Hate religion? Hate Jesus.

Posted by Raw Christianity on

The video below went viral shortly after being posted, amassed millions of views in a few short days, and circulated social media with an intense flurry.  What a wonderful message this man has put together!

Except that it isn’t.  While it contains a lot of good, it’s a denial of Christ and his worldview.  This is not to say that the author of the video is a heretic or not a Christian, but rather that his message denies truths that Jesus recognized.  It’s important to note that ones theology does not have to be perfect to be a Christian.  He is in error, but He is not walking a heretical line.

The problem with his argument is that it simplifies Christianity down to being nothing but a subjective personal experience with some entity known as Jesus.  Suppose we were to ask the author of the video who Jesus was, what would be his response?  Well, whatever it was would be an affirmation of his religion and worldview.  By denying “religion” he is saying that there is no real truth to the matter.  It’s all a matter of personal opinion based on this subjective relationship with something he perceives and calls Jesus.

What if an atheist decided to sit down and pray to Jesus to see if He existed?  What if He got no response?  Would this mean that Jesus did not exist?  No, of course not.  Maybe the atheist ignored it.  Maybe Jesus didn’t yet respond.  Maybe Jesus didn’t plan to respond to him in the way he asked.

But what if he did get a response?  What if the atheist felt something rise up inside of him?  Would this mean that Jesus existed?  No, not necessarily.  Why couldn’t it have been indigestion?  Or his own imagination?  Or his inner psyche playing tricks on him?  What if it was Allah responding to him to show the atheist that he existed?  Or Cthulhu? If it’s all about feelings and a personal relationship, then there’s no way to really know. Feelings, in and of themselves, tell us nothing.

You see, Christianity isn’t merely based upon feelings and relationships (though these are a part of it), it’s based upon reality, reason, and history.  Jesus really was born, He really walked this earth, He really died, and He really rose again.  He made truth claims about reality that should be testable and capable of being examined and communicated.  He created the world and everything in it. He calls us to live a certain way.  He gave us a philosophy through which to make sense of the world.   His divine hand should be seen in everything.  And this is regardless of how we feel about it.

Religion is the system of beliefs that make sense of and provide the tools that we use to answer the questions we ask of the world. Where did we come from?  Where did everything come from?  What are we?  Why are we here?  How should we live?  For what should we live?  What is our destiny?   If you were to ask the author of the above video these questions then the way he answered them would define his religion.

There are many truths in his poem, but if taken as a whole his position is the death of Christianity.  This is why liberalism is so damn brilliant.  They destroyed God by making Him irrelevant.  Religion to them is merely the subjective personal unscientific irrational belief that people take up.  Thus, it deserves no place in public policy.  I mean, how could it?  This is what they teach in the university and in public schools.  This is what people grow up believing.  These are now the people who vote and run the nation.

There is no dichotomy between religion and Jesus.  It’s not an either/or, it’s a both/and.   It has to be to be relevant or meaningful.

Oh, and by the way, the author of the video has recognized and repented for the errors he made in the video.  I do wonder, however, why he hasn’t chosen to make a note of this somewhere on his YouTube page.

I’m A-Gonna Shove My Religious Values Down Your Throat

Posted by Raw Christianity on

I have a raggedy old bear in my son’s room that I’ve had for longer than I can remember.  I’m not sure at what age I acquired it, but I’ll never get rid of it.  It sports a tiny white T-Shirt that reads “Riggs’ Pub, England,” a small establishment on another continent that shares my last name.  No one in their right mind would ever offer me any money for it, but I doubt I’d ever sell him to anyone even if they offered.  To me, it’s next to priceless.  For everyone else, it’s junk.

Everything in this life only has value if we personally choose to give it value.  Gold only has value because people want it, it has no intrinsic value in and of itself.  An addict might trade $10,000 worth of gold for a couple hundred dollars worth of drugs because in the moment they desire the fix more than the actual current value of gold.  Value is relative.

But you see, if there is no God, then this applies to people as well.  Without God people only have the value that another person wishes to give them.  You may think highly of yourself and other people, but that’s merely your personal conclusion.  If a government wishes to declare that one group of people is without value and that they have no right to live, then this is their priority to do so.  There is no arguing or appealing to a higher authority or value system of why people should not be exterminated.  The strong will survive and the weak will be wiped from the earth.  Take up arms and hope for the best.

If you’ve ever watched the news and shaken your head at the report of a man murdering his own family, then you’re actually appealing to a religious system of values.  The man shouldn’t have murdered his own family because his family members have an intrinsic value that he doesn’t have the authority to decide.  The value of his family was not decided by society either.  Society is only the relative value system of a collective group of people.  It might change at any given time.

Not so with God.  God provides an absolute value system for all of humanity.  Does the pro-life position depend on a religious value system?  Absolutely, but so does the call to not murder another human being.  We respect others because we respect the inherent value that we did not give them; the value that we recognize.

If you live in America then the Founding Fathers already shoved their religious values down your throat.  The Declaration of Independence, the document that sets forth the worldview of the Constitution, puts it like this:

 “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Our very founding document presupposes the existence of a Creator, that we are His creation, and that He bestowed within us certain moral absolutes.  This value doesn’t come from society or any individual, but from the transcendent hand from above.  This is a religious point of view, a system of religious values.

The opposite of this view can be found in the Humanist Manifesto.  It declares that the universe is “self-existing and not created”, that “man is a part of nature and that he has emerged as the result of a continuous process” and there are no moral absolutes because “modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural of cosmic guarantees of human values.”

In short, it’s the exact opposite worldview as that of our founding documents.  It’s the worldview that is presupposed when someone decries that you are pushing your religious views on them.  It’s the worldview being taught as the norm in every public classroom across America.

Well, if I were you, I’d be very quick to correct people who make such an assumption, because what they’re arguing for is a worldview where people have no value but what others choose to recognize.  And minus a few practical arguments of not being caught and sent to jail, there’d be nothing really wrong with them or the government murdering you if they chose to do so.

