrestling with difficult terminology if we are not to fall an easy prey to misunderstanding or to actual heresy.”&nbsp;Doctrinal development requires rigorous intellectual skills and sound philosophic categories to accurately apply God’s revelation. Thomas Torrance underscores the importance of applying good reasoning to theology so that the rationality of God can “throw its masterful light upon the whole area of human experience and knowledge.”&nbsp;The struggle for clarity of terms and thought in the expression of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and Christology helped build a solid doctrinal foundation that is also marked by its philosophic soundness. The development of rational doctrines is an example of creative interchange between theology and philosophy where both disciplines contribute equally.</p>

<h2>The Historical Foundation of the Doctrine of the Trinity</h2>

<p>The doctrine of the Trinity developed from implicit to explicit form in the early centuries of the church and was not invented at Nicaea. The early church believed the doctrine in its general form based on the revelation of Scripture. The foundation of the early doctrine of the Trinity was the baptismal formula and the doxologies in the Epistles along with the Logos-doctrine of John. The earliest confessions professed Jesus to be God. Peter exclaimed, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”&nbsp;(Matthew 16:16), and the eunuch whom Phillip baptized confessed his belief,: “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God”&nbsp;(Acts 8:37). Admission to the church was connected with belief in the doctrine of the Trinity as evidenced by the early baptismal formula that was used in accordance with the command of Jesus in Matthew 28:19. The doctrine of the Trinity was essential from the beginning of the Christian Church.</p>

<p>The earliest of the formal creeds, The Apostle’s Creed, have the Trinitarian elements that would be developed later. However, there was no need for a technical definition of the Trinity during the first two-and-a-half centuries until heresies arose challenging Jesus’&nbsp;divinity. Shedd says that belief in the Trinity “started not so much with three Persons as the deity of the Son. It is indisputable that they [the early church] worshiped Jesus. They emphasized the deity of Jesus as much or more than the Father in the early church. The incarnation is the great dogmatic idea of the first Christian centuries and shapes the whole thinking and experience of the church.”&nbsp;The person of Christ was the catalyst for the Trinitarian debate. Consequently, the person of Christ would follow quickly after the Trinity as needing more precise expression, which the early church was fully equipped to do with their theological and philosophical skills.</p>

<p>The Apostles’&nbsp;Creed was used by the early church from the second century and was probably condensed from the Apostles’&nbsp;writings. The creed is very clear and concise concerning the essential doctrines of Christianity. It teaches the existence of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The biblical language of the Apostles’&nbsp;Creed was sufficient for the time; there was no need for exact and rigorous Trinitarian distinctions until heresies arose.</p>

<p>The Apostolic Fathers freely applied the term “God”&nbsp;to Jesus in the strict sense of divine substance. They admitted to only one divine substance and confined worship to the one true God, yet worshiped the Son. They attributed the properties of the divine essence to the Son.</p>

<h2>Origen’s Contribution</h2>

<p>Improper exegesis was responsible for the heresies that arose after the early period of the Church. Monarchianism, the denial of the plurality of persons of the Trinity, cited only those texts that teach the unity of God and neglected the others that imply His real and not modal trinality. Arius followed the other extreme with the same type of one-sided exegesis and asserted the distinct personality of the Son at the expense of His unity of essence with the Father. It was necessary for the Nicene Council to employ an all-encompassing exegesis of the biblical data and assert consubstantiality and hypostatical distinction. This required not only sound exegesis, but accurate translation into terms and categories that expressed the data in the Bible. It required sophisticated linguistic and philosophical acumen.</p>

<p>Origen’s work marked a significant milestone in the doctrinal expression of the Trinity. Origen (c. 185-c. 254) taught at the Catechetical School at Alexandria, which reached its zenith under his tutelage. He emphasized the hypostatical distinctions between the persons of the Trinity; however, he laid the groundwork for the radical errors that required a whole century of discussion to work out. Arius cited Origen as his authority to support his view that the Son is finite and created. Athanasius also claimed Origen taught the same doctrine as he.</p>

<p>Despite this confusion, Origen gave the church the best way to harmonize the biblical terminology of the Father and the Son. Origen provided the key that the Son is homoousios to the Father, of one substance or essence with the Father. But Origen was speculative in his theology and carried his interpretations beyond the literal content of Scripture to allegorical extremes. In 553 Origen was declared a heretic.</p>

<p>Origen’s influence on the future debate, however, is indisputable. He captured the idea of Sonship by making a sharp distinction between three hypostases, a term not previously employed. He maintained three divine hypostases or personal substances. These categories provided the framework for the subsequent refinement at Nicaea.</p>

