July 18, 2012

Medical Ethicist advocates dehydrating demented patients to cause their death

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Bioethics, Euthanasia
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A former professor of medical ethics and former chairman of the Institute of Medical Ethics in Britain, Raanan Gillon, wrote an editorial in the British Medical Journal lambasting a judicial ruling that gave pre-eminence to the sanctity of life.  Gillon argues that given scant medical resources, physicians should be allowed to withdraw treatment from stable, but minimally conscious patients suffering from severe dementia in order to cause their premature death.  

Yes, this is a preeminent bioethicist.  The field has become overrun with utilitarians who espouse views that are anything but ethical.

 

July 17, 2012

How Can We Know Something Can’t Come from Nothing if We’ve Never Experienced Nothing?

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Cosmological Argument, Philosophy, Theistic Arguments
[18] Comments 

Theists often use the basic metaphysical principle that something only comes from something as evidence for God’s existence.  We reason that if the universe (something) came into being, then it must have been caused to come into being by something else – it could not have simply materialized out of nothing without a cause because out of nothing, nothing comes.  The something that brought the universe into being must itself be immaterial, spaceless, and eternal, which are some of the basic properties of a theistic being. 

I have heard a few atheists object to this argument by questioning the veracity of the basic metaphysical principle that something can only come from something on the grounds that we have never experienced nothing to know whether or not it is possible for something to come from nothing, and thus we cannot know that it’s impossible for something to come from nothing.  While we may not have any direct experience of something that comes into being from nothing, it does not mean it’s not possible.  Indeed, in the case of the universe it was not only possible, but it actually happened.

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July 16, 2012

Theism is Required for Objective Human Value

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Bioethics, Human Exceptionalism
[10] Comments 

What makes humans valuable?  There are only two options: something inherent within the nature of humans themselves (intrinsic) or something acquired by humans (extrinsic).  Things that are valuable in and of themselves for the sake of themselves have intrinsic value (love, friendship, health, happiness, virtue, etc.).  Things that are valued for their function – what they do for us or how they allow us to obtain an intrinsic good (money) – have extrinsic value.   

When it comes to bioethics, the great divide is between those who think human value is extrinsic (and many would add, subjective) and those who think human value is intrinsic and objective.  Put another way, bioethicists are divided between the liberals who think human value is based on doing (extrinsic value) and conservatives who think human value is based on being (intrinsic value).  Whereas liberals only value the functional expression of certain human capacities, conservatives value the being who possesses those innate capacities whether they are being expressed or not.

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July 13, 2012

Morality and the Epistemology-Ontology Distinction

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Epistemology, Logic, Moral Argument, Philosophy, Theism, Theistic Arguments
[36] Comments 

There’s a difference between how we know something to be true (epistemology), and what makes that something true (ontology).  Keeping this distinction in mind would illuminate many debates.  For example, atheists often claim that one doesn’t need God to know morality and act morally.  That’s true, but it misses the point.  Just because one can know moral truths and behave morally without believing in God does not mean God is not necessary to explain morality.  As Greg Koukl likes to say, that’s like saying because one is able to read books without believing in authors, authors are not necessary to explain the origin of books (author-of-the-gaps).  In the same way books need authors, moral laws need a moral-law giver.

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July 12, 2012

Given materialism, is the concept of “rape” even meaningful?

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Determinism, Moral Argument, Naturalism, Relativism
[7] Comments 

A friend of mine made a point the other day that I thought was insightful.  If matter is all that exists, and there is no free will because everything is either determined or indeterminate, then there is no real distinction between rape and consensual sex since the distinction relies on the notion of free will.  If the will is not free, then strictly speaking, no act of sex is chosen—even so called consensual sex is not chosen.  Every act of sex is chosen for us by forces that lie outside of our control.  We may think that we choose to engage in sexual activity or choose to refrain from doing so, but these are just illusions.  Prior physical processes cause us to either have the desire to engage in sex or the desire not to engage in sex.  

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July 10, 2012

Another Scientist Claiming that the Laws of Physics + Time = Protons and Plato

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Cosmological Argument, Naturalism, Science, Theistic Arguments
[10] Comments 

Astrophysicist Alex Filippenko of the Universityof California, Berkeley took part in a panel discussion on June 23, 2012 at the SETICon 2 conference on the topic “Did the Big Bang Require a Divine Spark?”  Taking a page out of the playbooks of Stephen Hawking and Lawrence Krauss, Filippenko claimed that “the Big Bang could’ve occurred as a result of just the laws of physics being there. With the laws of physics, you can get universes.”[1] If the laws of physics are responsible for churning out universes, then the ultimate question is not the origin of the universe, but the origin of the laws of physics.  Where did they come from?  Filippenko recognizes this problem, saying “The question, then, is, ‘Why are there laws of physics?’  And you could say, ‘Well, that required a divine creator, who created these laws of physics and the spark that led from the laws of physics to these universes, maybe more than one.’”[2] 

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July 6, 2012

Is Religious Faith Due to a Fear of Death and Desire for Immortality?