So I’m a-gonna shove my religious value system that says you’re a precious human person created in the image of God down your throat.  I don’t believe humanity is an ultimately worthless blip in an indifferent cosmos waiting for the next natural or man-caused disaster to wipe us out.  I believe we are more than that, and you should too if you want to continue to enjoy a country where the government doesn’t have the authority to take away your rights as a human being.

The Absolute Failure of Pro-Choice Logic

Posted by Raw Christianity on

In an earlier post I argued that without a transcendent point of reference there is no absolute standard for making sense of the world. If there is no God, then there is no final purpose or meaning to life.  Man will become the measure of all things and we can rationalize the world how we see fit. However, because there is a God  and we live in the moral universe that He created our conscience kicks in when we desire to have the right to commit acts we know are wrong.  We must attempt to redefine the world to fit our personal feelings on the matter.

This brings us to the position which has been branded to be “pro-choice.” Remove everything you know about abortion from your mind and think about how you would answer if someone asked you if you were pro-choice. You’d probably give an emphatic and resounding “Yes!” Who doesn’t like choice? Go to Starbucks, everyone likes choice. Choice and free will are a God given perfection, but that’s not what the pro-choice position is about, nor is it about planning for your parenthood. It’s about the justification of killing babies; unborn babies, but babies nonetheless. Let’s turn, then, to the different arguments used for the pro-choice position and why they fail to hide the reality.

 

“It’s not a baby, it’s a clump of cells (parasite, invader, attacker, blood and tissue, etc)!”

 

The word games begin.  Of course if the unborn is just a clump of cells, a parasite, or a blood thirsty invader from hell we’re going to want to kill it. However, that’s not what we are talking about here.

From the moment of conception a fertilized ovum has everything from sex to skin tone present and determined in the child’s genetic code. These qualities are present regardless of those which exist in the mother. This isn’t merely a clump of cells that happen to reside in the mother’s body; it’s a completely unique and distinct entity.  If you were to take a clump of cells from a woman’s arm, liver, kidney, or anywhere else on her body you would find the common genetic code within.  This is not true of the “clump of cells” in the mother that is being aborted.  The child has his own unique DNA and can have its own blood type and gender.

A clump of cells or an unraveling life?

Further, the fact remains that this “clump of cells” is in a state of development that was once true of all of us as well. Take a petri dish and scrape a clump of cells from your mouth, head, arms, or wherever you please and wait a couple of months. No human is going to develop, and this is because the entity in the womb is not just a clump of cells. People do not have abortions to get rid of clumps of cells.  They have abortions to get rid of the child within them.

As for those who call the unborn a parasite or an attacker of the mother, I think they really need to take the time to evaluate their position. This is a game of gymnastical semantics at its worst. What does it even mean to call the unborn a parasite or invader? The child in the womb is neither as it is in its natural and rightful place. It isn’t doing anything wrong or immoral. It’s following its natural and biological role in the child/mother relationship. Call the baby what you will, call it Adolf Hitler if you want, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a human being. It might make it easier on the conscience to murder, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is a unique human being.

 

“We cannot be sure when life begins.” 

 

Imagine you’re driving down the road late at night and in your headlights you see what might be a small child crawling across the road. Do you continue driving because you aren’t sure? No, you slow down and make sure that you aren’t going to kill anyone. If the question of what is and what is not life is above your pay grade, then it’s time to slow down and take a look at the facts before you continue. No one acts on this principle in life. If it’s possible that my dinner might be poison, then I’m not going to eat it. If I think pulling the trigger might result in the loss of life, then I’m going to remove my finger. Agnosticism is not a platform for action, but caution!

 

“It’s not life, it’s potential life.” 

 

Potentialities are states of affairs which may or may not come to be. I am currently sitting down at my computer but the potential is there for me to get up and grab something to drink.

Blueprints wil never actualize themselves. The unborn do.

However, that potential does not become actual until I choose to get up and do so. Sperm and eggs have the potential to create life, but they are not life. Once they combine the potential for life is no longer a mere possibility, it is an actuality.

This actuality, as was already stated, is something that is not merely a sperm or an egg as it has properties that are not true of a sperm or egg, but rather are true of life.

Imagine that you have before you a blueprint and parts of a chair. Imagine going to your tool box and grabbing everything you need to assemble the chair to bring it from potential to actual. Now wait. How long did you have to wait before the chair became actual? The answer, of course, is forever. Potentialities do not actualize themselves, they can only be made actual from without. However, a fertilized ovum develops naturally on its own and only requires time, air, water, and food which we all need as well. Potential life does not reach adulthood, only actual life does. Nor does potential life require an abortion. No one dismembers their own reproductive organs because they hold the potential for life.

 

“The unborn lack thought, size, feelings, etc.”

 

If being human is dependent on size then those larger than others would be more human.  A midget is not less human than a seven foot man.  Size has no relation to how human we are, nor does feeling, awareness, or intelligence. Those who are unconscious, unaware, or mentally retarded are not any less human than those who are awake and reading (and understanding) the landmark work on mathematics and logic, Principia Mathematica. If we black out we do not move from being human, to non-human, and then back to human again once we wake up.

Our size, level of development, degree of dependency, and environment have nothing to do with being human.

My one year old son is not fully developed yet. He has barely begun to speak, but this does not make him less human than me.  Women do not become more human when their cycle kicks in for the first time nor are they becoming less human through menopause.  Our bodies change and grow throughout our lives, but these changes have nothing to do with what we are.

“It’s my body! I can do what I please!”

 

Not your body...

No, it’s not a woman’s body. The child is merely within their body. If there are attributes true of the embryo that are not true of the mother, then it’s not their body–it’s the baby’s body.  About fifty percent of the time the body within has a penis?  Do women’s body’s have penises when they’re pregnant?  About fifty percent of the time the baby is a male and Do what you want with your body, but let the baby be. And really, we don’t have a right to do whatever we please with our own body. Our body belongs to God, so let’s take care of it.

