Gregory Koukl's Blog, page 54

One Nation under Allah?

There have been a couple of incidents (here and here) where a school has asked a Muslim (or perhaps just an Arabic-speaking student) to recite the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic. This has prompted some people to ask me if it’s appropriate to say “One nation under Allah” as part of the Pledge—that is, if it's appropriate to use “Allah” and “God” interchangeably when speaking in English.

My point here is not to critique these schools’ policies or even argue whether the Pledge should be recited in English, Arabic, or any other language. Rather, I want to reply to a comment made by Ibrahim Hooper, a member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

In an attempt to calm people’s concern about the use of the word “Allah” as a reference to God, he said, “Obviously in Arabic, you would use the word Allah, but Christian Arabs would use the word Allah. It’s not necessarily specific to Islam and Muslims.” In other words, saying “Allah” is no big deal. It doesn’t necessarily imply the Islamic notion of God. It’s just a generic term.

I agree with part of what he said. Arabic-speaking Christians do sometimes use the term “Allah” to refer to God, and they don’t have anything Islamic in mind. It can be a general Arabic word for God.

I do something similar. As an Assyrian-speaking Christian, I use the term, “Allaha,” when I talk about God in my language (you can obviously see the similarity to the Arabic word since both are Semitic languages). I don’t imply anything Islamic when I say it, and my family doesn’t infer anything Islamic when they hear it.

That’s not the case, though, in English. When an American hears “Allah,” they reasonably conclude it implies the Islamic notion of God. Why? Because there’s a perfectly good term for God in English: God. That’s a word that can apply to deity in several religions.

Notice the context makes all the difference. “Allah” can be a general term for God when spoken in an Arabic sentence. “Allah,” however, implies an Islamic notion when spoken in an English sentence.

This is obvious whenever I’m in the Middle East. I notice that while Arab Christians sometimes say “Allah” when they’re speaking in Arabic, they’ll immediately change and say “God” when they speak in English. If it really were a general term, like Ibrahim Hooper suggests, then we’d expect Arab Christians to use it even in English. They don’t because they realize its obvious association with the Islamic notion of God.

This post might make someone wonder whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Check out my answer to that question here.

Fetal Homicide Laws Are a Problem for Pro-Choicers

A recent murder in Colorado has been shaking up the state. Dynel Lane lured a woman who was seven months pregnant to her home and cut her daughter, Aurora, out of her womb. Aurora didn’t survive.

Because Colorado law didn’t allow for prosecuting Lane for murder, a fetal homicide bill has been proposed. As with California’s fetal homicide law (yes, even California has one!), the bill excludes any kind of abortion:

Under the new bill, prosecutors would be allowed to pursue murder and assault charges in cases involving "an unborn child at every stage of gestation from conception until live birth."

The language said it wouldn't apply to acts committed by the mother, medical procedures or legally prescribed medication.

Even though the bill specifically excludes deaths caused by the mother’s choice, the pro-choice politicians are objecting to it. They don’t want to set a legal precedent by calling an unborn human being a “person,” even if the cases it applies to are strictly limited. This fear is understandable. In order to protect abortion, they can’t allow a logical foot in the door. Once you admit that a fetus can be “murdered,” you raise questions that are difficult for pro-choicers to answer. David Harsanyi explains: 

The truth is that pro-choice advocates don’t want district attorneys prosecuting people for killing fetuses because it sets up two dangerous debates. 

First, the act of humanizing unborn babies that women want to keep means humanizing unborn babies others do not want to keep. Aurora got a name, but the other third-trimester babies disposed of aren’t as fortunate.

Secondly, any admission by liberals that life in the womb is human life worthy of protections sets up a host of uncomfortable philosophical questions and legal precedents. For starters, how can the act of killing a fetus – granted, for different purposes and with very different levels of violence – end a human life in one instance and not the other? 

This murder has upset the people of Colorado, and with good reason. Real life examples can sometimes reveal moral truths to us in a way that propositional arguments can’t. There’s currently a law against “unlawful termination of pregnancy” in Colorado, but of course, that addresses the rights of the mother, not the child, and it carries different penalties from those for murder. Put a name to the deceased fetal human, and suddenly, “unlawful termination of pregnancy” doesn’t seem like enough—not when we know the question of whether or not Lane could be charged with murder depended entirely on whether or not the autopsy could prove Aurora lived outside the womb for at least a moment before dying. It’s obvious to people something is wrong with a law that makes that kind of an irrelevant distinction.