<h2>The Arian Controversy</h2>

<p>The Council of Nicaea was motivated by the Trinitarian debates propelled by the views of Arius (256-336). The purpose of the council was to clarity the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. Arius’&nbsp;desire was to make the relation of the Father to the Son comprehensible. Arians equated the limits of their understanding with the limits of reality. What they could not conceive could not be. But the Arians also neglected the distinction between the rationality of an idea and the ability to fully comprehend it. Christian theology is utterly rational, despite the inability to fully comprehend all of the implications of a biblical doctrine.</p>

<p>Arius believed that the Father and Son were of similar substances, but Jesus did not share in the same divine substance of the Father. Jesus was not fully divine in the same way as the Father. Arius denied both the personality and deity of the Spirit. He considered it to be God’s force, not personal and not God, but the power by which God worked in creation. His views were condemned by the Synod of Alexandria in 321, but the spread of Arianism made it clear that the Apostles’&nbsp;Creed was no longer sufficient to protect orthodoxy. The Arian controversy motivated the church to define the standard of the doctrine more explicitly.</p>

<p>Athanasius was Arius’&nbsp;principle foe at Nicaea. Louis Berkhof points out the significance of Athanasius’&nbsp;defense: “He felt that to regard Christ as a creature was to deny that faith in Him brings man into saving union with God.”&nbsp;Athanasius was primarily responsible for bringing about the condemnation of Arianism at the Council of Nicaea by mounting the defense of orthodoxy. Athanasius argued mainly from Scripture, but also employed sophisticated philosophical arguments. He is regarded as the greatest theologian of his time.</p>

<p>Church representatives from all over the known world were invited to attend the first ecumenical council. They met at Nicaea in Bithynia from early May to late June, 325 A.D. ; 318 bishops were in attendance, 1/6 of the whole body of bishops. There were three basic parties represented at Nicaea, each with a particular theological concern in defining the doctrine of the Trinity. The first group was made up of true Arians, who were vastly outnumbered. A second group was the Nicenes, represented by their leader Athanasius. A third group, led by Eusebius of Caesarea, was named the “homoiousions”&nbsp;(defined below) for their favor of the term. Athanasius persuaded many of the middle-of-the-road homoiousions to take the homoousion position, so the second group gained a majority giving them a decisive advantage at the outset.</p>

<h2>The Nicene Solution</h2>

<p>The purpose of the Nicene Council was to faithfully express the teaching of Scripture and clarify the doctrine of the Trinity as completely as possible. They took pains to demonstrate that their views were Biblical and apostolic in origin. The Council formulated a creed that would serve as an authoritative guide in reading and interpreting Scripture. Their view of faith included rational activity; it involved “acts of recognition, apprehension and conception, of a very basic intuitive kind, in the responsible assent of the mind to truth inherent in God’s self-revelation to mankind.”&nbsp;For this reason, it was essential to the Council that they represent the Biblical witness in an intellectually respectful way, so the tools of reason and philosophy were employed to work out the doctrine of the Trinity in a rigorous and accurate manner.</p>

<p>The controversy between the parties at Nicaea raged over the proper term to express the kind of substance that the Trinity shares. The debate focused on the terms homoiousios and homoousios. Though the words look very similar, they were a world apart in what they conveyed about the nature of Jesus. The difference was whether the Son is of the same or a similar substance with the Father. Athanasius and his party favored the term homoousios, “of the same essence,”&nbsp;to describe the relation of the Son to the Father. This term identified the Son sharing the same essence with the Father as uncreated and necessary in His existence. This is the term that Origen had used a century earlier to explain this relation. The Arians preferred the term homoiousios , “like the Father”&nbsp;or “of a like essence with the Father.”&nbsp;The presence or absence of one letter made all the difference to say whether the Son was similar or identical to the divine essence.</p>

<p>Christology was central to the debate. The chief concern of Athanasius’&nbsp;group was the relationship of Jesus’&nbsp;deity to the doctrine of salvation. The Nicene Fathers considered the work of salvation the type of work only God could do. Only God could save because God is the offended party. The grace of Jesus Christ is the very grace of God Himself. As Athanasius said, “No creature can be saved by a creature.”&nbsp;How could it be the grace of God to pour out His wrath on an innocent third party? Jesus is a mediator in the full sense of revealing God himself because He is God.</p>

<p>As a direct response to Arianism on this point, the Council added the phrase “the Son is begotten from the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten not made.”&nbsp;This last statement was added to define the idea that the generation of the Son was an internal, necessary, and eternal act of God. The phrase precluded the possibility of misinterpreting it for creation of a temporal and finite substance or the generation of a secondary substance of a hybrid kind. Shedd points out the significance of this addition, “This phrase contained the metaphysical kernel of the dogma, and was the crucial test of Trinitarian orthodoxy and heterodoxy.”&nbsp;The words they chose expressed precise philosophical categories of existence that were essential to the doctrine so that there could be no misunderstanding of the orthodox view.</p>