“Women have a right to choose.” 

 

Of course women have a right to choose. Women have a right to choose to do whatever they want. This choice was granted to us by God way back with Adam and Eve.

...not your choice.

Choice is a good thing, but good things can be used in the wrong way. Women can choose to have abortions, and I can choose to rape women. Both can be carried out through the gift of choice, but just as rape is not justified because of the right to choose, neither is abortion. Life always comes before choice on the scale of values. If there was no life, then there would be no choice. Choice is not the ultimate trump card nor is it a warrant to do whatever we please. Yes, you have a right to choose, but a right to choose what? A right to choose to murder your child? You might have that God given potential, but it’s not justified merely because you can do it.

 

“Abortion is a matter of privacy.”

 

Just like choice, privacy is not the sonum bonum or greatest good. I don’t have a right to do whatever I desire just because I close my door. If men don’t have the right to beat their wives in the privacy of their own home, then women don’t have the right to murder their children behind closed doors.

“You’re a man, and therefore should have no say in the matter of abortion.”

 

Those who have never been slaves or married still have a right to argue that slavery and divorce are wrong. In fact, sometimes being outside of a situation allows one to truly be objective. The war in Iraq is not limited to those in the military nor is the current economy limited to stock brokers and CEOs. The issue of abortion is dealing with a debate of person-hood, and I am a person.

“Abortion is fundamental to liberating women.” 

 

Killing your own children is not liberating. All it does is liberate one from the responsibilities of being a parent and taking care of a child. How our society can take this issue from being a coward to being liberated is beyond me. If abortion is necessary for the rights of women, then only males should be open for being aborted. No one seems to care about liberating those in the womb. If one wants to find liberation, then they need to live according to God’s design no matter how hard that choice might appear to be.

Killing your own children is not liberating. All it does is liberate one from the responsibilities of being a parent and taking care of a child. How our society can take this issue from being a coward to being liberated is beyond me. If abortion is necessary for the rights of women, then only males should be open for being aborted. No one seems to care about liberating those in the womb. If one wants to find liberation, then they need to live according to God’s design no matter how hard that choice might appear to be.

Further (and here is the irony of the left), the pro-choice sid

e does not treat women as what they are worth. It treats them as amoral idiots. Take for example the Ryan-Delauro Bill which was introduced a couple months ago. It intended to “prevent unintended pregnancies, reduce the need for abortion and support parents” through seeking common ground in the abortion debate.In Congressman Tim Ryan’s own words the idea behind this bill is “we have to have birth control and contraceptive offered to [poor women] who don’t have access to contraception… there’s no other way we’re going to be able to reduce [abortions].” In effect what Ryan and the bill are presupposing is that women are too dumb to be educated in realizing that killing a human being is always wrong. You see, what the left gives with one hand it takes with the other. From one side of their mouth they argue that abortions empower women and liberate them and then from the other they push bills that argue they’re too stupid to be able to realize on their own they should not kill their children. Women, apparently, are without the means to make proper choices because it is the right thing to do, instead the demagogues have to create a certain socioeconomic environment in which women will make the right decisions by handing them a pill or money. This is what the pro-choice side’s logic always is: The politician is personally against abortion, but publicly for it, yet they always want to reduce it; not through moral logic and intuition, but political coercion. Apparently, in our world, some women just don’t have the capability to be morally upright without the government holding their hand.

 

“You can’t force a victim of rape to have a child.”

 

Last time I checked one percent of the cases involving abortion were due to rape. This percentage might be higher because not all women will admit to being raped, or it could even be lower because many use rape as an excuse to get an abortion (the “Roe” of Roe v. Wade admitted she lied about being raped). Whatever the percentage, this isn’t an argument for allowing abortion on demand. Exceptions never define the norm. There is a chance that wearing your seat belt could end up killing you in certain accidents, but this doesn’t mean that we should never wear a seat belt. A couple months ago when my cat had a severe facial injury I drove well over the speed limit to get her to a vet, and if I was pulled over a cop probably would have let me go. This does not mean, however, that the speed limit should not be legislated or left to personal conscience, choice, or privacy.

That being said, appeals to rape for abortion are appeals to emotion and pity. I hate to be cold and logical when speaking of inhuman acts of humanity, but just because a woman is raped does not mean that she has a right to commit murder. When a woman is raped she is violated, degraded, and is left with permanent scars, both physical and psychological that she will have to deal with for the rest of her life. This does not mean that she can now violate, degrade, and permanently scar the baby. The rapist might deserve to have his head crushed in, but the unborn and innocent child in the womb does not. Indeed, the violence of abortion parallels the violence of rape. If a man decides to use his body to destroy another this is called rape, but if a woman does it then this is argued to be a fundamental right, the logic of the circumstances and the morals held are contradictory. A woman should not choose to compound the indignity by committing murder, she should bring about life and turn her unfortunate circumstances into something wonderful.

 

“What if the mother’s life is in danger?”

 

Just as in the issue of rape, exceptions do not define the norm. Cases where the mother’s life is in danger when it comes to pregnancy are extremely rare. However, when the mother’s life is in danger because of the child that child is no longer innocent. Sure, the child is not aware, nor is it attacking the mother intentionally, but the child has become a danger to the mother’s well being. If I was sleepwalking and acting violently, then even though I was not acting intentionally other people still have the right to prevent me from acting out, and that includes lethal force. If there was a war and the enemy was strapping bombs to children and forcing them to run at us, then we are justified in gunning them down.

This is an issue that is between the mother and the father. The child, unlike the ridiculous definitions of pro-baby killers in the first argument, has launched an actual attack on the mother. Life may be taken away from guilty parties in order to protect the innocent. However, the mother, in an act of heroism and true love may give her life so the child may live. This is logically consistent with the logic of the pro-life position and the moral law. In fact, even before abortion was made legal, this was always the case.

