Gregory Koukl's Blog, page 145
February 12, 2013
Challenge: Your Creation Story Is Just Another Myth
This week's challenge is a graphic (click on it to get a closer view). Your friend posts this on your Facebook page...what do you say? How can you turn this into a good conversation? What points is this graphic intended to make? How would you counter those points?
Leave your ideas in the comments below, and then check back on Thursday to see Alan's response.
February 11, 2013
Ash Wednesday
A Defense of the Rationality of Miracles (Video)
February 10, 2013
Links Mentioned on the Show
The following are links that were either mentioned on this week's show or inspired by it, as posted live on the @STRtweets Twitter feed:
Cruel Logic – Short film by Brian Godawa
The Rap on the Rapture by Greg Koukl
Listen to today's show or download any show for free.
February 8, 2013
Four Self-Refuting Statements Heard on College Campuses Across America
If I began this post by asserting, “I can’t write a word of English,” you’d probably recognize the contradiction. My sentence betrays its own claim, doesn’t it? Such is the nature of self-refuting statements. Wikipedia describes such utterances as “statements whose falsehood is a logical consequence of the act or situation of holding them to be true.” You might be surprised how often people are prone to saying something that is self-refuting, but there are number of common statements we hear (or use) every day that fall into this category:
“Don’t bother me, I am asleep right now”
“I’m not going to respond to that”
“I can’t talk to you right now”
There are times when our words collapse under their own weight. Aaron, my good friend at PleaseConvinceMe.com recently posted a more exhaustive list of some of these statements as they appear in philosophical or academic circles. As I train university aged Christians around the country and listen carefully to their common college experiences, I’ve started to collect some of the more popular self-refuting statements uttered by college professors. Here are the top four:
“There is no objective truth” / “Objective truth does not exist”
Perhaps the most obviously self-refuting, this claim (or something similar to it) is still uttered in many university settings according to the students I train. Like all self-refuting claims, it can be cross-checked by simply turning the statement on itself. By asking, “Is that statement objectively true?” we can quickly see that the person making the claim believes in at least one objective truth: that there is no objective truth. See the problem?
“If objective truth does exist, no one could ever know with confidence what it is” / “It’s arrogant to assume you know the truth with certainty”
Once again, the professor who makes such a claim appears to be confident and certain of one truth: that no one can be confident or certain of the truth! The statement falls on its own sword the moment it is uttered.
“Science is the only way to determine truth” / “I only trust things I can determine through a scientific process”
University students report this statement often, and it may take a little more thought to recognize as self-refuting. When a professor makes this claim, we simply need to ask, “Can science determine if that statement (about science) is true?” or “What scientific experiment provided that conclusion for you?” It turns out that there is no scientific process or procedure can be employed to validate this claim. It is a presumptive philosophical statement that is outside the analysis of science.
“It’s intolerant to presume that your view is better than someone else’s’” / “Tolerance requires us to accept all views equally”
An even more hidden self-refuting statement lurks here in this common errant definition of tolerance. Folks who hold to this corrupted view say they accept all views as equally true. But if you make the claim that some ideas are patently false and have less value than others, they will quickly reject your statement. In other words, they will accept any view as equally valuable except your claim that some views are not equally valuable. See the inconsistency? People who embrace this definition of tolerance cannot consistently implement their own view of tolerance.
This last claim related to tolerance may be the future battleground of self-refutation. Most of us, as Christians, recognize this assertion and have been accused of intolerance at one time or another. The exclusive claims of Christianity related to salvation (through faith in Christ alone) place us in the bulls-eye for such criticism. In my next post, I’ll examine the true nature of tolerance as we help each other navigate the concept and learn to defend the classic definition.
February 7, 2013
Ryan Anderson: What Is Marriage?
The book What
Is Marriage? argues that only if marriage is defined as a conjugal
union between sexually complementary spouses is there a reason for the
monogamy, sexual exclusivity, and permanence that marriage entails. When we
remove the key component of sexual complementarity from the definition, none of
these other aspects will logically hold. And weakening marriage in this way
will cause much harm to our society.
