Gregory Koukl's Blog, page 56

Why Same-Sex Marriage Can’t Afford to Be Tolerant

Mere Orthodoxy’s Matt Anderson explains why “an anti-liberal approach toward dissenting views is part of the DNA of the logic of the current gay rights argument”:

Imagine, for a moment, that cultural conservatives are right that the family which begins within the union of a man and a woman is a morally unique institution, irreplacable in its role in society and inimitable in its shape by other voluntary associations of free adults, such as gay unions….

Then grant this simple premise: that humans are fundamentally and inescapably truth-telling beings, and that falsehoods require an elaborate and complex support structure if they are to take hold and endure for a long period of time. A child might believe that Santa Claus is real and get on with the world just fine. But as they grow older, the kinds of backflips, self-deceptions, and tricks they would have to go through in order to maintain such a belief would be dazzling.

Now, momentarily return to that peculiar and strange thought that same-sex sexual relationships, whatever other goods [they] have, lack particular features which make heterosexual relationships morally unique. Given human sexuality’s clear importance, and given humanity’s truth-telling nature, what kind of artifice would need to be in place to support and sustain such a deception within a society over a long period of time? What kind of intervention into the course of normal human affairs would a society have to undertake in order to obscure the morally relevant differences between those forms of sexual behavior that can generate children and those that cannot? What kind of construct would we have to build in order to maintain the premise that all consenting erotic associations are equal, that the union of the lives of two adults (even where children are introduced via the tragedy beneath adoption or through the artifice of technology) is of the same kind as those families where a man and a woman’s love and life together introduces a third member into the community who bears witness, within their very bodies, of the love of that mother and father for each other and for no one else in a way that removing children from their biological parentage necessarily diminishes? And once this structure is built, would it have the structural integrity to allow for meaningful and public dissent? Or would it be so fragile, because false, that it had to “stamp out” competing accounts of the world? 

Erasing or obscuring the moral uniqueness of the traditional nuclear family unit—if there is one— would require, dare I say, both an extensive and elaborate artifice that attempted to reconfigure not simply the family, but all those institutions which the family has some bearing upon. Maintaining such a support would require the most powerful and influential institutions in American life, of which there are currently (by way of hypothesis) three: entertainment, business, and the government. And as long as those dominant institutions established such an outlook on the world, any remaining institutions would come under significant pressure to reform themselves accordingly.

In other words, as Seana Sugrue argued once, same-sex marriage will lead to a soft-despotism because it has to.

Read the rest here.

This is a similar point to the one Frank Beckwith made when he likened bans against interracial marriage to the endorsement of same-sex marriage—both require the intrusive force of law to maintain because neither reflects the truth about what marriage is, either denying sex is relevant or insisting race is.

Links Mentioned on the 4/14/15 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 Death of Two Babies (0:00)

Questions:

1.  Is a single person adopting the same as a same-sex couple adopting? (0:23)

2. How do you balance being useful where you are and pursuing new goals? (0:40)

Bloom Where You're Planted by Greg Koukl

HOUR TWO

Commentary: Listener Mail (1:00)

Questions:

3. Challenge the greater good and justifying lying (1:18)

Greg's previous answer about moral dilemmas (start listening at 2:07)
STR Abortion Violence Statement by Greg Koukl (more on this from Amy Hall)
The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom

4. An idea for working at same-sex weddings (1:38)

5. Is the conscience a biblical idea? (1:53)

HOUR THREE

Commentary: Serving at Same-Sex Weddings (2:00)

A Note from Creator Cakes by Andrew Walker

Questions:

6. How do we know how to apply the Old Testament Law? (2:04)

40 Questions about Christians and Biblical Law by Thomas Schreiner
How Does the Old Testament Law Apply to Christians Today? by Greg Koukl
The Bible: Fast Forward (DVD) by Greg Koukl
The Law of Moses and the Christian: A Compromise by Justin Taylor (a summary of a paper by David Dorsey
40 Questions about Creation and Evolution by Kenneth Keathley

7. Should children attend the main service with their parents? (2:20)

Greg's previous commentary on attending church with kids (start listening at 2:00) 

8.What's the difference between serving at a wedding of a same-sex couple and a wedding of a couple who lived together? (2:30)

Should Christians Tithe? by Greg Koukl
Greg's commentary on the Indiana RFRA

9. What does the unification church believe about Jesus? (2:39)

10. Is it ethical to get vaccinations if fetal tissue was used to develop them? (2:51)

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 Evolutionary Ethics Fails to Account for Objective Morality