 

“What about the quality of life or circumstances the child might be born into?”

Should we "terminate their life" to save them from their standard of living?

Logical presuppositions at their worst again. Implicit in such an argument is the claim that it is better to murder someone than to bring them into a imperfect state of affairs. We can know for a fact that children are going to starve to death all over the world.  Should we nuke the counties for the benefit of its children?  Surely it’s not better to kill me than to bring me into a harsh world. It is never better to kill an innocent human being for the betterment of that human being. Abortion does not make life better for the child, it terminates life for that child. Abortion does not avoid child abuse, it is child abuse.

“Are you going to adopt all these babies that are being born?”

No, I’m not and I fail to see what this point has to do with anything. Just because I’m not going to take slaves into my house and take care of them doesn’t mean that I cannot speak out against the evils of slavery. Abortion is morally wrong, and regardless of if or if not I fulfill whatever moral duty another party wants to impose on me has absolutely no bearing on the issue at hand. The failures of another person never justify our own actions. This is a classic childhood defense for when we do something we know is wrong.

“Pro-lifers are for the death penalty, their morals are contradictory.”

 

First, even if contradictory it says nothing about the issue of abortion. Pro-lifers might believe that 2+2=5, or that the sun revolves around the Earth, but this does not mean that abortion is moral. This is an ad hominem, that is, an attack against the person instead of the issue.

Second, not all pro-life people are for the death penalty.

Third, and finally, the pro-life and pro-death penalty position are not contradictory. They are both based on the position that life is sacred and that you must give what you have taken. We are not pro-life because we are against killing a human being, we are against baby killing because the child in the womb is innocent. The convicted criminal is not innocent, he has taken the life of another, and must give what he has taken from another. You must pay for what you have done, the child in the womb has nothing to pay for, they have done nothing wrong.

 

“Making abortion illegal would lead to back-alley abortions.” 

 

We’ve all heard the graphic imagery: back-alleys, rusty coat hangers, bloody bathtubs, and dead women. This argument is not for the rights of women, it makes women look like idiots. Do people really believe that women are going to start grabbing rusty coat hangers and attempting to perform abortions on themselves? Seriously now. The pro-choice crowd seem to think that women are a bunch of insane people on par with junkies who are hallucinating about bugs being under their skin so they grab razors to extract them.

Moreover, this appeal to emotion is nonsense. If abortion is murder, then we should not build clinics to keep murderers safe. There are people that are building bombs illegally in their homes right now, and I’m sure this isn’t very safe, but that doesn’t mean we should construct bomb building facilities for these individuals.

 

“Abortion will help fix the over-population problem, world hunger, poor, etc.”

 

Because of our wonderful school system the more educated people become the more you start to hear them say really crazy things. This crowd admits to the person-hood of the child in the womb, but then still argues that we should murder them for a specific end. This might be to use the child to cure a disease, or the help fix a problem of overpopulation. Whatever the reason might be they all fall into the category that the ends justify any means. I’m sure that many goals could be achieved through mass murder. Indeed, both the Nazis and Planned Parenthood started by setting their sights on eliminating an inferior race of people for the betterment of the species. If anybody wants to challenge this strong claim then merely read the writings of Hitler and Margaret Sanger. The echo and connection between them is the same, as Sanger’s magazine Birth Control Review even had articles by Ernst Rüdin whose ideology was picked up by the Nazi Party.

If I desire a position at work of someone who has status over me, then there are many ways I can attempt to take it, but this does not mean that all of those means are justified just because the ends are desirable. I could work harder than this person, or I could kill all those who get in my way. Both lead to the outcome, but obviously these means are not equally justified. If you really think that killing another human being will help better the world, then I suggest volunteering and killing yourself instead choosing for someone else that they are the ones to die.

 

“Abortion is a moral issue, and we cannot legislate morality.”

Sure we can. In fact, all laws legislate a morality. Speed limits say that one ought to not drive faster than the posted limit.Oughts are what one should do, and what one should do is the definition of morality. One ought not kill another human being and so murder is illegal–morality legislated! Legislating morality is unavoidable, as even arguing that we should not legislate morality is legislating the morality that we ought to not push our morals onto others.

“Do not push your morals on me. ” 

 

Anyone who utters such a phrase has pulled the rug out from under their own feet. They are demanding that we should not push our morality onto them, when they are pushing their morality (i.e. we should not push morality onto others) onto us. It’s not a matter of pushing morality, but what is the moral law that transcends us all? I do not have my morals, and you do not have yours, we share the same morality which transcends every society that has ever lived. I’m not pushing morality, I’m merely speaking of what we all already know in our hearts: murdering babies is wrong.

 

“I’m against abortion personally, but…”

Personally I’m against drug dealers selling drugs to children, but this doesn’t mean that I’m going to make it a right for drug dealers to deliver drugs to children. 

Don't like kids doing drugs? Don't deal drugs to them!

When someone comes to you and tells you that they are personally against abortion but they want to make sure it’s a right for everyone else they are either lying through their teeth for political reasons or just inept at thinking logically about morality. No one would take me seriously if I said I was personally a racist, but that legally everyone should have a right to equality–nor would anyone vote me into office. Our personal convictions naturally influence public policy, and to be personally against abortion but allow it in the public square is to be for baby killing. Period. When a baby is murdered it doesn’t make any difference if those who watched were personally pro-baby killing or against baby killing. Listening to your neighbors murder their children doesn’t free you from any moral obligation if you decide to personally not take part in the murder.

“Making abortion illegal will not stop abortions from taking place.” 

