Commentary

Prayer is good, but reason and evidence are better

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I spotted a post over at the Anchoress about the issue of prayer and abortion. She is discussing with a friend whether to pray in front of an abortion clinic, which takes a lot of courage. But I don’t think that’s the only way to make a difference on abortion. I want to remind my readers that you can pray and debate. I think both are necessary. And debate is just as Biblical as prayer.

The Anchoress writes about the importance of prayer:

If you stand outside an abortion mill and peacefully pray for everyone inside, the abortionists and their aides, the troubled women choosing to enter, the babies – you are truly moving outside of your own concerns, your own ego, and growing in knowledge of generosity and detachment. Will you save a few lives? Perhaps, if God wills it.

But perhaps the point of your calling is two-fold; to affect the lives of others in a positive way, yes, but also to affect your own life, if you are open and trusting enough to allow yourself to be instructed and changed, as I know you will be.

I am convinced that the abortion issue itself is meant to be the long, protracted, painful, divisive and enduring struggle it is, because it is a challenge to the entire age.

The Torah says, “who saves a life saves the world entire.” Our common-wisdom will sometimes say – over new laws, or new restrictions or new requirements – “well, but if it saves a single life, it’s worth it.” We do know the value of human life, we know it instinctively and intrinsically, because our own DNA shouts out “I am good; I am important and I want to live” with every breath we take, every heartbeat pumped and every new blood cell created. But some of us work against that knowledge, for a variety of reasons. Some of it is self-loathing. Some of it is faux enlightenment. Some of it is simple, stubborn, adolescent contrariness, writ large.

I agree with all of this, but I want to also emphasize the importance of debating with our opponents.

I tend towards more confrontational means, and so I wanted to link together some of my best posts on defending the pro-life position, and then make some comments. When it comes to abortion, I’m inclined to keep faith, emotions and personal experiences right out of the discussion and stick with the strict philosophical reasoning and pure science.

First, let me share with you the links:

And now the comment. I think we need to get serious about the way we talk about social issues like abortion, marriage and divorce. Some Christians are hiding from these discussions and resorting to prayer alone because they believe that these are issues that are too emotional to debate. But emotions and personal experiences are irrelevant to questions of truth and morality.

The reason why society as a whole is sliding leftwards on social issues is because we wrongly believe that there is a fundamental split between facts and values. We believe in objective truth over here, as in chemistry and physics. And we believe in religious and moral truth over there, as in the existence of God and the sanctity of life. We need to halt the slide by treating the latter like the former.

And here’s how: learn to defend your views by reading books.

For example, is the abortion issue a concern to you? Then read Francis J. Beckwith’s 2007 book “Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice”, published by Cambridge University Press, and put it up on your shelf at work.

Is the marriage/divorce issue a concern to you? Then read Stephen Baskerville’s 2007 book “Taken into Custody: The War Against Fatherhood, Marriage, and the Family”, published by Cumberland House, and put it up on your shelf at work.

And so on… bioethics is just like any other area of publicly testable knowledge. The more you know, the more confident you become, and the easier it is to speak about these things in a non-threatening, academic tone. People actually debate these topics in formal, timed debates at universities, in front of students, for example.

We succeed in persuading our neighbors about social issues as we succeed in persuading our neighbors about anything. Bring more data to the table than your opponent and you will do well. Even if you don’t get an admission, talking about moral issues seriously creates respect for traditional social conservative views in the culture, by showing that we have reasons, and not just blind-faith.

UPDATE: This post over at Nice Deb is a must-read. Obama is telling Catholic Cardinals that he’s not pro-abortion.

News

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty faces protests over socialized medicine failures

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How well does socialized medicine work? Just ask Dalton McGuinty, the Premier (governor) of the wealthy province of Ontario. According to Yahoo News, he’s facing protests over his proposed cuts in medical service. It’s government-run health care at its finest, complete with Canada’s own version of tea parties!

(I know some of you Canadians are proud your nationalized health care, but please allow me to critique it and don’t be too upset with me).

Excerpt:

TORONTO – With a massive protest over hospital cuts planned today, Premier Dalton McGuinty says he’s not trying to dismantle local health care services.

Thousands of demonstrators are expected to descend on the front lawn of the Ontario legislature to denounce changes at six Niagara hospitals that they say are also happening in other communities.

Critics say a regional health-care agency in the Niagara-Hamilton area is planning to close ERs in smaller communities and move services elsewhere.

…The Ontario Health Coalition says about 50 busloads from communities across Ontario will take part in the protest, starting at 11:30 a.m.

They are expected to be joined at the legislature by seniors and patients to demand that McGuinty to save hospital services.

Buses were expected to arrive from such communities as Belleville, Trenton, Windsor, Leamington, Wallaceburg, Sarnia, Strathroy, Cambridge, Hamilton, St. Catharines, Welland, Port Colborne and Fort Erie.

Niagara-Hamilton is the region south and southwest of Toronto, which votes overwhelmingly Liberal and NDP (Socialist). It’s a union area where steel and auto manufacturing is the major industry. This is the area just northwest of Buffalo, New York.

The Conservative Party leadership race in Ontario

Right now, Ontario has kicked out their ineffective and moderate provincial leader John Tory, and they are in the process of choosing a new leader. One of our free speech heroes, Randy Hillier is in the running. The other two candidates are too far to the left, i.e. – “red tories”. Joanne from Blue Like You is also leaning towards Hudak.