<p>Little discussion took place at the Council of Nicaea regarding the Holy Spirit. First, there was not as much agreement on the relation of the Spirit in the Trinity as there was regarding the Son. Secondly, Athanasius and others who held to an orthodox view understood that once it is established that Jesus is of the same essence as the Father, it naturally follows from the biblical data that the Spirit is as well. Once they demonstrated the Biblical and philosophical possibility of two persons of the divine substance, it was a small step to demonstrate the third person. The Arians could no longer hide in ambiguous language with the application of the term homoousios.</p>

<p>The vast majority of the participants signed the creed, but instead of settling the controversy, the Council of Nicaea initiated a half century of theological turmoil that was marked by political interference and changing fortunes for Athanasius and Arianism. The tide of the controversy rose and fell with the theological sympathies of the emperors. One hundred fifty bishops met in 381 at Constantinople and declared the faith of the Nicene Creed in its original form as the sole legal religion in the empire and condemned all forms of Arianism.</p>

<h2>The Chalcedon Conclusion</h2>

<p>The Council of Nicaea defined the Biblical doctrine for the Trinity by focusing on the identity of Jesus, but it was not within the scope of the council to define Jesus’&nbsp;humanity and the relation of the two natures to each other. The Trinitarian doctrine had significant implications for Christology that was addressed at Chalcedon in 451 A.D. The council wrestled with how one person, Jesus, could have two natures. If Jesus is the same homoousios with the Father and is God, this must be reconciled with Jesus’&nbsp;clear humanity as evidenced in the Gospels.</p>

<p>Chalecedon was directed at the Nestorian and Eutychean heresies, which concurred with the Nicene Creed but worked out Jesus’&nbsp;deity in false relation to His humanity. Nestorianism’s error was the failure to unite the two natures in one person. Each nature represented separate persons somehow possessed by the man Jesus. The other heresy, Eutycheanism, drew the opposite conclusion. In this case, the human nature was subsumed by the divine nature making a hybrid and unique kind of nature. The solution at Chalcedon was to strike a Scriptural balance.</p>

<p>The solution sought at Chalcedon affirmed the unity of Jesus’&nbsp;person and the duality of His natures, and His identity with the divine substance. Four factors need to be balanced for an accurate understanding of Jesus: deity, humanity, the unity of one person, and the distinction of the two natures. This has been called “the Chalcedonian box”&nbsp;that defines the boundaries of orthodoxy and within which the answer must be found. The Chalcedonian creed falls short of plumbing the depths of the full implications of this doctrine (no doctrine can), but it lays out the essential elements of Christology and defines the boundaries of error. Shedd underscored the importance of Chalcedon, “It substantially completes the orthodox Christology of the ancient Church.”</p>

<h2>The Philosophical Categories</h2>

<p>The ecumenical councils used Scripture as their authority, but sought to work out the details in an intellectually rigorous way. The early theologians were also philosophers, and brought these categories of thought to bear on the debates. After all, if God is a rational being, His revelation must make logical sense, though this is different than being fully comprehensible to finite minds. If doctrines really “were inconsistent, then it could not express the central truth of the Christian religion and necessarily at least some of the claims made in stating the doctrines would be false.”&nbsp;So theology and philosophy must interact to express the most accurate and logical doctrines possible. The orthodox doctrines were worked out using philosophic categories of person, substance, and nature.</p>

<p>A person is a category of immaterial conscious substance. There seem to be three types of persons that we know of: God, angels, and humans. Persons are essentially souls. There are some capacities that are common to all persons: cognition, rationality, affect, volition, desire, perception, and morality are examples. The possession of these capacities qualifies a being for personhood. Jesus is a person in virtue of being God, therefore He is of the same type of conscious being as humans. It would not be appropriate or possible for Jesus to become a non-person, for instance an animal or a non-conscious thing, to initiate salvation.</p>

<p>Substances, or substantia, possess properties that make a thing what it is. The substance remains identical to itself through time and change. A substance is a natural kind that is marked off by “a set of its ultimate capacities that are possessed by it solely in virtue of the substance belonging to its natural kind.”&nbsp;Membership in the natural kind is constant through a person’s existence, it tells us what a thing is, and membership in the kind is the ground of identity through change. A substance cannot lose its essential properties and continue to exist. This is necessarily true if Jesus is to remain identical to the second person of the Trinity through the incarnation. The Council of Nicaea affirmed that Jesus was of one substance with the Father and the Spirit; He shares in the divine essence and continued to through the incarnation.</p>