 

The last time I checked there have been no laws which have successfully removed any such behavior from the world. Murder, theft, rape, and etc. all still take place regardless of the laws which are in place. The nation used to be divided on the issue of slavery, yet how many people do you know that are for slavery today? Not many, I assume. Slavery moved from being legal to being illegal. Since abortion has become legal do you know what we’ve become divided on today? That’s right, abortion. If anyone actually believes that lifting the bans on murder and theft will have no effect on the extent that they take place they are living in another world. If I found myself in a store and I was told that stealing the merchandise in it was a matter of personal conscience you can be damn sure than my rationale would lead to me to taking everything in sight.

 

“What if you woke up one morning to find a man surgically implanted to your body that requires your body to survive?”

 

In 1971 Judith Jarvis Thompson made an argument that made a huge blow to the pro-life position. Ironically, I doubt you will find any pro-choicer that has even heard of it (but to be charitable, I doubt you will find many pro-lifers that can give a compelling case for their position as well). Greg Koukl has responded wonderfully to the argument called the “Violinist.” Its strength lies in the fact that it assumes that those in the womb are human, but that we have a right to kill them anyway.

Thompson asks us to imagine that we wake up one morning and find that on our back a famous violinist has been surgically added to our circulatory system. The Society of Music Lovers had on their hands a violinist that would die unless they found someone who could support his kidneys for nine months. They found that the only person in the world who could do this was you. So in the middle of the night they kidnapped you and left you in the hospital to sustain this man until he could be removed. The doctors inform you that unfortunately you do not have a right to remove this man from your back and you must remain in bed at the hospital for nine months regardless of your own personal feelings on the matter. The doctor tells you that the violinist is a person, and that all persons have a right to life, and that life is greater than our rights to our own bodies. It might be heroic to do such a thing for this stranger, but is it a moral necessity? Now imagine if we were told that you were going to have to be stuck with this man for the rest of your life. Surely this is absurd, and thus the pro-life argument is fallacious.

There are several things that can be said in response to this. First, the child in the womb is naturally where it should be. Females have a biological disposition to have children, the child is not in a place where it should not be. The violinist is not where it should be, and it has violated the rights of another in an unorthodox fashion. If the logic of the argument is taken up, then we are left once again at looking at the children in the womb as a predator. This is just not true. Predators are by definition where they are not supposed to be. All children in the womb are where they are supposed to be.

Not a scale of humanness.

Second, there is a difference in removing life support and actively killing another. This is why people can be morally removed from life support. We are not murdering them, we are merely letting death take its natural course. Abortion is not removing life support, it is chopping the baby up and sucking out its brain. While we might be able to argue that we can remove support for the violinist, we would never argue that it would be okay to slice him to pieces to remedy the situation.

Third, the fallacious nature of the argument becomes apparent when we replace the stranger and stranger with a mother and a child. Surely we do not have to save everyone that we can regardless of the cost, but we do have a duty to our own children. I’m sure I could donate my organs right now to save the life of others, but it is not morally wrong for me to not do so. However, if my father or mother were going to die and my kidney could save them, then it would be abhorrent for me to refuse to help them. If my parents have no obligation to me in the womb (and remember this argument assumes those in the womb have all the rights of others), then there is no obligation that they have to me outside of the womb.

Thompson’s thought experiment falls on the same sword of every other argument for abortion. They allow us to kill and remove support from any human being whenever we please. I must commend her, however, for actually trying to give a logical reason against the right to life instead of spouting the nonsense that we normally hear from the left.

 

“A pro-lifer killed an abortion doctor.”

 

So what? I don’t care if the president of some pro-life group out there decided to cook and eat their two year old, what does that prove about anything? This is like when someone argues that Christians do bad things, therefore Christianity is false. What type of logic is this? It’s not reason in any form; it’s a smoke screen used to fool the masses when all real argumentation has failed.  If every pro-lifer went on a murderous rampage is wouldn’t have any effect on the nature of the unborn.

“Pro-lifers stigmatize women by using harsh language and showing them graphic pictures.”

 

The reality hidden behind walls is true whether we want to acknowledge examine it or not.

Are the words and pictures an accurate representation of what is taking place? If I show someone graphic pictures of the Holocaust and describe it using strong language does that mean I am doing something wrong? It’s a matter of fact. If abortion kills a baby, then it isn’t wrong to call the pro-choice movement pro-baby killing. That is, by tautology, what pro-choice then means. This isn’t hard to figure out. What this cry is really asking for is that we sugar coat the issue so that it is easier on the heart, mind, and soul of all parties involved. It is not loving to sugar coat harsh realities and lie to ourselves.

Showing women pictures of abortions has nothing to do with the nature of the unborn.

At the end of the day…

 

With all this being said I do not think that all women who get abortions are murderers. Murder requires the intentional killing of an innocent human being. Our society through organizations such as Planned Parenthood has brain washed millions into believing that those in the womb are not human, that they really are nothing but a clump of cells. All abortion kills the child in the womb, but not all women realize what they have chosen to do. This is why legislation which requires ultra-sounds and education about the child in the womb does not pass. If the mothers saw what was within them then not many would go through with the abortion. Fewer abortions are bad for business.

Regardless of what mothers (and fathers) have done, and regardless of if we realize that the entity in the womb is human or not God can repair and forgive all sins. If you have had an abortion and feel a sense of guilt, might I suggest that this is only natural. Guilt is something we all deal with, and the secular world will have no answers for us, no matter how hard they try to develop a way to rid us of guilt’s epidemic. The only answer for guilt is forgiveness, and this is exactly what God provided for us on the cross. On that stake of wood the ultimate death and murder of an innocent took place, and it was through His blood that true liberation, fundamental rights, and ends must come.