Conservative MP Jason Kenney has already endorsemed Hudak:

TORONTO – Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is backing Tim Hudak in the Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership race – a move that could make things awkward at the federal cabinet table.

…Having the backing of an influential federal minister is a major coup for Hudak, 41, the perceived front-runner in the race to succeed John Tory.

…”He’s the bright, young, energetic, common-sense conservative that will appeal to Ontarians,” he said.

Here is an excerpt from another article about the candidates:

The Niagara-area member, who is married to Harris’s former chief of staff Deb Hutton, also has about half of the 24-member caucus in his corner.

Norm Miller – son of former premier Frank Miller – Julia Munro, Garfield Dunlop and Lisa MacLeod have all endorsed Hudak.

…Hillier, a self-described libertarian who wants to scrap the Ontario Human Rights Commission, will likely make a splash in the race, but observers say he has virtually no support among caucus members.

…Hillier has cast himself as the leader who will steer the party and the province back to true conservatism, including smaller government, fewer regulations and a more participatory democracy.

MPP Lisa Macleod and MPP Randy Hillier are free-speech champions in Ontario. Free speech is also an issue in British Columbia.

News

Round-up of stories about intelligent design, from the Discovery Institute

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The Discovery Institute is the headquarters for ID research and advocacy in the United States. They send out a newsletter by e-mail and I though this week’s hit on all cylinders. Below are some of their stories from the newsletter. Thanks to commenter ECM for an earlier tip on the Junk DNA story.

When “Junk DNA” Isn’t Junk: Farewell to a Darwinist Standard Response

Richard Sternberg, research scientist at the Biologic Institute supported by the Center for Science and Culture, is now blogging at Evolution News & Views, weighing in on the latest research showing that so-called “Junk DNA,” which Darwinists have discounted as “rubbish,” are actually “anything but that.”

Sternberg writes:

In the Darwinist repertoire, a standard response to evidence of design in the genome is to point to the existence of “junk DNA.” What is it doing there, if purposeful design really is detectable in the history of life’s development? Of course this assumes that the “junk” really is junk. That assumption has been cast increasingly into doubt. New research just out in the journal Nature Genetics finds evidence that genetic elements previously thought of as rubbish are anything but that. The research describes tiny strands of RNA, previously thought to be junk, that now turn out to play a role in gene expression. Another finding by Dr. Geoff Faulkner shows that “retrotransposons,” a further variety of “junk” as the dogma previously taught, play a similar role.

Also at ENV, Dr. Sternberg takes a look at the old Darwinian tripe that biological systems couldn’t possibly have been designed because they exhibit “shoddy engineering”:

We often hear from Darwinians that the biological world is replete with examples of shoddy engineering, or, as they prefer to put it, bad design. One such case of really poor construction is the inverted retina of the vertebrate eye. As we all know, the retina of our eyes is configured all wrong because the cells that gather photons, the rod photoreceptors, are behind two other tissue layers. Light first strikes the ganglion cells and then passes by or through the bipolar cells before reaching the rod photoreceptors. Surely, a child could have arranged the system better — so they tell us.

The problem with this story of supposed unintelligent design is that it is long on anthropomorphisms and short on evidence. Consider nocturnal mammals. Night vision for, say, a mouse is no small feat. Light intensities during night can be a million times less than those of the day, so the rod cells must be optimized — yes, optimized — to capture even the few stray photons that strike them. Given the backwards organization of the mouse’s retina, how is this scavenging of light accomplished? Part of the solution is that the ganglion and bipolar cell layers are thinner in mammals that are nocturnal. But other optimizations must also occur. Enter the cell nucleus and “junk” DNA.

Jerry Coyne Recycles: Why Darwinism Is False

Jonathan Wells is reviewing Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution Is True over at ENV, and already the list of problems with Coyne’s book is mounting:

On Earth Day 2009, we are reminded of the ecological importance of recycling. As a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at The University of Chicago, Jerry A. Coyne must be keen on recycling: He even recycles worn-out arguments for Darwinism.

If “evolution” meant simply that existing species can undergo minor changes over time, or that many species alive today did not exist in the past, then evolution would undeniably be true. But “evolution” for Coyne means Darwinism — the theory that all living things are descendants of a common ancestor, modified by unguided natural processes such as DNA mutations and natural selection.

Coyne discusses the fossil record, embryos, vestigial structures, the geographic distribution of species, artificial and natural selection, and the origin of species. In the process, (1) he ignores the Cambrian explosion — which Darwin considered a “serious” problem — and he rearranges the fossil record to fit Darwin’s theory; (2) he defends Ernst Haeckel — who faked some drawings of vertebrate embryos to provide support for Darwinism — and he dredges up the doctrine that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny; (3) he claims that much human DNA is useless junk — despite abundant recent evidence that this is not true — and he relies on theological arguments that have no legitimate place in natural science; (4) he invokes “the well-known process called convergent evolution” to explain many cases of the geographic distribution of species — even though the “well-known process” is merely speculation — and he again falls back on theology to justify a supposedly scientific theory; and (5) he describes examples of natural and artificial selection — none of which show anything more than minor changes within existing species — and he misrepresents experimental evidence to make it sound as though the origin of species by natural selection has been directly observed.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Other stuff

The newsletter also discussed historian A.N. Wilson’s return to faith from atheism, which is really interesting because he seems to be well-rounded in his reasons for rejecting atheism. And the newsletter mentions that Jay Richards’ forthcoming book, “Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem” is out May 6th! Jay gave a great lecture on basic economics for Christians and another great lecture on what Christians should think about global warming.