<p>A nature is a set of essential properties that further mark off what sort of thing an individual substance is. The distinction between kinds of personal substances is the unique natures they possess. Orthodoxy holds that all of God’s properties are essential, but angels and humans have essential properties in virtue of their natures and accidental properties in virtue of their individual existence. Among God’s necessary properties are perfection, omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. Jesus could not lose these and continue to be homoousios to the Father, so somehow these divine properties coexisted with the human nature in the Jesus.</p>

<p>To understand how the second person of the Trinity could take on humanity, we must understand the difference between essential and accidental properties. To determine what are the essential properties of human nature, we must take into consideration the distinction between what is universal to all humans versus what is essential to all humans. Thomas Morris points out that it is universal that all human persons live on the surface of the earth, but that does not mean that it is essential that they do. Humans could live in a space lab for their entire bodily duration and still be human. It is also the case that all humans sin, but that is a universal property not an essential one since it is possible for humans to live without sin. Morris points out a further distinction that follows from this, “In order to be fully human, it is not necessary to be merely human. An individual is merely human just in case it has all the properties requisite for being fully human...and also some limitation properties as well.”&nbsp;This distinction will be helpful in solving issues of apparent incompatibilities between divine and human natures. Jesus is fully human, all that humanity was meant to be; the rest of the members of the human race are merely human, limited by the influence of sin.</p>

<p>The best test for determining what is essential to human nature is conceivability: Is it possible for human beings to exist without a particular property? When this test is administered to many properties that appear to be essential to humanity, it becomes clearer that many are actually accidental. Certainly it is conceivable that humans could exist without sin; in fact, this is the witness of Scripture in the Garden of Eden. So it would be fully consistent for Jesus to take on humanity that is somewhat different from the universal experience of the human race. Jesus would only have to take on the properties essential to humanity.</p>

<p>With this framework set, we can propose an analysis of what a human being is. A human is a personal substance that possesses the set of essential properties of human nature, and is embodied in its usual state of existence, but not always so. Jesus was fully human by this analysis. He retained the divine substance necessarily, and added human nature, remaining one person.</p>

<h2>Unique, Yet Rational</h2>

<p>God is a personal substance, but instead of the usual one-to-one correspondence of persons and substance that we are familiar with, God is three persons in one substance. The divine nature, shared by all three persons of the Trinity, is able to be instantiated only once. God is a union of three persons. The witness of the Bible is that God is one (Deut. 4:35). It also seems necessarily true that there can only be one being with the divine essence if God's maximal attributes are understood in a comparative sense. Part of the logic behind the Nicene Creed is that it was necessary for Jesus to be God. If Jesus made claims to divinity and was a separate person from the Father, the divine substance must admit of multiple persons. It was also understood that only God could affect salvation for humanity. A mere human could not accomplish the task.</p>

<p>Though unique, there appears to be no incoherence to the concept of three persons in one substance. Each personal substance of the Trinity has the essential properties of divine nature.</p>

<p>Each person of the Trinity is a center of consciousness with His own personal capacities. Jesus is a preexistent divine personal substance with two natures—a divine nature that added a human nature to His substance. Again, though it is a unique case for a person to have two natures, it seems possible for two personal natures to be coexemplified as long as their essential properties are not mutually exclusive. Because the second person of the Trinity had the same personal substance as the incarnated Jesus, they are identical persons. Though this person added a new nature, His essential properties did not change. Because natures are essential properties that cannot be lost without going out of existence, Jesus continues to have two natures. The incarnation could not be a temporary event, which is what orthodox doctrine holds.</p>

<h2>Conclusion</h2>

<p>The early church took both the Bible and rationality seriously. The Bible was the authority and source of doctrine. But the early church was not fideistic; they brought rigorous theological and intellectual efforts to bear in working out the details of the doctrines of the Trinity and the implications this had for Christology. This approach was essential to define orthodoxy and</p>

<p>defend the church against heresy. The Bible witnesses to the concept of the Trinity and a person with two natures and the doctrines bear up under philosophic scrutiny. The ancient creeds of Christendom and the articulation of two of the most fundamental Christian doctrines are found to be rational and commendable.</p>

