J. Warner Wallace tweeted this post by vjtorley from Uncommon Descent.
Excerpt:
On a deeper level, however, the skeptics’ attempt to divorce to the theory of evolution from the origin of life is fundamentally flawed. “Says who?”, you ask. Says evolutionary biologist PZ Myers, that’s who – in his 2008 post, 15 misconceptions about evolution. Myers was responding to a list of common myths about Darwin’s theory of evolution, drawn up by Listverse founder Jamie Frater. For the most part, Professor Myers thought Frater’s post was excellent, but on a couple of points, he differed sharply with Frater’s responses to these myths about evolution. Frater had argued that evolution doesn’t deal with the origin of life, but PZ Myers argued that this compartmentalization of the two issues was tantamount to “cheating”:
[Myth] #15 is also a pet peeve [of mine]: “Evolution is a theory about the origin of life” is presented as false. It is not. I know many people like to recite the mantra that “abiogenesis is not evolution,” but it’s a cop-out. Evolution is about a plurality of natural mechanisms that generate diversity. It includes molecular biases towards certain solutions and chance events that set up potential change as well as selection that refines existing variation. Abiogenesis research proposes similar principles that led to early chemical evolution. Tossing that work into a special-case ghetto that exempts you from explaining it is cheating, and ignores the fact that life is chemistry. That creationists don’t understand that either is not a reason for us to avoid it.
Well, there you have it. If you accept that “life is chemistry,” as any card-carrying materialist surely does, then you cannot honestly maintain that the evolution of life should be studied in isolation from the question of how it originated.
Myers is wrong about a lot, but this time he is right on the money.
Darwinists who are trying to avoid putting forward a naturalistic theory for the origin of life better think again. In order to affirm that naturalistic mechanisms can account for the diversity of life, you do have to explain the origin of life. If that is the place where an intelligent cause is needed to explain the information, then that’s enough to cast doubt on naturalism. There has to be a seamless chain of cause and effect for naturalism to be true. Any discontinuity, whether it be the creation event or the origin of life, is lethal to naturalism.
Scott Klusendorf travels throughout the United States and Canada training pro-life advocates to persuasively defend their views in the public square. He contends that the pro-life message can compete in the marketplace of ideas if properly understood and properly articulated.
[…]Scott has participated in numerous debates at the collegiate level. His debate opponents have included Nadine Strossen, President of the ACLU (1991-2008) – Kathyrn Kolbert, an attorney that has argued for abortion rights in a United States Supreme Court case – and Kathy Kneer, President of Planned Parenthood of California.
Scott has debated or lectured to student groups at over 70 colleges and universities, including Stanford, USC, UCLA, Johns Hopkins, Loyola Marymount Law School, West Virginia Medical School, MIT, U.S. Air Force Academy, Cal-Tech, and University of North Carolina.
Each year thousands of students at Protestant and Catholic high schools are trained by Scott to make a persuasive case for life as part of their worldview training prior to college. He’s provided that same training to students at Summit Ministries and Focus on the Family Institute.
Scott is the author of The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture, released in March 2009 by Crossway Books. Scott has also published articles on pro-life apologetics in The Christian Research Journal, Clear Thinking, Focus on the FamilyCitizen, and The Conservative Theological Journal.
Chuck Colson, founder and Chairman of the Board of Prison Fellowship, says: “Scott first grabbed my attention when Focus on the Family featured one of his presentations on its national broadcast. I was struck by his ability to communicate truth so clearly and insightfully. I’ve heard many speakers who deliver excellent content, but few who can actually equip people to communicate their pro-life convictions to a secular culture. In fact, I was so impressed with Scott’s talk that I phoned him directly to learn more about his work. After that, I scheduled him as a keynote speaker for our own Breakpoint conference.”
Scott is a graduate of UCLA with honors and holds a Masters Degree in Christian Apologetics from Biola University.