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Eschatology, Odds & Ends, Religions, Theology
[16] Comments 

I’ve heard a lot of atheists hypothesize that one of the reasons religion was invented was because people had to manage their fear of death.  If people believe that they will continue to live on in some fashion after death, it mitigates their fear of death.  Can the fear of death explain the origin of religion, or the origin of religious faith in people today?  Perhaps, but three points should be made.  

First, not all religions include conscious existence beyond the grave.  For example, in many Eastern religions absorption into the One (personal extinction) is the end of all things.  Clearly immortality is not the motivation for those religions and religious practitioners.  

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July 5, 2012

Studies purporting to show that children raised by same-sex parents fare just as well as children raised by opposite-sex couples are flawed, and new evidence that they fare worse

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Homosexuality, Same-sex parenting
[19] Comments 

Opponents of same-sex marriage often argue that such relationships are detrimental to children.  Advocates of same-sex marriage point to a litany of studies showing that children raised by same-sex couples fare just as well, if not better, as other children. The American Psychological Association referred to 59 such studies when they announced in 2005 that children raised by same-sex couples fare just as well as children raised by opposite-sex couples.

Recently, Dr. Loren Marks from Louisiana State University examined those 59 studies (ranging from 1980 to 2005) the APA cited in support of their conclusion.  He concluded that they were all fraught with methodological problems that undermined their results.  According to the Science Daily report “more than three-quarters were based on small, non-representative, non-random samples that did not include any minority individuals or families; nearly half lacked a heterosexual comparison group; and few examined outcomes that extend beyond childhood such as intergenerational poverty, educational attainment, and criminality, which are a key focus of studies on children of divorce, remarriage, and cohabitation.”[1]  Dr. Marks is careful to point out that this does not mean children raised by same-sex couples do, in fact, fare worse than other children: “The jury is still out on whether being raised by same-sex parents disadvantages children, however, the available data on which the APA draws its conclusions, derived primarily from small convenience samples, are insufficient to support a strong generalized claim either way.”[2]

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July 3, 2012

What Should Christians Make of the “Forgiving God” Meme?

Posted by Jason Dulle under Ethics, Holiness, Nature of God, Theology
[20] Comments 

Sam Storms has written an insightful analysis of the idea that we can or should “forgive God.”  While a few snippets cannot do it justice, the heart of his argument is as follows: 

First of all, let me say that I understand where this sort of question comes from. I understand how people quite often are confused by what God does or doesn’t do. … But my struggle is with the language of “forgiving God.” For one thing, I don’t find it ever used in Scripture. That alone ought to give us pause before we incorporate such language into our Christian vocabulary or allow it to shape our theology or our understanding of spiritual formation.

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July 3, 2012

Is Science Superior to Religion Because Science Can Be Mistaken?

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Logic, Science
[32] Comments 

Recently I listened to the debate between Peter Atkins and Callum Miller.  As usual, Atkins was short on arguments and long on ad hominems, although I must admit that he was more civil in this debate than usual.  One of the things Atkins said, however, caught my attention.  He said that one of the advantages of science over religion is that in science, one can be wrong, whereas in religion one is never allowed to be wrong.  I’ve heard other atheists make the same claim.  I find it interesting because whether it’s true or false, it’s irrelevant.  

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July 2, 2012

What’s the difference between fruit and humans?

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Human Exceptionalism, Philosophy, Relativism, Tactics
[33] Comments 

I have a question for my non-theist readers: Why is it that I can chop up a tomato and eat it, but I cannot do the same to a human being?

 

June 29, 2012

What I’ve Been Reading: Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament: Manuscript, Patristic, and Apocryphal Evidence

Posted by Jason Dulle under Bible, Book Reviews, Textual Criticism, Theology
[10] Comments 

Daniel Wallace is a prominent evangelical NT textual critic.  He has written about the field in various places, but never in much detail, and never in a book dedicated to the topic.  So I was very excited when I heard he was editing a collection of essays on the topic.  

Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament is not a general book on the topic of NT textual criticism, but a collection of essays criticizing the analysis and methodology of Bart Ehrman.  Indeed, if you have heard any of Wallace and Ehrman’s three debates, you will already be familiar with much of the material Wallace presents in his chapter.  But it is nice to have that wealth of information put to print and to have access to all of the details Wallace provides in the footnotes.  Here are a few facts about the NT manuscripts that are of note:  (more…)

 

June 28, 2012

Should government get out of the marriage business?