When it comes to standing against a law that would prosecute people like Lane for murdering fetal human beings like Aurora, these politicians would rather bite that bullet than create a law that might make people think a little too carefully. But if they’re worried about consistent, logical thinking leading from a fetal homicide law to fetal human rights, perhaps they should also worry about how their consistent thinking in rejecting a fetal homicide law will appear to the people of Colorado who viscerally recognize the morally horrific nature of this recent murder.

They risk people thinking too much either way.

A Marriage Riddle

An ethicist, a same-sex marriage activist, and a polyamorist walk into a bar. The ethicist says, “Marriage is the mutual support and consent of a man and a woman.” The activist says, “Marriage is the mutual support and consent of two people.” The polyamorist says, “Marriage is the mutual support and consent of people.”

Which of these does the 14th Amendment require?

Links Mentioned on the 4/28/15 Show

The following is a rundown of this week's podcast, annotated with links that were either mentioned on the show or inspired by it:

HOUR ONE

Commentary: The Challenge to Be Christian in Canada (0:00)

Every Idea Has Consequences by Alan Shlemon

Second Commentary: Defending Islam, Attacking Christianity (0:20)

Questions:

1. How do you counsel a nine-year-old who says he can't believe in God because he can't see God? (0:32)

2. What do you think of a pediatric surgeon who won't treat a child who hasn't been vaccinated? (0:45)

HOUR TWO

Guest: Tim Barnett – New STR Speaker (1:00)

Tim Barnett – His speaker page
Clear Thinking Christianity – Tim's website

Questions:

3. Religious exceptions aren't needed for same-sex marriage laws. (1:17)

Refusing to Serve Individuals vs. Refusing to Participate in Events by Amy Hall

4. Are we obligated to tell a mosque they are accidentally passing out Christian literature? (1:32)

Last week's podcast guest hosted by Alan and Amy
The Ambassador's Guide to Islam by Alan Shlemon
Greg's interview with Nancy Pearcey
STR's book club is reading Nancy Pearcey's Finding Truth

5. Conversation on a plane as a winsome ambassador (1:48)

Tactics in Defending the Faith – Book, DVD, CDs/MP3s

HOUR THREE

Guest: Kevin DeYoung – What the Bible Teaches about Homosexuality (2:00)

Kevin DeYoung's blog
What Does the Bible Teach about Homosexuality? by Kevin DeYoung
Why We're Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be by Kevin DeYoung
Greg's interview with Alan on the Reformation Project
Why Not Gay Marriage? by Kevin DeYoung

Listen to today's show or download any archived show for free. (Find links from past shows here.)

To take part in the Twitter conversation during the live show (Tuesdays 4:00–7:00 p.m. PT), follow @STRtweets and use the hashtag #STRtalk.

Why the Supreme Court Should Let States Choose Their Marriage Policy

The Supreme Court will hear arguments today on whether or not it’s constitutional to define marriage as a man and a woman. Please keep in mind that, contrary to what you might be hearing, the Supreme Court isn’t deciding whether or not to ban same-sex marriage. The option to ban it isn’t something they’re considering (nor should they). Rather, they’re deciding whether or not same-sex marriage will be required in all 50 states. If they decide the Constitution does not require it, the states will be left to choose their own marriage policy.

The questions the justices will answer are these:

1) Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex?

2) Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-state?

It’s important to reiterate that this is a question about the Constitution: Does the Constitution require same-sex marriage? The judges’ preference as to which marriage policy they think is better should not determine the outcome, and we can only hope it won’t.

Ryan Anderson summarizes the situation:

1. There simply is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that requires all 50 states to redefine marriage….

2. The overarching question before the Supreme Court is not whether a male–female marriage policy is the best, but only whether it is allowed by the Constitution….

3. As Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito pointed out two years ago, there are two different visions of what marriage is on offer…. Our Constitution is silent on which of these visions is correct….

4. The only way the Court could strike down state laws that define marriage as the union of husband and wife is to adopt a view of marriage that sees it as an essentially genderless institution based primarily on the emotional needs of adults and then declare that the Constitution requires that the states (re)define marriage in such a way….