In a recent radio
interview with Dennis Prager, Ryan Anderson (one of the authors, along with
Robert George and Sherif Girgis) summed up the four main points covered in his book:
1. What is marriage? “You have to answer [this question] before you
can say whether or not a marriage policy is just or unjust and is treating
citizens equally
or inequally. The problem has been that a lot of the rhetoric is ‘we’re for
marriage equality,’ but they don’t say what
marriage is. The reason that we title the book (and the [Harvard Journal of
Law and Public Policy] article
that the book really grows out of) ‘What Is Marriage’ is that that’s the central question.”
2. Why does marriage matter for policy? “Why is the government in the
marriage business? The government’s not in the business of promoting my
romantic life just for the sake of romance; the government’s in the marriage
business because the sexual act that unites a man and a woman also creates new
life, and the government needs to make sure that that new life is reared to
maturity responsibly.”
3. What would be the harms of redefining marriage? “If you redefine
marriage to exclude the norm of sexual complementarity, all of the other
traditional norms associated with marriage—monogamy, sexual exclusivity, and
the pledge of permanency—they don’t make any sense.”
Monogamy: “There’s nothing magical or special about the number two.
The reason we got to monogamy was that it was one man and one woman [that complete
the union].”
Sexual Exclusivity: “There’s no reason that if marriage is just an
intense emotional relationship for spouses to pledge sexual exclusivity. But
marriage isn’t just an emotional relationship if you understand it as a conjugal
union between sexually complementary spouses [i.e., the kind of union that
unites mind, heart, and body, creating new life].”
Permanency: “If marriage [as an institution] isn’t a fruitful union…if
it’s not meant to result in kids, there’s
no reason beyond just sheer preference for why it should entail a pledge of
permanency.”
The Harm: “The harm of redefining marriage isn’t so much that this
or that lesbian or gay couple is going to do something that causes harm, it’s
that it’s going to redefine, in the public understanding, what marriage is, and
that law shapes culture, culture shapes belief, and belief shapes practice.”
4. What would be the consequences for the least of those among us? “As
the marriage culture has collapsed, we’ve seen a host of social ills: increases
in crime, decreases in graduation rates, increases in poverty, decreases in
social mobility, increase in the growth of the welfare state, increase in the
growth of the judicial system, prison system. So anything that you would care
about—if you care about limited government and if you care about social
justice—depends on a strong marriage culture. But if the government redefines
marriage and it brands people like you and me bigots because we hold on to an “unfair, unjust”
vision of marriage because you and I think kids need
moms and dads, then it’s going to be really hard for marriage to do the
work that the government needs marriage to do.”
For the detailed arguments, purchase Anderson’s book here.
February 6, 2013
New Pro-Choice Tactic Equivocates on "Life"
As a follow-up to last
week’s post on the article
arguing that the unborn are human lives “worth sacrificing,” it’s important to
note that the latest tactic being used by pro-choicers is to equivocate on the
word “life”—using it to refer to both the mother’s life situation and the unborn
child’s life—in order to make it
appear as if the moral claim of the unborn (to live) is equal to the moral
claim of the mother (to have the life she wants).
I’ve noticed people making this move
lately—for example, this man from MSNBC:
“In some ways that choice [to abort my child] saved my life.” Well, no, it didn’t save his
life, he merely thinks it gave him a better life situation. But the same word “life” is used so that we’re left with the
impression that it was his life vs. his child’s life—that the moral claims of
both human beings were equally strong.
And more explicitly in last
week's article:
Of all the
diabolically clever moves the anti-choice lobby has ever pulled, surely one of
the greatest has been its consistent co-opting of the word “life”….
[Abortion] saves
lives not just in the most medically literal way, but in the roads that women
who have choice then get to go down, in the possibilities for them and for
their families. And I would put the life of a mother over the life of a fetus
every single time — even if I still need to acknowledge my conviction that the
fetus is indeed a life. A life worth sacrificing.
She says she puts “the life of a mother
over the life of a fetus,” but she doesn’t mean that both the mother's and the child's literal lives are at stake, she simply uses the same word “life” to compare actual life
to “quality of life” in an attempt to equalize their moral claims in the mind of the
reader. What she’s actually saying is that she puts the mother’s option to save
money, or prevent difficulties, or simply to live the life she prefers, over
the literal life of another human being.