At the end of the day it comes down to a matter that the culture we live in has lost our Godly roots. Ignoring the revelation of God found in Scripture and nature we are left attempting to define everything ourselves. When this occurs it isn’t hard, indeed, it’s natural and expected that we come to the wrong conclusions. In the end, humans are not worth anything because of the development of our bodies, feelings, brain waves, or emotions. We, as the Declaration of Independence states, have inalienable rights because they are endowed by the Creator. If there is no God, then each man is worth only what we deem them to be worth. Under this logic there is absolutely nothing wrong in killing those in the womb or even our neighbors. It is not hard to apply the same arguments that the left use against those in the womb and apply them to justify killing our children at five, ten, or even fifty years old. This is because the logic of the left is not grounded in anything but utilitarian ethics, ad hoc declarations, and social contracts. That is, the means are always justified by the current desired ends, ungrounded morals, and opinion polls. No longer does America seem to have her sight fixed on God above, but instead attempts to direct the ship lost in the storm by its own sails. Unfortunately, fixating on those sails will never allow us to avoid the sharp rocks on the horizon, and we’ll never see what hit us until we have already wrecked. Though, perhaps we already have, and we are merely witnessing the death toll.

Christianity’s Calming of the Secular Seas

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In April of 2008 Aliza Shvarts of Yale University did her senior art project using the medium of her own reproductive system.  It’s reported that she never actually completed her project, but the zeitgeist that birthed the idea is still prevalent. Her “art” was to include her artificially inseminating herself multiple times and then forcing her body to have a miscarriage. She explained the meaning of her project as such:

[The project] creates an ambiguity that isolates the locus of ontology to an act of readership. An intentional ambiguity pervades both the act and the objects I produced in relation to it. The performance exists only as I chose to represent it. For me, the most poignant aspect of this representation… is the impossibility of accurately identifying the resulting blood. Because the miscarriages coincide with the expected date of menstruation (the 28th day of my cycle), it remains ambiguous whether the there was ever a fertilized ovum or not. The reality of the pregnancy, both for myself and for the audience, is a matter of reading.

In laymen terms she is attempting to show how reality has no meaning and purpose in and of itself, rather we predicate meaning and purpose onto it. According to her, the fetus, and everything else, are “very much a linguistic and political reality, an act of reading constructed by an act of naming — an authorial act.” The nature of her pregnancy relies not on some source beyond herself, whether science or God, but on her own interpretation of the situation. “Just as it is a myth,” she argues, “that women are ‘meant’ to be feminine and men masculine, that penises and vaginas are ‘meant’ for penetrative heterosexual sex (or that mouths, anuses, breasts, feet or leather, silicone, vinyl, rubber, or metal implements are not ‘meant’ for sex at all), it is a myth that ovaries and a uterus are ‘meant’ to birth a child.”

From lecture halls to movie theaters, the world agrees.

The postmodern scientists of the quantum world argues that light is both a wave and a particle; that subatomic particles exist and do not exist at the same time; that we form and appear to change reality just by observing it. Is it there, is it not there? That’s in the eye of the beholder. Hollywood, through movies such as Pulp Fiction, argues that one nation calls a burger a Cheeseburger Royale, another a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, and even another as the Whopper. The burger is whatever we declare it to be. Some people prefer ketchup on their fries, others mayonnaise. Some mother’s are having a child, others are merely carrying a choice. Some men prefer to marry a woman, some prefer to marry a man, and others their own family.

This philosophy has its genesis, as Nietzsche observed, in the idea that “God is dead.”  When God philosophically dies in a culture so does any hope for an objective meaning and purpose to our lives and the world we live in.  Does the entity in the womb have a right to life?  Is it human?  Is it a person?  The answer isn’t up for debate because it’s left up to the individual to decide.  Science, philosophy, and ethics have no say on the matter and every man becomes a god unto himself.  What’s the definition of a family, marriage, and sex?  Do they have any concrete form?  If God does not exist, then no one is left to speak on the issue but ourselves.  We define the world as we so desire.  Man becomes the measure of all things.

The Bible, as always, completely contradicts the starting point of the world. Genesis opens up with God as does the Gospel of John: “In the beginning God,” and “in the beginning was the Word”–they are one and the same. Everything begins with God and what He has said.  The Bible is not merely God uttering some ideas about the world, but instead Him speaking on the nature of reality itself.  Heraclitus was wrong when he said “you could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.”  While this world is ever changing and evolving there is a standard to be found beneath it all. The river is not defined by the water, but by its bed and the bedrock is fixed.  Some people may prefer different condiments on their fries, but they cannot choose what God has provided for nourishment and what is to be left as waste.

Defining our world without reference to the absolute leads to the perverse idea of freedom we see today. If something seems possible, then we want to have a right to do it. Yet, freedom does not mean a freedom to do and live however one pleases. That is not freedom, that is anarchy; rebelling against everything leaves nothing for one to freely live in. Freedom requires boundaries, structure, and form.  We did not and cannot choose to be born, who are parents are, or what the speed of light may be.  We are not free to pour poison over our cereal and live as if it were milk.  We are not free to choose the nature of the child in the womb any more than we are free to choose the nature of a toddler or teenager.

GK Chesterton dares us to imagine a plateau in the middle of the ocean where children are playing. If there are strong walls, then they can play without worry and care, tossing themselves about with more might than the raging seas below. Remove the walls, however, and you will no longer hear the children’s songs being sung, but instead find them huddled in fear in the middle of the island. As secularism continues to take hold in America and we continue to erode any defining walls we will not see the sun illuminating a brave new world to live in as we please, but instead be greeted by a thick fog slowly revealing not only the ferocity of the seas below, but the ferocity of each other.

Those who try and build society without God have no rational basis for defining our world. They live in and build off of a lie.  Absolutes do exist and they dictate who we are and how we are to live. There is meaning, purpose, and design to life, but that is only because God is not dead–He is there and He has spoken.

We may not be free to choose if we must rest our feet upon the ground, but we can choose to recognize this reality or instead try to walk off of a cliff.

Let us choose wisely.

