Tag Archives: Morality

News

Canadian student union leader says pro-lifers are all potential murderers

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Story from Life Site News.

Excerpt:

Lakehead University Life Support (LULS), the Canadian campus pro-life club that recently lost its hard-won club status, is facing harsh opposition from board members of the Student Union (LUSU) – one of whom has compared the group to the murderer of late-term abortionist George Tiller – as the club seeks to regain its status.

The student union voted 7-6 on October 29th in favor of denying the pro-life group club status. The club had only won its status in February after fighting for two years to gain it.

On November 6th, LUSU Vice President of Finance Josh Kolic released a statement in which he called the effort to overturn the union’s decision an attempt to ‘hijack’ the democratic process.  He went on, further, to claim that the pro-life club “represents … the same mentality of those who gunned down Dr. George Tiller.”

[…]In Kolic’s statement, he claimed that denying the pro-life group club status was a “great victory for human rights.”  In his view, “the neutral stance is simply one that allows the individual woman herself to choose,” and, as such, he says this is the position that LUSU itself should take.

He went on to ask the student body for “help [to] restore democracy and the spirit of human rights to the Lakehead University Student Union” by attending their next meeting or emailing “a deputation to the board as to why a woman’s right to choose is important to you.”

How ironic: a pro-abortion person calling pro-lifers murderers. It seems to me that it is pro-abortionists who advocate the actual murder of hundreds of millions of innocent unborn children. And remember the recent murder of a pro-life activist by a pro-abortion zealot. And here’s a recent attempted murder of a pro-lifer. Those are from the last few months alone.

Let me ask you a question. How many pro-abortion people do you suppose have read a book like “Defending-Life-Against-Abortion-Choice” by Dr. Francis J. Beckwith, published by Cambridge University Press, or a book like “Embryo: A Defense of Human Life“, published by Princeton University’s Robert P. George? Are pro-abortionists informed about the case for the pro-life position?

Well, consider how they censor the pro-life clubs on campus. Do you think they are open-minded and tolerant of opposing views? I can probably make a more persuasive case for the pro-abortion view than militant pro-abortionists like Josh Kolic can. I’ve actually heard their arguments presented in debates that I chose to listen to. Josh wants to censor opposing views. That is pure intolerance.

Further reading

Suppression of pro-lifers is quite common in Canada.

Here are some resources on the topic of abortion.

Notice how pro-lifers focus on reason and evidence, while pro-abortionists focus on the use of force, to one degree or another, in order to get their way.

Videos

Video of Johnson-Provine debate on evolution vs physical evidence

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In 1994, when this debate was held, intelligent design was still pretty new. This debate, more than any other resource, clarified what was at stake in the debate over origins.

Provine makes clear what follows from the truth of evolution: no free will, no objective standard of good and evil, no life after death, no meaning in life. Johnson argues that the Cambrian explosion disproves Darwinian evolution, and the only reason why Darwinian evolution is widely-accepted is because materialism is pre-supposed.

If materialism is pre-supposed, then only atheistic answers to the origins question are allowed, so naturally Darwinism wins – it has to win once you make a philosophical assumption that matter is all there is. (An assumption contradicted by the big bang theory, which requires the creation of all matter from nothing.

Here’s a summary of the debate:

Debate before an audience between two professors on the naturalistic vs. the theistic way of understanding human existence.

William Provine, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University, cites evidence supporting neo-Darwinian theory and argues that microevolutionary processes account for the origin of all life. He asserts that modern evolutionary theory is incompatible with belief in God; that there are no absolute moral and ethical laws; that free will does not exist; and that human character is merely a result of heredity and environment.

Phillip Johnson, Professor of Law at the University of California in Berkeley, agrees that modern neo-Darwinian theory is atheistic and scientific; however, as a general theory it is a philosophical dogma that is inconsistent with the evidence.

Provine and Johnson debate basic questions: Do we owe our existence to a creator? Can the blind watchmaker of natural selection take the place of God? Moderator is Timothy Jackson, Dept. of Religious Studies, Stanford University.

And here’s a couple of clips from the opening. (H/T Uncommon Descent via ECM)

The rest are  linked here.

This is very much worth watching, especially for atheists who typically are not aware that evolution rests on a philsophical assumption that is assumed, and that contradicts astrophysics. That has to stop. And the best way to stop it is by calling it out into the open using debates like this one.

For those of you behind a firewall, here are text excerpts.

And don’t forget about my recent post about the role of pre-suppositions like the pre-supposition of naturalism in historical Jesus research. The post contains debates where this is actually discussed as well.

Polemics

Can atheists ground objective moral values and duties, just like theists?

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Consider this article from Thinking Matters in New Zealand.

Excerpt:

There is an objection to the moral argument for God’s existence, specifically the premise which states the best explanation for the foundation for objective moral values and duties is God. It is the idea that moral values and duties can be plausibly anchored in some transcendent, non-theistic ground. That moral values and duties exist objectively, but as brute facts, not needing an explanation for their existence. They are sort of eternal unchanging ideas that are necessary features of the universe. This position we shall call Atheistic Moral Platonism, and there are three ways we could respond.

Click here for the three ways to respond.

I actually used to hold to Deistic Platonism before I became a Christian, and that’s all documented in my testimony. To learn more about this topic, here is my series on how morality cannot be rationally grounded by atheism, and the series includes links to lectures and debates for further study. The relationship between a cosmic designer and objective moral values and duties is the easiest topic in the world to discuss with non-Christians. It takes only a little preparation, compared to more difficult issues like scientific evidence and the historicity of the resurrection.