<h2>Bibliography</h2>

<ul>
	<li>Berkhof, Louis. The History of Christian Doctrines. London, WI: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1937.</li>
	<li>Brown, Harold O.J. Heresies. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1984.</li>
	<li>Bruce, F.F. The Spreading Flame. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1958.</li>
	<li>Eisenhower, William D. “Creative Interchange between Philosophy and Theology: A Call to Dialogue.”&nbsp;Faith and Philosophy 9, no. 3 (July 1992).</li>
	<li>Hoffman, Joshua, and Gary Rosenkrantz. “Omnipotence.”&nbsp;Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro, eds. A Companion to Philosophy of Religion. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997.</li>
	<li>J.F. Johnson. “Athanasian Creed.”&nbsp;Walter A. Elwell, ed. Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1984.</li>
	<li>Macnamara, John, Marie La Palma, Gonzalo E. Reyes. “Logic and the Trinity.”&nbsp;Faith and Philosophy 11, no. 1 (January 1994).</li>
	<li>Moreland, J.P. and Scott Rae, Body &amp; Soul: Human Nature and the Crisis in Ethics. Downer’s Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000.</li>
	<li>Morris, Thomas. The Logic of God Incarnate. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.</li>
	<li>Muller, Richard A. Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1985.</li>
	<li>Schaff, Philip. The Creeds of Christendom. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books House, 1998.</li>
	<li>Shedd, William G,T. A History of Christian Doctrine. Vol. 1. Minneapolis: Klock and Klock Christian Publishers, 1978. Reprint, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1889.</li>
	<li>Torrance, Thomas F. God and Rationality. London: Oxford University Press, 1971.</li>
	<li>The Trinitarian Faith. Edinburgh: T. &amp; T. Clark, 1988.</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>

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title: Intuition: A Special Way of Knowing
topic: Philosophy
author: Greg Koukl
date: 04/16/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/intuition-a-special-way-of-knowing
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Why is it a national tragedy when 39 people commit suicide? Answering that question tells us something important about the existence of God and about a special way of knowing.</em></p>

<p>The headline of Thursday’s <em>LA Times</em> read, “39 Dead in Apparent Suicide.”&nbsp;From coast to coast the daily papers carried the story of the mass suicide of a religious cult in San Diego known as Heaven’s Gate. Before I read a single word of the coverage, a question occurred to me.</p>

<p>Why does mass suicide make the front page of papers all over the country? The obvious answer is, “Because it’s tragic.”&nbsp;This response, though, raises another question: “<em>Why</em> is it tragic?”&nbsp;The answer to this second question tells us more about the nature of the world than many people realize. The key to answering it lies in understanding a very particular way of knowing.</p>

<h2>How We Know Things</h2>

<p>We know things in a number of different ways. Some things we know as a result of discoveries we make in the physical world. We use our senses to empirically test our environment. After gathering information, we draw conclusions we believe are justified by the evidence. Philosophers sometimes call this “a posteriori”&nbsp;knowledge. Science often employs this empirical method of learning.</p>

<p>Still other things we know through pure reason. We draw inferences based on cause and effect, or we draw conclusions by employing the laws of rationality. If someone offers to show you a square circle for the small charge of $2, save your money. Square circles cannot exist because the notion is contradictory. One need not look behind the curtain to know with certainty that such a claim is false. The error is self-evident; contradictory things cannot both be true. There are squares and there are circles, but there are no square circles.</p>

<p>Both of these methods require justification before we can be confident of the results. To demonstrate the truthfulness of a scientific theory, we cite the evidence—the experiments, the observations, the factual data—that leads us to our conclusion. A theory is either good or bad, depending upon how well it is supported by the evidence.</p>

<p>To prove there are no square circles, we appeal to fundamental laws of rationality, like the law of non-contradiction. To test the soundness of an argument, we examine the logical steps that lead us to our conclusion. Are there any fallacies in our line of thinking? If the premises in our argument are accurate and our reasoning is valid, then our conclusion is sound and our results must be true.</p>

<h2>A Third Way</h2>

<p>There’s a third way of knowing, though, that needs no such justification: intuition. In fact, this way of knowing is so foundational that justification is impossible. That’s because knowledge by intuition is not gained by following a series of facts or a line of reasoning to a conclusion. Instead, we know intuitional truth simply by the process of introspection and immediate awareness.</p>

<p>When I use the word “intuition,”&nbsp;I mean something specific. I don’t mean female intuition, or a policeman’s hunch, or an experienced stockbroker’s sense that the market is headed for a plunge. Each of these is a type of a specialized insight into a circumstance based on prior experience.</p>

<p>The kind of intuition I have in mind is immediate and direct, what the <em>Encyclopedia of Philosophy</em> describes as “immediate knowledge of the truth of a proposition, where ’immediate’&nbsp;means ’not preceded by inference.’”<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1">1</a></sup></p>