A Rational Fear of Atheism

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A study was done at the University of British Columbia on why people distrust atheists so much.  Participants were given a scenario where someone gave false insurance information at a car accident and then fled the scene.  Then they were asked if they thought the person was an atheist, a rapist, Christian, or Muslim.  Atheism tied with rapist for most likely.  This hard hitting scientific methodology is why people go to college I guess.

From here the test went on adding and removing different factors to try and show that people distrusted atheists because nonbelievers have no one watching over them.  Why behave if there’s no eye in the sky?  Respondents were reminded that atheists, like all people, have to answer to the police and government for their crimes (I guess in Canada the police can arrest you for cheating on your spouse or lying to your friend).  The study finishes up with trying to show that atheists are good people too because they can and have given to people in need and performed charitable work.

Unfortunately the study did not also conclude that it was ridiculous.

Look, no one (in their right mind) is denying that atheists can do good deeds.  No one is denying that atheists can know right from wrong.  Neither is anyone denying that some atheists can be better than Christians, nor that some Christians can be worse than atheists.  But what atheists cannot do is account for the existence of morality to begin with.  Morality is a system of oughts–one ought not steal and one ought to  give to charity–but in atheism there are no oughts.  To what moral authority do they appeal to to argue that one ought or ought not do something?  Themselves and their personal feelings?  That’s subjective.  Society?  Society is nothing but a group of subjective individuals.  Mother nature?  Mother nature neither knows nor cares, mother nature just is.  When the wind blows it doesn’t have any moral categories.  It’s not blowing righty or wrongly, it’s merely following the laws of physics.

Worse yet, atheism has led to the most bloodshed in human history.  The USSR murdered 62 million people,  In the 20th century China (PRC) murdered 35 million; China during the guerilla period, over 3 million; Cambodia, over 2 million; Vietnam, 1.6 million; North Korea, 1.6 million, Russia prior to the Soviets, over a million.  While Hitler was not an atheist (he was a pagan) his philosophy was no different than an atheist.  He believed that humans were nothing but animals and that social Darwinism cried out for him to exterminate the inferior ones.  This led to the death of six million people at his hands.  Compare these numbers with whatever atrocities people wish to lay at the feet of Christians.

This isn’t an accident, it’s the result of atheistic philosophy.  People shouldn’t be terrified of atheists, but they should be terrified of atheistic philosophy when put into practice on a social level–the path America is taking today.

I’m terrified.

I Don’t Care About A Stupid Tree

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A tree has burned down and it’s made national news.

A tree.

Seriously.  Millions of babies are dismembered and murdered every day in the womb but it’s an outrageous outrage when a tree burns down.  I understand the significance of the tree and the reason why people felt proud that it was in their backyard.  I also understand why people are angry that it might have been arson.  I understand that if true the culprits should be found and punished accordingly.

But I don’t understand why when a dog is abused or a tree dies that people freak out more than when they hear about abortion.   Bald eagles and bears have more rights than then unborn child in the womb.  If I were to kill a bear that was threatening my house and home I would go to jail, but if I were to take my fiance to a “doctor’s office” where they were to allow her to give birth to everything but the baby’s head only to stab it in the back of the neck and suck out its brain its considered a basic human right.

Something is seriously wrong with our world.  We’re worshipping the creation instead of the Creator and we’re actively killing ourselves because of it.   This isn’t just hyperbole or extreme language.  It’s the logical conclusion that follows when we don’t believe in God.  If God doesn’t exist then human beings have no worth besides what other humans predicate to them.  If we want to decide that the child in the womb has no intrinsic value, then we have the right to do so–there is no higher authority.  And that’s where we are.  We murder our own children but lament the death of a tree.

In a sane world I would grieve of the loss of a historical beauty, but this isn’t a sane world that we live in.  It’s a spiritually, and thus morally depraved sick world that we live in.  So, for now, excuse me if I don’t care about a damn tree.

Shut Up About Tim Tebow Already.

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Let’s get a few things clear: I don’t care about football.  I’ve never been into watching sports or following a team/athlete.  Once in a while I’ll get into a close game that’s in its last few moments, but outside of a social gathering, you won’t see me hunkered down in front of a game.

I also don’t care about Tim Tebow.  I don’t care if he wins or loses.  I don’t care how many yards he throws or if he becomes rookie of the year.  I don’t care if he’s a good athlete or a terrible one.  I don’t care if he kneels down in prayer or if he does some ridiculous dance move instead.  I don’t care if he worships Christ or if he prays towards Mecca five times a day.  I don’t care if he goes to church on Sunday or if he sits at home and meditates over the Code of Hammurabi.

What I do care about is that people seem to care so much about his Christianity and they want to shut him up.  If his Christianity was replaced by his respect for Allah or he made some gesture that made reference to organic food, green energy, or the battle for “homosexual rights” he would be praised to no end.  The relentless mocking and ridiculing of the man would have become taboo a long time ago.  You don’t mock Muslims, or homosexuals in our modern society, only Christians.  It’s an unabashed hatred for Christianity.  He’s a Christian and he’s not afraid to show it or to show his appreciation to God.  Deal.

But let’s get something else clear as well: The theological debates and questions being asked about Tebow and his team are downright stupid.  Whether Tebow wins or loses has no bearing on the existence or nature of God.  An intelligent Creator might be able to be discerned from the existence of football, (minds, intelligent creatures, our biological complexity, and ability to communicate cannot be coherently explained by evolution), but how an athlete who believes in God performs says nothing on the God who created him.  If Tebow were to go on and win the Super Bowl it wouldn’t say a damn thing about Christianity.  Likewise, if he were to be struck by lighting while being sacked by a Muslim it wouldn’t demonstrate that Allah was supreme.

