Thinking to Believe

According to The New York Times, there are 2500 crisis pregnancy centers in the United States versus 1800 abortion clinics.  For those who think that pro-lifers aren’t doing anything to help women with their babies, think again.

“Although feminism purports to raise the value and status of women, it actually deconstructs femininity, treating it as an illusion or even an aberration.  The male chauvinist of the past identified women as unique and different, but then treated femininity as a lesser thing than masculinity.  The feminist of today, rather than celebrating femininity as a thing of equal worth, dismisses it as a bourgeois construction.  Far from championing femininity as a beautiful, God-created gift, the feminist absorbs femininity into a hyper-masculine world of competition, struggle, and ideology.” – Louis Markos, “Just Brilliant!: Three Things only a PhD Can Believe,” Salvo, Issue 24, Spring 2013, page 16.

I have written in the past of gay men who opposed same-sex marriage (for various reasons).  While it’s old news at this point, I ran across a couple of more recently.  Rupert Everett, a gay British actor, told The Sunday Times magazine he opposed same-sex marriage (and all marriage for that matter) and same-sex parenting because children need mothers and fathers.

At about the same time, Doug Mainwaring, also a gay man, published an opinion article in The Washington Post:

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In 2006, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that the NJ legislature must give same-sex couples all of the same rights and benefits as opposite-sex couples, but did not demand that the state amend its marriage laws.  The legislature responded by creating civil unions that had identical benefits to marriage.

Fast forward seven years, and Judge Mary C. Jacobson of the State Superior Court ruled on September 27, 2013 that this is not enough – the state must call same-sex unions marriage as well starting Monday, October 21, 2013.  Governor Christie vowed to appeal the decision to the NJ Supreme Court, but when that court refused to block the law while Christie challenged it, and made it clear that they would not rule in his favor, he decided to withdraw his appeal, meaning NJ is now the 14^th state to offer same-sex marriage.

“The person who can’t or won’t discern good from evil is destined to be a victim of those who are adept at disguising one as the other.  Thus, abstaining from moral judgments is not a hallmark of nice people, but of foolish ones.  And the person who makes judgments while insisting that he doesn’t or shouldn’t is naïve, if not hypocritical.” – Regis Nicoll, “Speak No Evil,” Salvo, Issue 25, Summer 2013, p. 14.

Those who subscribe to empiricism believe that we should not believe the truth of some X based on a competent authority.  We are only justified in believing some X if we have empirically verifiable evidence supporting the truth of X.  It goes without notice that this principle itself is not empirically verifiable, and thus empiricism is self-refuting as a complete theory of knowledge.  But let’s ignore the man behind the curtain for a moment, and explore other deficiencies in an empirical epistemology.

In his book, A Universe from Nothing, physicist and empiricist Lawrence Krauss describes the state of the cosmos in the distant future.  Due to cosmic expansion, in two trillion years all of the evidence for the Big Bang (cosmic microwave background, redshift of distant objects/the Hubble expansion, and the measurement of light elements in the cosmos), and all 400 billion galaxies visible to us now, will no longer be detectable via empirical methods.  Worse yet, all of the evidence for the dark energy that caused the cosmic expansion will be gone as well.  For scientists living in that day, all of the empirical evidence will point to a static universe inhabited by a single galaxy that is no more than a trillion years old (based on the ratio of light elements at the time).

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Last year theoretical physicist and atheist, Lawrence Krauss, wrote a book titled A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing. As the title suggests, Krauss wrote the book to answer the age-old question of why there is something rather than nothing. The book was heralded by many atheists as the definitive answer to theists who claim God is necessary to explain the existence of physical reality. Indeed, in the afterward Richard Dawkins claimed that Krauss’ book devastates theistic arguments based on cosmology just as Darwin’s On the Origin of Species devastated theistic arguments based on design in biology. Other reviewers, however – including scientists, philosophers, and theologians – beg to differ. Having read the book myself (not just once, but two times now), I can see why they were less than impressed with Krauss’ argument.

While my overall assessment of Krauss’ argument is not positive, truth be told, most of the book was quite enjoyable and informative.  That’s because the first 2/3 of the book is a lesson on the historical development of modern cosmology.  Krauss doesn’t make his case for why there is something rather than nothing until the last four chapters.  Unfortunately, that’s where the book falls apart.

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Nobody likes the idea of hell – even believers – but many unbelievers simply loathe the concept.  They think punishing sinners in hell is not befitting of a supposedly loving God, and appeal to the doctrine as evidence against the truth of Christianity.  Is hell truly a stain on God’s character?  I don’t think so, and when the skeptic examines his own beliefs about justice a bit more carefully, I think he’ll come to agree that hell is not the egregious concept he claims it is.  Here’s a tactical way to get your skeptical friend to see this point.

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Physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia advocates always make their case by pointing to the suffering of the terminally ill. They tug on our heart strings, and promise that if only we’ll legalize PAS/EUTH, it will be limited to the terminally ill who are in their last stages of life and cannot bear the pain of their disease and want to die.

That is how it starts out, but eventually, the scope of those eligible for PAS/EUTH always widens to encompass more and more people – either by changing the law, or just flouting the law.  The first requirement to go is usually the time-frame.  If PAS/EUTH is good enough in the last 6 or 12 months of a person’s life, well, why not allow it a little before?  Eventually, time limits don’t matter.  Next to slip is the requirement that one be terminally ill.  Any illness that causes unbearable pain will do.  But, if PAS/EUTH is the answer to pain, and pain comes in both physical and emotional forms, then why limit PAS/EUTH to just those who are suffering from physical pain?  So the tent gets widened to include those who are depressed and cannot bear life as well.  Indeed, if PAS/EUTH is a compassionate answer to pain, then why is consent even needed?  Doctor’s and parents should be allowed to kill babies born with severe medical problems, whose quality of life is deemed to be too low to be worth living (or let live).  The fact of the matter is that there’s no end in sight when death is seen as a good way to end human suffering, which is why every European country that has legalized PAS/EUTH has followed this slippery slope one way or another.

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For those of us who do not think “same-sex marriages” are legitimate marriages, how should we respond when invited to attend a same-sex wedding?  Al Mohler has some insightful words about this difficult issue, showcased by a recent event in which the elder President Bush and his wife attended a same-sex wedding.

Many people who are opposed to same-sex marriage, nevertheless, say they would attend a same-sex wedding (or have done so). Their reasons for doing so vary. For some, the simple fact of the matter is that they truly don’t see anything wrong with same-sex marriage. Their opposition to same-sex marriage is confessional in nature, and does not reflect their true convictions. It’s just one of those things they pay lip service so they can fit in with their community of peers. They will attend a same-sex marriage because deep down they approve of same-sex marriage. For others who have genuine convictions against same-sex marriage, however, the conflict runs much deeper. As much as they disapprove of same-sex marriage, they feel the need to attend a same-sex wedding to preserve a friendship, to avoid hurting someone’s feelings, to avoid a family feud, or because of social pressure.  While I understand these motivations, the fact remains that attending a same-sex wedding will be viewed by others as your personal approval of the same-sex union (if not same-sex marriage in general).  This is clear from a statement by one of the brides at the wedding attended by former President Bush, who told The Washington Post, “Who would be best to acknowledge the importance of our wedding as our friends and as the former leader of the free world? When they agreed to do so we just felt that it was the next acknowledgement of being ‘real and normal.’”

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