At first I thought it was just a coincidence that a few people happened to be using language that obscures the moral claims of the two parties (mother and
child), but then I came across another article
about how Planned Parenthood is leaving
behind the term “pro-choice” and trying to come up with something new:
It may be that a
change in language frees those who believe in an absolute right to abortion to
a more honest wrestling with the issue. Let’s
imagine a scenario in which we admit that abortions may involve an obliteration
of something that could legitimately be called life but that they are done to protect something that could also be called
life. Planned Parenthood is, after all, in the business of protecting
women’s lives, their futures, their ability to pursue education, to establish
security, to have homes filled with future children, and their freedom to
decide how best to use their short time on earth [emphasis mine].
So it’s deliberate.
What this shows is that we’ve made good
progress convincing people that unborn children are live human beings, and that
pro-choicers realize that our moral intuition, once we understand that the
unborn are live human beings, goes in favor of the unborn child. We know the moral
claims to “life” and “the life situation I want” aren’t equal, but if pro-choicers
consistently use the same word enough for both, maybe they can reshape our
intuition.
Expect to see this rhetorical trick
more often, and challenge it when you hear it. Ask the person to define explicitly
what he or she means by “life” in the case of the mother and in the case of the
child, then examine whether or not those two rights claims are truly morally
equal.
February 5, 2013
The Death of a Fetal Human is Different Than the Death of a Dying Human
While hosting the Stand to Reason Radio Show on Sunday, a caller asked me how to defend an objection related to abortion. A friend asked him how he could be comfortable ending the life of a person on life support, yet uncomfortable ending a life in the womb. He was asked to imagine the scenario of a dying man who (as the result of suffering a stroke or being involved in a car accident) had no recordable brain activity. Isn’t this person just like the fetal human in the earliest weeks of development? Neither has any observable brain activity; should either been seen as a living human? If we have the right to “un-plug” one (the dying human), why don’t we have the right to unplug the other (the fetal human)?
Of course the biggest problem with this description of “living humans” is that it equates mental capacity with personhood. Can a person still be a person even if they lack a certain degree of measurable brain activity? How much activity is required before one attains personhood? Am I less a “person” if I don’t have the mental capacity of someone who is smarter? What if I am in an induced coma? What if my diminished metal condition is temporary? See the problem? But there is an even bigger problem with the scenario offered by the caller. We simply cannot equate the of lack brain activity in the unborn with the lack of brain activity in the aging or injured. We must distinguish between these two groups:
“Not Yet” Adult Humans
Fetal humans may lack brainwave activity, but if left to their own devices (if we do nothing to intervene) they will eventually become fully functioning human beings. They are “not yet” adult humans, but if you simply leave them alone, they will become adults like you and me. Ever notice the bananas on sale at your local market? Most of them are green. Many are so green that you wouldn’t even imagine eating them for a week. But we buy them anyway. Why? Because they are “not yet” ripe bananas. If we buy them, put them on the shelf, simply leave them alone and do nothing to intervene, they will become the ripe bananas we all know and love. We don’t throw away green bananas; we wait patiently for them to ripen. We understand their value even though they are green.
“Never Again” Adult Humans
But we don’t feel the same way about over-ripe, black bananas. We recognize that bananas (like all living things) have a life cycle. There is a time when a banana’s life is over. Sadly, there are times when we must also admit the same is true for humans. At the end of one’s life, when we are sure that someone will “never again” be a living adult human being, it may be appropriate to allow life to run it’s course. Aging or injured humans are not like fetal humans. When someone is aging or injured we find ourselves asking, “Should I intervene to prolong life?” When considering the fate of the fetal human, we find ourselves asking, “Should I intervene to end life?” See the important difference?
As Christians, we are consistent in our approach in these two scenarios when we say we ought not intervene. We don’t want to intervene to end the life of a fetal human, because our intervention alters the course of someone who is developing into a living adult (this is the expected trajectory that God has for all of us as fetal humans). And we don’t want to intervene to extend the life of someone who is already brain dead, because our intervention alters the course of someone who will never again be a living adult (this is the expected trajectory that God has for all of us as aging humans). Fetal humans ought to be allowed to live, even as dying humans ought to be allowed to die.
