Thinking to Believe

Radio host, Andrew Tallman, has been running a series over at Townhall on the topic of capital punishment that is absolutely superb. He makes a persuasive case for capital punishment, and does an outstanding job answering both religious and secular objections to it. I would highly recommend his articles on this subject.

There’s a great video on global warming over at What You Ought to Know. It’s both balanced and funny.

In a recent 60 minutes interview, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia shared his thoughts on abortion. In response to a question about how his Catholicism affects his judicial decisions, Scalia said:

“I’m a law-and-order guy. I mean, I confess I’m a social conservative, but it does not affect my views on cases. On the abortion thing for example, if indeed I were, you know, trying to impose my own views, I would not only be opposed to Roe versus Wade, I would be in favor of the opposite view, which the anti-abortion people would like adopted, which is to interpret the Constitution to mean that a state must prohibit abortion. … There’s nothing there. They did not write about that.”

A little later he continued in the same vein:

“My job is to interpret the Constitution accurately. And indeed, there are anti-abortion people who think that the constitution requires a state to prohibit abortion. They say that the Equal Protection Clause requires that you treat a helpless human being that’s still in the womb the way you treat other human beings. I think that’s wrong. I think when the Constitution says that persons are entitled to equal protection of the laws, I think it clearly means walking-around persons. You don’t count pregnant women twice.”

I’m not so sure I agree with Scalia’s hyper-originalism here (I think a good case can be made that abortion is unconstitutional), but pro-life advocates need to take notice of what he said. Some pro-life supporters are not only hoping for Roe v Wade to be overturned by the Supreme Court in the near future, but they are hoping the Supreme Court will completely reverse itself, and declare that the Constitution protects the life of the unborn as well as the born. This would invalidate all democratically instituted abortion laws, just as Roe invalidated all democratically instituted anti-abortion laws. Scalia is one of the most conservative judges on the Supreme Court. If he does not think abortion is unconstitutional, there is virtually no chance the Supreme Court will ever decide as much in our lifetime, if ever. At best the Supreme Court will overturn Roe, returning the issue of abortion back to the states, and giving us the opportunity to persuade our fellow citizens to outlaw abortion in our state, in every state across the nation.

Ben Witherington III has a good video lesson on choosing a Bible translation. He gives some good, basic information on why there are so many translations, how they differ, what benefit each has, tips on how to choose the proper translation, and what to watch out for. Listening to the Australian paraphrase of Luke 1 is worth it alone!

Modern science is guided by the philosophy or methodology of naturalism. This means they either believe that, or go about their discipline acting as if God does not exist, or at least is not involved with the cosmos. As a result, most scientists deny that a designing intelligence is the cause of life on Earth. And yet the more scientists seek to find a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life on Earth, the more impossible it seems. Some have gone so far as to suggest that life must have been seeded on Earth by an alien civilization. This, of course, allows for the presence of a designing intelligence. To my amazement, Richard Dawkins holds this out as a scientific possibility. In the documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Ben Stein asked Richard Dawkins how life began. After admitting that scientists do not know, Dawkins held out the possibility that life on Earth was seeded by aliens, and considered this a scientific hypothesis. The exchange was as follows:

BEN STEIN: What do you think is the possibility that Intelligent Design might turn out to be the answer to some issues in genetics or in evolution.
DAWKINS: Well, it could come about in the following way. It could be that at some earlier time, somewhere in the universe, a civilization evolved, probably by some kind of Darwinian means, probably to a very high level of technology, and designed a form of life that they seeded onto perhaps this planet. Now, um, now that is a possibility, and an intriguing possibility. And I suppose it’s possible that you might find evidence for that if you look at the details of biochemistry, molecular biology, you might find a signature of some sort of designer.

Four things are of interest, here. First, when scientists have to resort to aliens to explain how life on Earth could have originated, you know they have no clue at all about the origin of life!

Secondly, Dawkins admits that design is empirically detectable. If that is true, then contrary to the anti-ID talking points, Intelligent Design is a genuine scientific theory.

Thirdly, this hypothesis—even if true—would not explain the origin of life in general, but only the origin of life on Earth. Alien life would go unexplained.

Fourthly, he is willing to countenance the possibility that a designing intelligence is responsible for life on Earth, so long as that designer is not a divine being. This reveals the fact that he not truly opposed to the existence of genuine design in biology, but simply prejudiced against the existence of a divine designer.

This says a lot.

In the reader forum at William Lane Craig’s website, an individual going by the name Dreyshock posed an interesting question: Does God have opinions? Theists agree that God is omniscient—meaning He has the property of knowing all and only true propositions—but does such knowledge include opinions? Does God think Monet was a better painter than Picasso, or that Bach’s music was more beautiful than the Beatles’? Does God think Gothic architecture is beautiful?

There are three options:

(1) God does not have subjective opinions. The property of knowing all and only true propositions excludes the possibility of God having opinions, because opinions are neither true or false.

(2) God does have opinions, and His opinions are the right opinions (someone holding a contrary opinion would be wrong in their opinion).

(3) God does have opinions, but His opinions are neither right nor wrong (someone could hold a contrary opinion without being considered wrong in that opinion).

What do you think? I have some thoughts, but I’ll hold off in sharing them until I hear from you.