Two years ago, I had the chance to debate an atheist professor at Weber State University in Utah on the best explanation for the existence of objective moral values. The writings of Bill Craig and Paul Copan have shaped a lot of my thinking in this area, as I'm sure you'll see below. In my opening argument, I made the case for God as the ontological foundation for objective morality. Then I raised five problems for an evolutionary view of ethics that make it an implausible alternative. Here are the problems I outlined in the debate: 

(1) Evolution cannot account for moral values: Moral values do not fit in the ontology of naturalism. On a naturalistic view, our moral values are the result of biological evolution, purely for the purpose of survival and reproduction. But how would such a herd morality be binding and true?

Atheists recognize the unnatural fit. Philosopher of science Michael Ruse writes: 

The position of the modern evolutionist...is that humans have an awareness of morality...because such an awareness is of biological worth. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth.... Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” they think they are referring above and beyond themselves.... Nevertheless...such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction...and any deeper meaning is illusory…. 

J.L. Mackie, one of the most prominent atheist philosophers of the 20th century, said this: “Moral properties constitute so odd a cluster of qualities and relations that they are most unlikely to have arisen in the ordinary course of events, without an all-powerful god to create them.” 

(2) Evolution cannot account for moral obligations: If humans are simply more developed animals, why think there are moral duties to which they are obligated? Male great white sharks are under no obligation to refrain from forcibly copulating with female great whites. Male lions are under no obligation to refrain from killing all the young lion cubs in a pride they have just taken over. Notice, we do NOT use moral terms to describe such behavior. We do not call the shark’s behavior “rape” and we do not call the lion’s behavior “infanticide.” 

Natural science is a descriptive enterprise, only telling us what is the case, not what ought to be the case. For example, nature can describe what it is to be healthy, but it cannot generate a moral obligation to be healthy. 

Prominent American philosopher Richard Taylor recognizes this problem for naturalism: 

The idea of political or legal obligation is clear enough…. Similarly, the idea of an obligation higher than this, referred to as moral obligation, is clear enough, provided reference to some lawgiver higher…than those of the state is understood. In other words, our moral obligations can…be understood as those that are imposed by God…. But what if this higher-than-human lawgiver is no longer taken into account? Does the concept of moral obligation…still make sense? … The concept of moral obligation [is] unintelligible apart from the idea of God. 

On a naturalistic view, there is nothing to issue moral commands and there is no one to serve as the appropriate authority standing behind our moral obligations. As Taylor states, in the absence of God, the concept of moral obligations is incoherent. 

(3) Evolution cannot adequately explain human value: On a naturalistic evolutionary scenario, human beings are nothing special. The universe comes into existence through the Big Bang and, through a blind process of chance and necessity, evolves all the way through to us. The same process that coughed up humans also coughed up bacteria. Thus, there is nothing intrinsically valuable about being human. Indeed, on this view, to think humans beings are special is to be guilty of speciesism, the view that one’s own species is somehow superior to other species. 

Atheist Richard Dawkins offers a bleak assessment of human worth on an atheistic worldview:

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, or any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference…. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. 

But what other result should we expect from valueless, cause-and-effect physical processes? There is no reason to think that an impersonal, valueless process could produce valuable, rights-bearing persons. 

(4) Evolution cannot adequately explain moral accountability: If God does not exist, there is no basis for moral accountability. On naturalism, who or what imposes moral obligations upon us? And who or what would hold us to those obligations? In a purely material universe, there is no moral accountability. What difference would it make to disregard your moral obligations to whomever? In an atheistic universe, why would you ever set aside self-interest for self-sacrifice? 

(5) Evolution cannot adequately explain human freedom: If we are the products of evolutionary forces, how did moral freedom and responsibility emerge? There is no reason to think, given our supposed materialistic and deterministic origins, that we have free will. Atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel states that there is “no room for agency in a world of neural impulses, chemical reactions, and bone and muscle movements”; naturalism strongly suggests that we are “helpless” and “not responsible” for our actions.  

Of course, if there is no free will, then no one is morally responsible for anything. Determinism puts an end to objective moral duties because on this worldview, we have no control over what we do. We are nothing more than puppets in a cause-and-effect universe.

Michael Ruse, “Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics,” in The Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 262, 268-9.

J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1982), 115-116.

Richard Taylor, Ethics, Faith, and Reason (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1985), p. 83-84

Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 132-133

Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 111, 113.

How Do I Teach My Kids Not to Fear?

How do I raise my kids in the context of this world so they aren't fearful?