<p>Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was referring to this kind of knowledge when he wrote, “A truth can come into the mind in two ways, namely as known in itself, and as known through another. What is known in itself is like a principle, and is perceived immediately by the mind...It is a firm and easy quality of mind which sees into principles.”<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2">2</a></sup></p>

<p>Philosophers call this kind of knowing “a priori”&nbsp;knowledge (literally, “from what is prior”), knowledge which one has prior to sense experience. University of Mississippi ethicist Louis Pojman gives this example: “If John is taller than Mary and Tom is taller than John, Tom is taller than Mary.”&nbsp;He writes:</p>

<blockquote>You do not have to know John, Tom, or Mary. You don’t even have to know whether they exist or, if they do, how tall they are in order to know that this proposition is true. You need only whatever experience is necessary to understand the concepts involved, such as ’being taller than.’&nbsp;To believe this proposition a priori [i.e., know before sense experience], one need only consider it. No particular experience—perceptual, testimonial, memorial, or introspective—is necessary.<sup id="fnref:3"><a href="#fn:3">3</a></sup></blockquote>

<p>Intuitional truth doesn’t require a defense—a justification of the steps that brought one to this knowledge—because this kind of truth isn’t a result of reasoning by steps to a conclusion. It’s an obvious truth that no rational person who understands the nature of the issue would deny.</p>

<p>Some people are uncomfortable with this notion. It seems like cheating. We have no other alternative, though. If you can’t know some things without knowing why you know them—if you don’t have some things in place to begin with—you can’t know anything at all. You can’t even begin the task of discovery.</p>

<p>Intuition is the way we start knowing everything. C.S. Lewis wrote, “If nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved.”<sup id="fnref:4"><a href="#fn:4">4</a></sup> There are certain things you must know immediately—directly—in order to have the tools you need to begin learning other things. The mind grasps them immediately, and all inferential knowledge flows from them.</p>

<p>Aristotle put it this way:</p>

<blockquote>Some, indeed, demand to have the law proved, but this is because they lack education; for it shows lack of education not to know of what we should require proof, and of what we should not. For it is quite impossible that everything should have a proof; the process would go on to infinity, so there would be no proof...<sup id="fnref:5"><a href="#fn:5">5</a></sup></blockquote>

<p>Aristotle’s point is that certain intuitions must anchor all other knowledge. Say, for example, I ask you how you know a certain fact. When you offer evidence, I then ask, “How do you know your evidence is reliable?”&nbsp;When you make your defense, I ask, “How do you know <em>that</em>?”&nbsp;This same question could be asked again and again, resulting in Aristotle’s infinite regress.</p>

<p>If it’s always necessary to give a justification for everything we know, then knowledge would be impossible, because we could never answer an infinite series of questions.<sup id="fnref:6"><a href="#fn:6">6</a></sup> It’s clear, though, that we do know some things without having to go through the regress. Therefore, not every bit of knowledge requires justification based on prior steps of reasoning. Eventually you’re going to be pushed back to something foundational, something you seem to have a direct awareness of and for which you need no further evidence.</p>

<p>I often use a classical representation of a syllogism<sup id="fnref:7"><a href="#fn:7">7</a></sup> when I teach on the discipline of clear thinking. I write this major premise on the board: “All men are mortal.”&nbsp;Then I add the minor premise: “Socrates is a man.”&nbsp;Then I ask the students, “What’s next?”&nbsp;Their unanimous answer is, “Socrates is mortal.”</p>

<p>How did all of my students immediately know the conclusion of my syllogism? It logically followed from the first two premises. The ability to see that conclusions naturally follow from adequate premises is a function of intuition.</p>

<p>Intuitional knowledge can’t be “proved”&nbsp;because, on the level of intuition, no further analysis is possible. Analysis makes the complex simple, but if a thing is already simple, it cannot be broken down further. Once we understand the proposition in question, we just “see”&nbsp;that the thing is true. It is self-evident after a little reflection.</p>

<p>Basic math is another thing that can’t be proven. It’s truths are known by intuition. Someone once took me to task on this, suggesting he could scientifically prove two plus two equals four. He took two apples and put them together with two more apples to give a total of four. That was his “scientific”&nbsp;proof.</p>

<p>The math wasn’t proven in this case, though; it was simply exemplified with different tokens. A token is some physical representation—a sound, a mark of ink on a piece of paper, an object—that represents the unseen type, in this case, a number. Let me illustrate.</p>

<p>I could write “two plus two equals four,”&nbsp;or “2 + 2 = 4,”&nbsp;or substitute apples as my tokens instead of words or numerals. In each case, the math is demonstrated—restated with different tokens—not actually proven.</p>