Myers: I could imagine a culture where a child doesn’t have the right to life until they are 5-years old
Moderator: Myers is an atheist. He believes that standards of conduct are variable depending on what is dominant in a culture. Since cultures vary by time and place, and none is objectively right or wrong, then a 5-year limit for personhood is as valid as any other standard that might evolve. There is no way to judge between cultures against some objective standard
Moderator (to Klusendorf): Myers says that the unborn is a “piece of meat”. It’s not a person until well after birth. Do only atheists believe this?
Klusendorf: No others hold them. But what is more interesting is that he just asserts his views, he never argues for them. He says that pro-lifers lie when debating this issue
Moderator: (to Myers) What is the unborn?
Myers: It’s a piece of tissue that will develop into a human being over time
Moderator: (to Myers) What is it 5 minutes before it’s born?
Myers: It’s fetus, it’s not a baby
Klusendorf: The development stages of a human are all stages of development of the same entity, as even Peter Singer and David Boonin admit
Moderator: He made a distinction between before birth and after birth
Klusendorf: Yes, and that contradicts what he says later when he says there are no sharp boundaries
Klusendorf: Myers is confusing parts with wholes. The skin cells on my hand are part of a larger human being. The embryo is not part of a larger human being, they are a whole human being, directing its own development
Klusendorf: Myers also makes the claim that embryos are constructed piece by piece from the outside. But the science of embryology is clear – the embryo develops itself.
Moderator (to Myers): Is the unborn a person?
Myers: Personhood develops gradually. A newborn baby is not a person. A baby’s brain is still forming so it’s not a person. There is no specific moment when a baby becomes a person. It is culturally determined. Our society says it’s birth. Some people say viability. Either of those are acceptable to me
Moderator: (to Myers): So drawing the line between unborn and born is arbitrary?
Myers: Yes it is
Klusendorf: He is separating human beings into classes: persons and non-persons. This has resulted in injustices, historically speaking. E.g. – with American Indians
(Break until 15:00)
Klusendorf: He says that a human being becomes a person when their brain is fully developed, but even teens don’t have fully developed brains
Klusendorf: Look at this scientific evidence from PBS about NIH research which shows that brains still developing in teens and it causes them to make poor decisions
Klusendorf: If development gives us value, then those with more of it have more of a right to life than those with less
Klusendorf: This point was made by Lincoln in his debates about slavery, when he warned his opponent that someone with lighter skin could enslave him
Moderator (to Myers): How do you decide these life issues?
Myers: We use the notion of “greater good”
Moderator (to Myers): that’s a culturally determined notion?
Myers: Yes. The greater good here is that we maximize the security and happiness of most people in the society. Women are persons, so we favor their rights.
Klusendorf: His response begs the question. He is assuming that the unborn are not human persons. He talks about the need for women’s rights. Are unborn women included in those who have rights?
Klusendorf: If cultures decide who is and who is not a person, then he cannot oppose cultures that say that Jews are not persons, or that women are not persons
Klusendorf: He admits that he cannot oppose cultures that think that children of age 5 are not persons, and can be killed
Moderator (to Myers): You call that kind of society “brutal”, why do you say that?
Myers: It’s my personal preference because I like my own kids
Moderator (to Klusendorf): Respond to that
Klusendorf: He has no argument, just his own opinion. He cannot oppose any society that things that it is OK to traffic, kill, etc. 5-year-olds
Klusendorf: He says that he has a personal preference. That is an interesting fact about his psychology, but he has no argument
Klusendorf: In an atheistic worldview, human beings at any stage are cosmic accidents
Klusendorf: How do we get any kind of intrinsic value and human rights out of an atheist worldview? I don’t see how you can
Klusendorf: Even a woman’s absolute right to an abortion is not grounded by atheism
Moderator (to Myers): What do you think of the pro-life movement?