5. Everyone in this debate is in favor of marriage equality. Everyone wants the law to treat all marriages in the same ways. The only disagreement our nation faces is over what sort of consenting adult relationship is a marriage….

6. Marriage exists to bring a man and a woman together as husband and wife, to be father and mother to any children their union produces. Marriage is based on the anthropological truth that men and woman are distinct and complementary, the biological fact that reproduction depends on a man and a woman, and the social reality that children deserve a mother and a father….

7. Redefining marriage to make it a genderless institution fundamentally changes marriage: It makes the relationship more about the desires of adults than the needs—or rights—of children. It teaches that mothers and fathers are interchangeable....

8. There is no need for the Court to “settle” the marriage issue like it tried to settle the abortion issue. Allowing marriage policy to be worked out democratically will give citizens and their elected representatives the freedom to arrive at the best public policy for everyone…. Judges should not cut this process short.

Read the rest of Anderson’s post. You can read summaries of the amicus briefs that have been filed on both sides here. For more on this topic, see “Understand the Same-Sex Marriage Issue.”

Live Broadcast Today

Ask your question. Share a piece of your mind. Call with your question or comment at (855) 243-9975, outside the U.S. (562) 424-8229. Today 4-7 p.m. PT. Greg is live on the broadcast. 

Listen live online. Join us on Twitter during the program @STRtweets.

Is It Moral to Vaccinate Your Child?

Greg addresses some concerns one might have regarding vaccinations.

Being Loving Doesn’t Mean Always Agreeing

Greg created a few short videos for the European Leadership Forum while he was there to speak last year. Here’s his answer to the question “How can Christians demonstrate real tolerance?”

 

Finding Truth: False Worldviews Reduce the Human Person

This week, we’re discussing the chapter “How Nietzsche Wins” in Nancy Pearcey’s Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes , which covers the second of five principles for evaluating worldviews: “Identify the Idol’s Reductionism” (see links to the previous posts below).

Every false worldview, since it puts something that is less than God (an idol) in the place of God (as the ultimate reality and source of all things), will have an understanding of the human person that is less than the image of God. And as Nancy Pearcey demonstrates throughout this chapter, “When we reduce people to anything less than fully human, we will treat them as less than fully human.” So in order to think through the implications of a worldview, we need to identify how the idol of that worldview reduces the human being. For example:

What the dominant classes hold as true tends to shape social and political practice. If the elites hold a materialism that reduces humans to computers, then they will treat people like computers. Thinking will be reduced to computing: the neuroelectrophysiology of the brain. People will be judged solely by how well they perform their assigned functions. And when they stop functioning, they will be tossed in the garbage heap with the other electronic trash.

Do you recognize in that quote the idea that human value is instrumental (i.e., based on what a person can do) rather than intrinsic (based on the kind of being the person is)—the very understanding of human value that leads people to reject the unborn human being’s right to life?

Pearcey’s explanation of Enlightenment and Romantic worldviews—where they come from and what they lead to—clarifies the reason why there are such harsh political divisions in this country. The difference is deeper than politics. The divide on contentious issues such as abortion, euthanasia, and marriage goes all the way down to the person’s worldview. (For one example of this, see the worldview differences that led atheist commenters on this blog to argue against universal human rights.) 

This tells me two things: 1) It will take more to resolve this nation’s differences than merely settling specific political issues (which may, in fact, not even be possible in light of the worldview divide), and 2) making disciples of Christ is a more revolutionary act than any kind of political work. 

A while back, I posted “The True Story of Christian Missionaries,” reporting on a researcher’s discovery that in nations where missionaries stressed conversion, salvation by grace through faith, and the importance of Bible reading, the eventual result was democracy, religious liberty, literacy, lower infant mortality, economic growth, and more: “The work of missionaries . . . turns out to be the single largest factor in insuring the health of nations.” (See also what happened in 18th century England when a million people became Christians.) 

This isn’t to say we should seek to bring others to Christ because this will change the world. Rather, it means that those who think direct attempts to change the world are a better use of resources than the Great Commission are not only mistaken about the value of the Great Commission (which both addresses our greatest human need and glorifies God in the greatest possible way), they’re also mistaken about the most effective means of changing the world!