<p>We know this to be the case because if this apple demonstration was a true scientific proof, as he attempted, then the experiment would need to be repeated to verify consistent results.</p>

<p>“Repeat the experiment?”&nbsp;one might ask. “That’s silly. There’s no need to repeat it. The outcome is obvious.”&nbsp;That’s my point. It’s obvious to our intuition. No scientific proof is necessary, nor is it possible.</p>

<p>Math is obvious because of our intuition. As long as one knows what the symbols in the equation 2 + 2 = 4 represent—the numerals and the mathematical signs—a moment's reflection shows that the truth of the equation is self-evident. Indeed, if you disagreed, I would be at a complete loss to prove it to you. Either you see it, or you don’t.</p>

<p>To know something intuitively, incidentally, doesn’t always mean to know the facts automatically or inerrantly. Things like apples in groups and a person’s height are details of the external world that need to be discovered. Addition and multiplication tables need to be learned. This is generally done before a student has full grasp of the meaning of the terms themselves, a necessary precondition for intuition to be applied. Rote memory temporarily accomplishes what the understanding cannot. As time goes on and a student’s mental capacities mature, knowledge based on intuition becomes more apparent. With a little reflection, any person of reasonably sound mind can produce addition or multiplication tables on his own.</p>

<p>Further, errors in math may be common, but this is not a mark against intuition. It’s actually evidence for it. If there was no intuition, the errors could never be known, nor could they be rectified. Intuition serves as the source of justification for facts that, in the early stages of mental development, must be learned.</p>

<p>To know a thing by intuition means that the truth of the proposition is 1) immediately evident, 2) needs no further justification, and 3) is obvious once all the facts are known. Mathematical truth must be learned, but it is justified by an appeal to intuition. Those who are not capable of grasping such things are mentally handicapped, deficient in their abilities.</p>

<h2>Plain Moral Facts</h2>

<p>We know many things this way. Intuitional knowledge can be rational, but it can also be moral. There seem to be what G.J. Warnock called “plain moral facts,”&nbsp;or “moral common sense,”&nbsp;according to philosopher Henry Sidgwick.</p>

<p>An example of a plain moral fact would be, “Human beings have intrinsic value.”&nbsp;In the Declaration of Independence, our founding fathers referred to this truth as “self-evident.”&nbsp;It needed no defense because it was “self evidenced,”&nbsp;so to speak, with its justification coming from within, not from without. Upon this foundation they built their case for the Revolution, and we build our case for human rights.</p>

<p>Many of our moral rules are conclusions we come to as a result of moral reasoning. Since humans are valuable, we ought not take their lives without proper justification (“Thou shall not murder”).</p>

<p>Certain moral rules, though, are not conclusions we reach; they are premises we begin with. All moral reasoning must start with foundational concepts that can only be known by intuition. These are the kinds of truth that any rational person understands. That’s why one doesn’t carry the burden of proof in clear-case examples of moral truth. “People who fail to see this,”&nbsp;says philosopher William Lane Craig, “are just morally handicapped, and there is no reason to allow their impaired vision to call into question what we see clearly.”<sup id="fnref:8"><a href="#fn:8">8</a></sup></p>

<p>A person who denies obvious moral rules—who says that murder and rape are morally benign, that cruelty isn’t a vice, and that cowardice is a virtue—doesn’t merely have a different moral point of view; he has something wrong with him. If somebody says to me, “I think rape is morally acceptable,”&nbsp;I’m not going to “tolerantly”&nbsp;reflect on his alternative morality. Instead, I’m going to recommend he get help, fast.</p>

<p>Some will attempt to deny moral intuition. In unguarded moments, though, when an event or situation causes their intuition to rise naturally to the surface, their language gives them away.</p>

<p>When people’s “moral common sense”&nbsp;is offended, they are compelled to speak out. They readily pass moral judgment on others, condemning injustice in the courts, or attacking racist governments, for example.</p>

<h2>Intuitions and Mass Suicide</h2>

<p>Certain circumstances cause our deepest intuitions about life to rise to the surface. In moments like these, our intuitions are revealed in the language we use.</p>

<p>Language does not create reality; it describes reality. It is not the cause, but the effect. We discover something in the world and then use words to express or describe what we’ve experienced.</p>

<p>To understand why it is significant that the mass suicide in San Diego was considered tragic, I need to acquaint you with a word. The word is “<em>telos</em>,”&nbsp;a Greek word that simply means “goal.”</p>

<p>You might have heard references to something called a teleological argument for the existence of God. These kinds of arguments attempt to show that God’s existence may be properly inferred based on what seems to be a purpose, or goal to particular things in the universe.</p>