Is "Pulling the Plug" Analogous to Abortion?
During the radio show on Sunday, Melinda tweeted a link
to a quote
from an article by Francis
Beckwith in response to this question from a caller (paraphrased): If it’s okay to pull the plug on a brain-dead patient
who is no longer sentient, why isn’t it equally okay to abort an unborn child who
isn’t sentient?
Here’s what Beckwith has to say about the folly of basing
“personhood” on current or past sentience and why “pulling the plug” is not
analogous to abortion:
Some ethicists argue that the
unborn becomes fully human sometime after brain development has begun, when it
becomes sentient: capable of experiencing sensations such as pain. The
reason for choosing sentience as the criterion is that a being that cannot
experience anything (i.e., a presentient unborn entity) cannot be harmed. Of
course, if this position is correct, then the unborn becomes fully human
probably during the second trimester and at least by the third trimester.
Therefore, one does not violate anyone's rights when one aborts a nonsentient
unborn entity.
There are several problems with
this argument. First, it confuses harm with hurt and the experience of harm
with the reality of harm. One can be harmed without experiencing the hurt that
sometimes follows from that harm, and which we often mistake for the harm
itself. For example, a temporarily comatose person who is suffocated to death
"experiences no harm," but he is nevertheless harmed. Hence, one does
not have to experience harm, which is sometimes manifested in hurt, in
order to be truly harmed.
Second, if sentience is the
criterion of full humanness, then the reversibly comatose, the momentarily
unconscious, and the sleeping would all have to be declared nonpersons. Like
the presentient unborn, these individuals are all at the moment nonsentient
though they have the natural inherent capacity to be sentient. Yet to
countenance their executions would be morally reprehensible. Therefore, one
cannot countenance the execution of some unborn entities simply because they
are not currently sentient.
Someone may reply that while these
objections make important points, there is a problem of false analogy in the
second objection: the reversibly comatose, the momentarily unconscious, and the
sleeping once functioned as sentient beings, though they are now in a
temporary state of nonsentience. The presentient unborn, on the other hand,
were never sentient. Hence, one is fully human if one was sentient
"in the past" and will probably become sentient again in the future,
but this cannot be said of the presentient unborn.
I need to highlight this part because it’s so key:
There are at least three problems
with this response. First, to claim that a person can be sentient, become
nonsentient, and then return to sentience is to assume there is some underlying
personal unity to this individual that enables us to say that the person who
has returned to sentience is the same person who was sentient prior to
becoming nonsentient. But this would mean that sentience is not a necessary
condition for personhood. (Neither is it a sufficient condition, for that
matter, since nonhuman animals are sentient.)
And now we get to the relevant difference between a brain-dead
patient and the unborn:
Consequently, it does not make
sense to say that a person comes into existence when sentience arises, but it
does make sense to say that a fully human entity is a person who has the
natural inherent capacity to give rise to sentience. A presentient unborn human
entity does have this capacity. Therefore, an ordinary unborn human
entity is a person, and hence, fully human.
Second, [A. Chadwick] Ray points
out that this attempt to exclude many of the unborn from the class of the fully
human is "ad hoc and counterintuitive." He asks us to
"consider the treatment of comatose patients. We would not discriminate
against one merely for rarely or never having been sentient in the past while
another otherwise comparable patient had been sentient....In such cases,
potential counts for everything."
Third, why should sentience
"in the past" be the decisive factor in deciding whether an entity is
fully human when the presentient human being "is one with a natural,
inherent capacity for performing personal acts?" Since we have already
seen that one does not have to experience harm in order to be harmed, it seems
more consistent with our moral sensibilities to assert that what makes it wrong
to kill the reversibly comatose, the sleeping, the momentarily unconscious, and
the presentient unborn is that they all possess the natural inherent capacity
to perform personal acts. And what makes it morally right to kill plants and to
pull the plug on the respirator-dependent brain dead, who were sentient
"in the past," is that their deaths cannot deprive them of their
natural inherent capacity to function as persons, since they do not possess
such a capacity.
(HT: Wintery
Knight)