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Politics, Same-sex Marriage
[14] Comments 

That is what some Christians and secularists suggest.  They think marriage should be a private institution handled by churches and others, while the government sits by as a neutral observer.  That may salve over the current political and cultural debate over the definition of marriage, but is this a good idea?  Jennifer Roback Morse thinks not, and wrote a three-part series explaining why (1, 2, 3).  She argues that privatizing marriage is not only impossible in practice, but that it would result in more state power and would unnecessarily hurt children.

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June 28, 2012

My faith that we are still a republic ruled by a Constitution and still have a federal form of government is hanging by a thread

Posted by Jason Dulle under Politics
[5] Comments 

I woke up this morning hotly anticipating the SCOTUS decision on the constitutionality of Obamacare, fully expecting it to be ruled unconstitutional.  To my dismay, it was upheld (and Roberts, rather than Kennedy, was the deciding vote).  I was happy to see that SCOTUS rejected the government’s claim that Obamacare was a valid expression of Congress’ ability to regulate interstate commerce (although Ginsberg, unsurprisingly, thinks it is), but I was blown away that they considered it a tax.  Seriously?  Talk about legal and semantical obfuscation!  As Wesley J. Smith wrote, “It appears that the Supremes have rewritten the law in order to uphold it.”  With this approach to law and constitutionality, anything can be made legal…the constitution be damned.

Apparently now the federal government can require us to buy whatever they want so long as they call it a “tax” (something Obama and the Dems specifically said it was not). Calling something a tax doesn’t make it one.  Perhaps we’ll all be required to buy, I mean pay a tax for tofu next year.

When Congress can pass such a law, and SCOTUS can uphold it as being constitutional, I fear that we are no longer being ruled by a Constitution but by the whims of those who hold office.  Federalism is dying.  Power is shifting away from the states and to the federal government.  Who needs state governments when the federal government can regulate all of American life?  I fear we are no longer the United States of America.  We are simply America.

 

June 27, 2012

The Qeiyafa Ostracon may not be the oldest Hebrew inscription after all

Posted by Jason Dulle under Archaeology
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In an earlier post I discussed the Qeiyafa Ostracon, identifying it as the earliest extant example of Hebrew writing.  That was what was being reported at the time, but the truth appears to lie elsewhere.  The May/June 2012 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review discussed this inscription, noting the many problems associated with the identification.  

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June 26, 2012

Inclusivism is Incompatible with Biblical Teaching

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Pluralism, Soteriology, Theology
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Inclusivism is the doctrine that while no one can be saved apart from Christ, one need not have conscious faith in Christ to be saved.  So, for example, while a good Buddhist may not trust in Christ for his salvation, since he is a good Buddhist Christ applies the merits of His substitutionary atonement to him. 

The NT is opposed to inclusivism.  It is quite clear that one must exercise conscious faith in Christ to experience salvation: 

John 3:14-18  And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, [15] that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. [16] “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. [17] For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. [18] Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 

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June 25, 2012

Quote of the Day: C.S. Lewis on the limits and findings of science

Posted by Jason Dulle under Quote of the Day, Science
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“[C.S.] Lewis insists that, because science confines its examination to the universe, it’s natural that science discovers nothing beyond it.” — David Bagget and Jerry Walls in their book, Good God.

 

June 25, 2012

More on Stephen Law’s Evil God Challenge

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Moral Argument, Problem of Evil, Theism
[13] Comments 

While I have already written an assessment of Stephen Law’s evil god challenge, after listening to Law engage in an informal debate on the topic with Glenn Peoples on Unbelievable, I have a few more observations to make.

Law seems to take as his starting point the idea that people reject the existence of an evil God based on the empirical evidence: there is simply too much good in the world for an evil god to exist.  Then he reasons that if the presence of good in the world makes the existence of an evil God absurd, people should also recognize that the presence of evil in the world makes the existence of a good God equally absurd.  The success of his argument depends on three assumptions:

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June 22, 2012

Trevin Wax on the Problem of Hell

Posted by Jason Dulle under Hell, Theology
[2] Comments 

“Scripturally speaking, the problem is not that good people do not go to heaven; the problem is there are no good people.” — Trevin Wax, “Inclusivism and Its Effects” in Credo magazine, Issue 2, January 2012, 10.

 

June 21, 2012

Even if the universe is eternal, it still needs a cause

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Cosmological Argument, Naturalism, Theistic Arguments
[88] Comments 

Given my recent post on falsely assuming that God’s eternality excludes the possibility that He has a cause (and thinking premise 1 of the kalam cosmological argument proves He doesn’t have a cause), I thought it fitting to address atheists who assume that the universe, if it is eternal, is uncaused.  Some atheists reason as follows:

(1) If the universe began to exist, then it has a cause
(2) The universe did not begin to exist
(3) Therefore the universe did not have a cause

This commits the fallacy of denying the antecedent.  The form of the fallacy is as follows:

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