<p>The reason one feels a deep sense of tragedy when 39 people commit suicide is because of <em>telos</em>. When a six-year-old dies of leukemia or a group of high school honor students perish in a plane crash, we say, “Their lives were cut short,”&nbsp;or “They died an untimely death,”&nbsp;or “It was such a waste.”</p>

<p>These phrases depend for their meaning on the notion of <em>telos</em>. Their lives were shorter <em>than they should have been</em>. They died <em>before their time</em>, or more explicitly, before their <em>appointed</em> time. They died before a certain purpose was fulfilled. Deep down inside we know that the child and the students did not achieve what they were “meant”&nbsp;to accomplish.</p>

<p>We also consider it tragic to make a conscious decision (as opposed to being pressed into poverty by circumstance) to be a bum, begging and living under a freeway in cardboard boxes. The more libertarian among us would no doubt acknowledge a person’s “right”&nbsp;to live as he wants, but even the libertarian has a nagging sense that this life is being wasted. By contrast, we look at someone like Mother Theresa or Jonas Salk, and applaud them for having accomplished something wonderful, having fulfilled something of their purpose in life.</p>

<p>Why do we feel compelled to talk someone out of suicide? Why try to dissuade them if life has no goal? We’re so sure of transcendent human purpose that we try to stop people from killing themselves and “wasting”&nbsp;their lives. A life can only be wasted if it has a purpose that is never fulfilled.</p>

<p>Notice that the notion of untimely death here has no relation to the person’s own subjective goals. The goal of a suicidal person is to die, a purpose he fulfills if he takes his life. An infant who dies unexpectedly has no goals or aspirations of his own. Yet in both cases we have this nagging suspicion that something is wrong.</p>

<p>How do we know this is tragic? We know it by intuition. It’s built into the structure of our minds. Our reactions to these things—suicide, untimely deaths—are spontaneous, immediate, and intuitive.</p>

<p>Our sense of tragedy lies in our conviction that these people did not fulfill some larger purpose, a <em>telos</em> bigger than their own temporal wants and desires. If there is no purpose in life, there is no tragedy when a child is struck down in its infancy, or when high school students are killed in a plane crash, or when 39 people commit suicide. There is no waste when a gifted pianist whiles away his life under a freeway abutment.</p>

<h2>Mass Suicide and the Existence of God</h2>

<p>It’s odd the way bizarre events sometimes hold a key to the meaning of the universe. In unguarded moments, these circumstances bring into focus a very powerful intuition: human lives have purpose. They have a goal, a <em>telos</em>.</p>

<p>A goal is a function of mind. Persons have goals, not things. If there is a goal for our lives—such that cutting our lives short is tragic—then it’s fair to ask, “Where did this purpose come from? Who (not what) has this goal for my life?”</p>

<p>There can be no purpose beyond us if there is no Purposer beyond us. Purpose is evidence of a plan. There can be no plan if there is no Planner.</p>

<p>This Divine Planner has not left us without direction. He’s given us the faculty—intuition—to know there is a plan, a “life abundant”&nbsp;that can be experienced. He’s given us specific guidelines to know the plan itself. He’s given Himself to be a companion with us through the journey.</p>

<aside class="footnotes">
<hr>
<ol>
	<li id="fn:1">Paul Edwards, ed., <em>The Encyclopedia of Philosophy</em> (New York: Macmillan, 1967), vol. 4, p. 204. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:1">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:2">St. Thomas Aquinas, <em>Summa Theologica</em> (London: Benzinger Brothers, 1911) Ia., Q84, a2, quoted in Louis P. Pojman, <em>What Can We Know? An Introduction to a Theory of Knowledge</em> (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1995), p. 89. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:2">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:3">Louis P. Pojman, <em>What Can We Know? An Introduction to a Theory of Knowledge</em> (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1995), p. 196. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:3">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:4">C.S. Lewis, <em>The Abolition of Man</em> (New York: Macmillan, paperback edition 1955), p. 53. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:4">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:5">Aristotle, <em>Metaphysics</em>, 1006a. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:5">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:6">Incidentally, this knife cuts both ways. When asked, “How do you know that?”&nbsp;one can respond with, “Why do you ask the question?”&nbsp;When the skeptic responds with, “Because you can’t claim something is true unless you have proper justification,”&nbsp;ask, “Oh? Well, how do you know <em>that</em>?”&nbsp;This reverses the process, putting him on the slope slipping into infinity. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:6">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:7">A syllogism is a form of deductive reasoning consisting of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:7">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:8">William Lane Craig, “The Indispensability of Theological Meta-Ethical Foundations for Morality,”&nbsp;unpublished paper, p. 8. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:8">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
</ol>
</aside>
</div>

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