Expect to See This Argument against Religious Freedom

Based on Frank Bruni’s New York Times article “Bigotry, the Bible, and the Lessons of Indiana,” wherein he says “how easily” the “very traditions and texts that inform many Christians’ denunciation of same-sex relationships…can be [and are being] understood in a different way,” it sounds to me like the argument that may soon be taken up against our religious freedom will go something like this: 

Some Christian churches endorse homosexuality and same-sex marriage, therefore homosexuality and same-sex marriage are compatible with Christianity. Therefore people who oppose homosexuality and same-sex marriage aren’t really motivated by their religion; they’re motivated by bigotry. And since their opposition doesn’t have its basis in religion (but only in bigotry), therefore we aren’t required to protect their “freedom” to teach and act in accordance with those beliefs.

Watch for it.

(See responses to Bruni’s article by Rod Dreher and Owen Strachan.)

Finding Truth: I Lost My Faith at an Evangelical College

Welcome to the second week of our discussion of Nancy Pearcey’s Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes. (And if you’re here as an atheist because you misunderstood the title of this post, double-welcome!) For more info on what we’re doing and what you’ve missed so far, see the links at the end of this post.

In this opening chapter, we get an overview of where this book will take us. Nancy Pearcey guides us through Romans 1, using it to create a template for examining any worldview. She follows Paul’s five-step argument this way:

1. We all have access to evidence for God through creation.

The evidence we find in creation includes not only the existence of life and the universe, but also the evidence of human nature—our own personhood:

How do humans constitute evidence for God? Because they are personal agents. In philosophical terminology, personal does not mean warm and friendly. A personal being is a conscious agent with the capacity to think, feel, choose, and act—in contrast to an unconscious principle or substance that operates by blind, automatic forces (such as the forces of nature). The existence of personal beings constitutes evidence that they were created by a personal God, not by any non-personal cause….

Because humans are capable of knowing, the first cause that produced them must have a mind. Because humans are capable of choosing, the first cause must have a will. And so on. Philosopher Étienne Gilson captures the argument neatly: because a human is a someone and not a something, the source of human life must be also a Someone. (p. 29)

For this book, Pearcey will focus on the evidence of human nature, examining worldviews to see if they can adequately explain what we know to be true about human beings.

2. We all suppress the evidence for God from creation.

3. We all create idols to take the place of God.

The most fundamental decision we all face over the course of our lives is what we will recognize as the ultimate reality, the uncaused source and cause of our existence. Everything else in our worldview depends on that initial decision. The Bible speaks of this foundational choice in terms of who or what we worship. (p. 35)

4. God gives us up to the consequences of our idols—to a “debased” mind.

Pearcey says of the Greek word for “mind”: 

The church fathers often translated nous as the faculty for evaluating and directing the course of one’s life: “the eye of the soul.” So it is no great stretch to translate the word as worldview, the convictions by which we direct our lives. (p. 40)

5. God gives us up to the consequences of our idols—to “dishonorable” behavior.

Romans 1 tells us that idolatry leads to a “debased” worldview, which opens the door to oppression, injustice, and all the other evils listed at the end of the chapter. What is the connection between idols and immoral behavior? The link is that idols always lead to a lower view of human life. The Bible teaches that humans are made in the image of God. When a worldview exchanges the Creator for something in creation, it will also exchange a high view of humans made in God’s image for a lower view of humans made in the image of something in creation. (p. 44) 

So (1) the evidence for God is in front of us, but (2) we suppress that knowledge and (3) create idols to replace God. The resulting (4) warped worldview leads to (5) warped, harmful behavior: “The principle is that those who dishonor God inevitably dishonor themselves and others.”

Pearcey then outlines five principles of a Romans-1-based “game plan” for assessing worldviews (including our own): 

Identify the idol
Identify the idol’s reductionism (i.e., how it recreates the concept of the human person in its own image, leading to a low view of human life)
Test the idol: Does it contradict what we know about the world?
Test the idol: Does it contradict itself?
Replace the idol: Make the case for Christianity

What stood out to you in this chapter? Any questions? Any points you’d like to make? We welcome your discussion below.

Next week, we’ll begin going through these five principles, so read Principle #1: “Twilight of the Gods,” and we’ll see you here on Friday.

Previous posts:

Book Club Introduction (Includes a 15% discount for the book)
Week One: Foreword

Twitter: #STRread, #FindingTruth

Challenge Response: Same-Sex Marriage Gives Stability to Children

Here's my response to this week's challenge:

Bake for Them Two?