This is not how God revealed Himself propositionally in the Bible.  God confirmed His message through miraculous signs that could not be interpreted as natural phenomena.  He turned water into wine, He parted the seas, He calmed the seas, He fed crowds with crumbs, He raised the dead, He healed the sick, He gave sight to the blind, He predicted His own death and resurrection from the dead.  When Tebow starts predicting the outcome of the games, parts the defense with a shout, controls the weather to blow a kick off its path, or teleports the ball into the hands of a receiver in the end zone then I’ll sit up and take notice.

I don’t care if his verse of choice is John 3:16 and then he throws for 316 yards, an average 31.6 yards, drawing a television rating of 31.6, and then so on and so forth.  Numbers are a game of math and there is a mathematical certitude that these numbers will pop up.  Did you know that the words in the first 19 letters of the Qur’an appear throughout the book in multiples of 19?  Does this mean anything?  Of course not.  Ronald Wilson Reagan had six letters in each of his three names.  Did this 666 mean that he was the anti-Christ?  Absolutely not.  Look long enough into anything and you can use numbers and math to find any sort of code or hidden meaning that you want.  The God of the Bible doesn’t work through secrets and esoteric messages.  He has spoken and He has spoken clearly.

Let’s not get muddled up in some man as being the second coming of Elijah.  He’s just another fellow Christian fighting against the secular hatred of Christianity who happens to play football.

Godspeed.

(Oh, and if football turns out to not be his thing, I think T-Bo, would make a pretty cool rapper name.)

Let’s Be Honest

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The outrage at the troops who urinated on the bodies of dead terrorists is completely misplaced.  The members of the Taliban were trying to kill these men moments before.  If someone broke into my house and tried to kill my family I’d probably unload into them long after they were dead.  I don’t know what the rage flowing through my veins would cause me to do, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t mind spitting on the body bleeding out before me.

I do think this is wrong, not because we should respect the Taliban or people trying to kill us, but because judgment belongs to God.  The threat has subsided and our earthly judgment has already been carried out.  Leave the rest up to God’s fearful wrath or amazing grace.  This is the only reason why the troops went too far and stained their character and the character of America.  They took the place of God and carried out an unnecessary act that accomplished nothing but satisfying their own egos.

But let’s be honest.  We’d all want to do it too.  And if in a moment of passion you’ve ever looked at someone in the eyes, dead or alive, and said “Fuck you!”, you’ve already done so.  I think this inward reflection is more important than the endless hypocritical outrage outpoured by society.

Contra Gremlins

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Christopher Hitchens has died and he’s no longer an atheist.  He might still reject God, but he doesn’t doubt His existence.

Hitchens had a lot of things wrong, but he had at least one thing right.  Christianity and all religions, to him, were false.  He might have been wrong about his conclusions, but he was right in looking at the question from the angle of religion either being right or wrong.  Religion for him was not a personal belief that people took up to interpret reality.  Rather, he looked at reality and concluded that the claims of religious people and books were no where to be found.

Is there any other way to look at the question?  If religion is neither true of false, then what is the point of believing in it?  If you’re a Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist or whatever else you might call yourself by, then do you believe your religion is true?  Or is it just your subjective view that comes with a couple rituals performed on designated days?  If it’s the latter then I don’t understand why you even bother; might as well talk to and plan rituals around gremlins in your walls.  It’s the same.

Preamble Ramble

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This blog’s intended theme (among others) is an attempt to clear up a misconception about the nature of Christians and Christianity that the modern world seems to have taken up.  I do not intend to do this formally and directly, but rather indirectly through the random thoughts and feelings about whatever might run through my head.  Consider this, then, your warning.  I am not going to bother myself with pleasantries or to edit myself to the proper way a Christian should act.  This is not to say that I am going to be purposely crass or vulgar, but if a thought runs through my head, then I am not going to hide it.  The point is not to offend, but to be real–to be raw, if you will.

So let’s get something out of the way: Christians are assholes.

This isn’t a flaw or malady of Christianity.  It’s a problem with people.  People are assholes.  All of them.  You too, are an asshole.   The problem with Christianity is that it really can’t go anywhere without people and by extension, assholes. The blog you are reading right now just so happens to be written by one of the assholes which makes up the community of assholes known as humanity.

Welcome.

Too many people, I believe, come to Christianity and walk away because they look at the decisions and choices we make and conclude that we are no better than the rest of the world.  They are right.  We are not.  Others look at the Christians who have their act together and conclude that they could never live a life such as that.  The standard is too high and they know their heart and it is not good enough.  They, too, are right.  It is not.

This is not a contradiction.  This is the reality.  As I said, people are assholes.  We are born this way.  It is not something we can change through our own means.  I have come to the conclusion that the only hope for mankind is Jesus Christ.  Only His literal and historical life, birth, death, and resurrection from the grave can save and change the hearts which reside within you and me.  This is not because He knew a secret that we did not, but because He was God incarnate.  He was God made flesh who conquered the grave and promised to crack open our hardened hearts and make them new.  The change is not instantaneous–rather it is a journey that takes a lifetime.  Until then, to one degree or another, the part of us that is an asshole will remain.

Please do not take this as an excuse for how Christians may act.  It is merely an explanation, not a justification.  The supposed contradiction between our actions and our beliefs are not contrary, but rather consistent with each other.  We are a bunch of assholes who God is working on to change into a reflection of Himself.  And He invites you to join in if you will let Him.

Some of my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ may be offended by the way I might choose to express myself, but once again, my purpose is to be honest and real.  Jesus was very clear that the spirit was above the letter of the law (Matthew 5:20-44).  I have never murdered anyone and I cannot foresee myself ever falling into such depravity, but God claims that I already have on those occasions that I have cursed the life of another.  I may have not been physically unfaithful to my fiance, but God claims I have committed adultery when I lust after another.  I may be able to hide my sins from humanity, but I cannot hide them from God and I stand guilty before Him desperate for His grace and forgiveness.  Please understand that I am not out to be unChristian merely because I can, but rather, once again, to be honest and real about life and my own head.

I’ll warn you now, it’s fucked up in here.

Thank you for reading.