Thinking to Believe

It’s commonly said that 90% of all unborn babies with Down Syndrome are aborted.  This statistic is offered by both conservatives and liberals alike.  Fortunately, it’s based on a misunderstanding of the data.  Studies have shown that approximately 90% of women who undergo an amniocentesis diagnostic test and are told that their baby has Down Syndrome end up aborting the baby (which is not surprising considering the fact that this is the second test for the disease, is invasive, and carries a risk of killing the baby.  It stands to reason that women willing to undergo the procedure do so because they want to be sure that their child has Down Syndrome before they kill him/her).  In other words, the people who undergo amniocentesis are more likely to abort a baby with Down Syndrome than those who do not, but only ~2% of pregnant women undergo amniocentesis.  When you consider all women pregnant with a baby suffering from Down Syndrome, the abortion rate is estimated to be somewhere between 1/3 to 1/2.  That is still way too much, but not nearly as bad as 90%.

Check out this video from Stand to Reason demonstrating why abortion is unjust discrimination against the unborn.

At least that’s the idea behind some new research on the effects of belief in God on the brain. Apparently, people suppress the areas of the brain used for analytical thinking and engage those parts of the brain used for empathy in order to believe in God.  The clear message of these research “findings” is that you have to stop thinking in order to believe in God.  Belief in God is about how you feel, not about what you think.

I have not read the actual research, and probably couldn’t make much sense of it even if I had.  But I don’t need to review the research in order to know that this research is irrelevant to the question of whether God exists.  First, it commits a logical fallacy known as the genetic fallacy.  This fallacy is committed any time one attempts to invalidate the truth of some X because of the origin of X.  Since belief in God has its origin in our feelings rather than our thinking (the origin of X), God (X) does not exist.  He’s just a product of our personal feelings.

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The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead was the central message of the early church and the basis of Christian hope.  But why should we believe that a man was raised from the dead 2000 years ago when we were not there to witness it, and when our uniform experience says that dead people always stay dead?  While many people think the resurrection of Jesus is something you either choose to believe or choose to reject based on your personal religious tastes, the fact of the matter is that there are good, objective, historical reasons to believe that Jesus rose from the dead.

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Many think that the existence of evil disproves God’s existence. Nothing could be further from the truth. Evil is a real problem we must wrestle with, but it argues for God’s existence, not against it.

For evil to be a problem, evil has to be real – not just an expression of human desires, preferences, or opinions.  Evil is the absence of good, so for evil to be real, an objective standard of goodness must exist that transcends human beings.

What is the source for that standard?  God.  He is the Good, and we recognize good because we are made in His image.

Besides, denying God’s existence because evil exists does nothing to solve the problem of evil.  Only if God exists can we have hope that evil will be overcome and those who commit evil face true justice for their moral crimes.

If God is good, why is there evil? Because love requires freedom, and freedom entails choosing either the good or the evil. God was good to give us free will. We are responsible for abusing this good thing, not God, and yet God has taken it on Himself to fix the problem we created. God is not just observing the pain and suffering we experience from evil, but became one of us and experienced it Himself so that He can empathize with us and ultimately overcome evil for us.

A 2010 study by the Center for Research on Gender & Sexuality at San Francisco State University examined the level of monogamy (or lack thereof) in male homosexual relationships in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Based on a study of 566 gay couples, lead researcher Colleen Hoff found that 47% had an open relationship, 45% were monogamous, and 8% did not agree on what they were. This is congruent with a number of other studies of male homosexuality. In the same way it is a mistake to think that all male homosexuals are promiscuous, it’s a mistake to think they all embrace the monogamous ideal of marriage.

See also:

Male homosexual relationships often lack the monogamous ideal

Same-sex marriage will likely redefine our concept of marriage

HT: Winterey Knight