Myers: I’m a developmental biologist. The pro-life movement is lying to people. An embryo is not a person. “Personhood implies much more than being a piece of meat with the right number of chromosomes in it”. The primary issue in abortion is women’s autonomy. It is entirely the woman’s decision
Klusendorf: You have to present arguments to prove that pro-lifers are lying. There are pro-abortion scholars who have arguments, he isn’t one. He only has assertions, opinions and preferences.
Klusendorf: What if a woman gets pregnant solely in order to take a drug during pregnancy in order to have a deformed child. Myers has no argument against that
Myers also has no argument against sex-selection abortions. So much for “women’s rights”.
I just want to mention that the Life Training Institute is one of the ministries I recommend to people. They are the only pro-life group I support, because they are apologists all the way. If they’re not debating, they’re training others to debate. If you like Christians who have battlefield experience on the pro-life issue, this is your organization.
While the Kermit Gosnell story is still being ignored by the mainstream media, I though I would investigate the groups who promote abortion.
The support for abortion comes entirely from the secular left, especially from the Darwinists, the feminists and the global warming alarmists. Let’s take a look at each of them.
“I’ve scooped brains out of buckets, I’ve counted dendrites in slices cut from the brains of dead babies. You want to make me back down by trying to inspire revulsion with dead baby pictures? I look at them unflinchingly and see meat. And meat does not frighten me.”
Unsurprisingly, Myers is “pro-choice”. But Myers’ advocacy of “choice” goes further:
“…I’m even willing to say that I’m pro-abortion…”
“Pro-abortion”? Even committed pro-abortion zealots don’t generally endorse abortion explicitly, except to assert the right to ‘choice,’ as if one were choosing a salad dressing rather than deciding to take a human life.
Myers:
“[I] would like to encourage more people to abort…”
Meyers is considered to be one of the more rabid atheistic evangelists operating today. But there are tons of virulent atheists operating on the taxpayer’s dime in the university.
The denial of basic human rights by the pro-abortion population control thugs is expanding. My colleague Wesley Smith at Secondhand Smoke quotes Peter Singer, a utilitarian atheist-Darwinist ethicist at Princeton, who has denied that young children meet the standards for personhood and has stated that many intelligent animals ought to have more rights than young children.
Singer:
“When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed. The loss of the happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the second. Therefore, if the killing of the hemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others it would . . . be right to kill him.”
“Maybe the law has to have clear bright lines and has to take birth as the right time, although maybe it should make some exceptions in the cases of severe disability where parents think that it is better for the child and better for the family that the child does not live…The position that allows abortion also allows infanticide under some circumstances…If we accept abortion, we do need to rethink some of those more fundamental attitudes about human life.”[emphasis mine]
This is where the ideas of Kermit Gosnell are taught to students – in the left-wing universities. Singer and Meyers are committed atheists, committed Darwinists and radically pro-abortion. Atheism has killed over 100 million people in the last 100 years. Atheism is the repudiation of objective morality. When you repudiate objective morality, you get mass murder. Sometimes through abortion, sometimes through DDT bans, sometimes through revolutions and wars, and sometimes in the Gulag. These are things that are natural on atheism – survival of the fittest. Kill the weak. That’s their view. And when people like Grosnell go off to college, that’s what they learn.
Feminists in government
First, it’s important to understand that third-wave feminism, (hereafter “feminism”) is one of the movements that brought about abortion.
Excerpt:
A growing movement in America, spearheaded by Sarah Palin, is pro-life feminism, This attempts to decouple feminism from abortion rights, arguing that you can believe in a woman’s right to be empowered without believing in her right to abort. Its proponents report a groundswell of support among young women looking to reinvent their mothers’ ideology.
But you cannot separate women’s rights from their right to fertility control. The single biggest factor in women’s liberation was our newly found ability to impose our will on our biology.
[…]As ever, when an issue we thought was black and white becomes more nuanced, the answer lies in choosing the lesser evil. The nearly 200,000 aborted babies in the UK each year are the lesser evil, no matter how you define life, or death, for that matter. If you are willing to die for a cause, you must be prepared to kill for it, too.