Yes, God may call you to social action—perhaps even as a politician, as He did William Wilberforce. But when you see the tragedy of all that’s happening in this world, I don’t want you to be deceived into thinking your efforts as an apologist to bring people to Christ are less valuable than social action. Since worldviews drive all societal policies, what’s at stake in your work is not only the eternal souls of human beings, but also an increased acceptance of the only worldview that recognizes the fullness of our personhood (unlike views based on a non-personal ultimate reality) and calls us to treat human beings in a manner worthy of that understanding.

After discussing how both Enlightenment and Romantic worldviews devalue our personhood, Pearcey makes an important observation:

The puzzling question is why these worldviews are at all popular. After all, what we long for most of all is to be known and loved for who we are as unique persons—a longing that can be met only if the divine is a person.

As Christians, we have the advantage in worldview discussions because not only do we have the truth, we also have what people are yearning for. They’re waiting to hear!

And now it’s your turn to continue the discussion. Any ideas from the chapter you’d like to comment on? If you have your own blog (or Facebook page, Twitter account, etc.), I’d love to see you write your own posts on this chapter and link to them below, along with your comments (hat tip to Tim Challies for this idea). I can only talk about so much in a single blog post, but we can expand our discussion through your posts. I want to give you the chance to bounce your ideas off each other.

Next Friday, we’re on to Principle #3 in “Secular Leaps of Faith” to test the worldview idols to see if they contradict reality.

Previous posts:

Book Club Introduction (Includes a 15% discount for the book)
Week One: Foreword
Week Two: I Lost My Faith at an Evangelical College
Week Three: Twilight of the Gods

Twitter: #STRread, #FindingTruth

Articles mentioned in this chapter that illustrate reductionism and its consequences:

How Neuroscience Can Help Us Find True Love – “Darling, dopamine floods my caudate nucleus every time I look at you.”
Scientists Say Free Will Probably Doesn’t Exist, but Urge: “Don’t Stop Believing” – Study showing “the antisocial consequences of deterministic beliefs”
The End of Neurononsense  – A researcher “found that people who hold the reductionist view—who deny the special status of the human species in nature, who believe behavior is determined by physical processes alone—were far more likely to agree with the maltreatment of humans.”
Consciousness: The Achilles Heel of Darwinism? Thank God, Not Quite (PDF) – “Consciousness has to be an illusion. The reason is obvious: If nothing in the physical world can have the features that consciousness seems to have, then consciousness cannot exist as a thing in the physical world.”

Charles Babbage – Father of the Computer

Charles Babbage was born in London in 1791 and is considered the father of the computer and one of the most influential scientists in history. He was an Anglican Christian who believed science and the Bible are compatible. He believed we should use our best knowledge and imagination to know God as best we can. He believed the authenticity of Scripture and used his scientific endeavors to demonstrate its reliability and to understand it better. He understood that theology is a knowledge-based study and that science has limits of what it can prove or disprove.

Babbage’s scientific expertise spanned a variety of fields. He invented the first mechanical computer. In 1821, Babbage was asked to evaluate the accuracy of the astronomical tables. He formulated his idea for mechanical computation, though his machines were never completed. He later developed designs for a machine capable of broader computations and programming, using punch cards. His plans were used to build a functioning difference engine in 1991, proving that his theories were workable.

He also analyzed the efficiency of the British postal system and proposed the idea of standard postage, which was adopted. He published a book on the economy of manufacturing and proposed what came to be known as the Babbage principle – the idea of division of labor. Having workers specialize instead of doing a variety of tasks, some of which involve activities below their skill level, results in more efficient productivity and profitability. Babbage was a pioneer in absolute measurement, and worked on a project to tabulate all the constants of nature. His work in measurements was essential in building the machinery for manufacturing in the industrial revolution. He studied railways and showed the superiority of the broad gauge for railways; and he invented the cowcatcher.

Babbage wrote books exploring his religious convictions. He acknowledged three sources of knowledge: a priori, general revelation from creation, and special revelation from God. He wrote about the design argument and the works of the Creator that are open to our examination, which provide a firm basis for Christianity. He wrote in support of miracles, responding to David Hume’s objections: "We must not measure the credibility or incredibility of an event by the narrow sphere of our own experience, nor forget that there is a Divine energy which overrides what we familiarly call the laws of nature.”

After his death, Babbage’s son used his father’s designs to create six small demonstration pieces of the difference engine. One was sent to Harvard where Howard Aiken later discovered it. It influenced his design of the Mark 1 electro-mechanical computer, which was built by IBM and used during WW2.