Actually, first-wave feminism, which I agree with, WAS pro-life. But today, what people mean by feminism is third-wave feminism, and third-wave feminism requires abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy.
Which political party supports that third-wave feminist view?
“Today marks the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that protects women’s health and reproductive freedom, and affirms a fundamental principle: that government should not intrude on private family matters. I am committed to protecting this constitutional right. I also remain committed to policies, initiatives, and programs that help prevent unintended pregnancies, support pregnant women and mothers, encourage healthy relationships, and promote adoption,” the president said in a statement. “And on this anniversary, I hope that we will recommit ourselves more broadly to ensuring that our daughters have the same rights, the same freedoms, and the same opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.”
“Look, I got two daughters — 9 years old and 6 years old,” he said. “I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby. . . .”
That’s feminism – the official view of the Democrat party.
Philadelphia, where Kermit Grosnell practiced, is DOMINATED by Democrats at all levels of government. It’s very similar to Chicago in that respect. And the state had a Democrat governor for the longest time as well.
Ask yourself why you are not hearing about which root causes and whose rhetoric are to blame for this four-decades-long massacre — just the tip of a blood-soaked iceberg defended by the predators of Planned Parenthood. You know the answer: If it doesn’t help the Left criminalize conservatism, it’s not worth discussing.
From the conclusion of the grand jury report: “It is not our job to say who should be fired or demoted. We believe, however, that anyone responsible for permitting Gosnell to operate as he did should face strong disciplinary action up to and including termination. This includes not only the people who failed to do the inspecting, the prosecuting, and the protecting, but also those at the top who obviously tolerated, or even encouraged, the inaction. The Department of State literally licensed Gosnell’s criminally dangerous behavior. DOH gave its stamp of approval to his facility. These agencies do not deserve the public’s trust. The fate of Karnamaya Mongar and countless babies with severed spinal cords is proof that people at those departments were not doing their jobs. Those charged with protecting the public must do better.”
And she has also written about how Obama’s science czar is a proponent of eugenics and coerced abortion. This man was appointed by Barack Obama. This is the Democrat view – they LOVE abortion. And some of them even love infanticide.
Obama himself voted twice against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act.
Obama also likes to give speeches to Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortions in the United States.
[Planned Parenthood] took home $85 million in “excess of revenue over expenses” (a nifty way of saying profits) and had an operating budget of over $1 billion for the 2007-2008 fiscal year, according to its latest annual report. Included in that budget was $350 million in “government grants and contracts” (an equally nifty way of saying your tax dollars). An increase in the number of abortions performed helped fuel the profits.
Abortion is a very profitable business, and the pro-abortion politicians subsidize the abortion industry with taxpayer dollars, including dollars from pro-life taxpayers, in exchange for political contributions to their campaigns. Yes, the contributions go almost entirely to Democrats.
Global warming alarmists
Here’s an article that explains what global warmists think about people having babies.
Excerpt:
Couples who have more than two children are being “irresponsible” by creating an unbearable burden on the environment, the British government’s green adviser warned.
Jonathon Porritt, who chairs the government’s Sustainable Development Commission, says curbing population growth through contraception and abortion must be at the heart of policies to fight global warming.
He says political leaders and green campaigners should stop dodging the issue of environmental harm caused by an expanding population.
A report by the commission, to be published next month, will say that governments must reduce population growth through better family planning.
“I am unapologetic about asking people to connect up their own responsibility for their total environmental footprint and how they decide to procreate and how many children they think are appropriate,” Porritt said.
• Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;
• The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food;
• Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;
• People who “contribute to social deterioration” (i.e. undesirables) “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility” — in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.
• A transnational “Planetary Regime” should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans’ lives — using an armed international police force.
Democrats what to use government to promote abortion in order to stop global warming.
WINTERY KNIGHT 