The author of this blog post claims that when a Christian baker is forced to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding, they should "bake for them two." Is that really what Jesus meant by Matthew 5:41?

Three Steps to Protect Christian Wedding Vendors

Here's the recommendation for Christian wedding vendors I mentioned on the show yesterday:

The basic strategy here is to put the prospective client off in a legitimate way so they don't call back, or have them disqualify themselves without the vendor having to weigh in explicitly regarding his willingness to participate in a same-sex marriage (SSM). I suggest the vendor follow these steps. 

Don’t initially answer the question, “Will you perform a SSM service?” or “Will you provide your floral/baking/photography service for a SSM?” Instead say you’ll need to get some information first before you can go any further. Have a basic form you fill out in your first conversation with all customers listing the full name of each “wedding” participant, the name of the person officiating the event and the event location, if they have that information. You don’t need to tell them this at the time, but your goal is to find out if the request is legitimate, or just an attempt to legally corner you and provide grounds for a lawsuit (it happens). Once you’ve gathered the relevant information, tell them you’ll need to check out the details, thank them for the call, say, “Goodbye,” and then hang up. Do not say you will call them back. If they resist, tell them you simply cannot go any further with their request unless you have the basic info. If they persist, simply thank them for the call and hang up. The form should be filled out for every potential client, since they may not reveal up front that their request is for a SSM. You will only be able to determine this by getting the names of the bride(s) and/or groom(s). You may even need to ask if this is a same-sex wedding or a heterosexual wedding if you’re not sure, but say nothing that might indicate your own views. Next, follow up to see if the request is legitimate. If not, you can simply ignore future requests from this party, telling the caller that according to your research, this was not a legitimate request. If you discover it is legitimate, with luck the client will not call back, having chosen other vendors who are not so difficult to work with. If the client does call back and it’s a legitimate event, move to step two.

Ask the clients what they are looking for in a vendor. Do they want someone who is excited for them, who will celebrate with them, and whose support and approval of the event will naturally be reflected in their work? Of course they would. If that’s the case, tell them that you would not be their best choice because you could not bring any of that to the service you would provide. You do not agree with these kinds of events, you have religious compunctions about them, and it would injure your conscience to participate. Ask them, “Do you want this kind of person serving your wedding?” Do not say, at this point, that you refuse to participate in the event, though. Instead, give them plenty of room to disqualify you themselves. If they do, you’re off the hook. If not, proceed to step three.

This is where each vendor has to decide for himself what to do. If he cannot, in good conscience, serve an event like this, then he should decline. The risk is that such a decision could expose him to legal risk. If serving the event violates only his tastes and subjective sensibilities, but would not be sin in his judgment, then he might want to do the event in spite of the discomfort and save himself any legal hassles.

One final note: Keep tabs on what the ADF (Alliance Defending Freedom) is doing. They deal with these kinds of issues on a regular basis and may be developing strategies to legally protect Christian vendors and churches who seek to exercise their rights of refusal on this.

Articles on the Religious Freedom Fiasco

1. "The Post-Indiana Future for Christians" by Rod Dreher—an interview with a “practicing Christian law professor at one of the country’s elite law schools”:

To elites in his circles, Kingsfield continued, “at best religion is something consenting adult[s] should do behind closed doors. They don’t really understand that there’s a link between Sister Helen Prejean’s faith and the work she does on the death penalty. There’s a lot of looking down on flyover country, on middle America.

“The sad thing,” he said, “is that the old ways of aspiring to truth, seeing all knowledge as part of learning about the nature of reality, they don’t hold. It’s all about power. They’ve got cultural power, and think they should use it for good, but their idea of good is not anchored in anything. They’ve got a lot of power in courts and in politics and in education. Their job is to challenge people to think critically, but thinking critically means thinking like them. They really do think that they know so much more than anybody did before, and there is no point in listening to anybody else, because they have all the answers, and believe that they are good.”

2. In “Christians ‘Must Be Made’ to Bow,” Dreher responds to Frank Bruni’s “Bigotry, the Bible, and the Lessons of Indiana” article in the New York Times:

Bruni enlists liberal Evangelical professor David Gushee in his crusade: “Conservative Christian religion is the last bulwark against full acceptance of L.G.B.T. people.”

So, having defined the enemy, the one thing standing between them and cultural hegemony, what do they propose to do? This (emphasis mine):

Creech and Mitchell Gold, a prominent furniture maker and gay philanthropist, founded an advocacy group, , which aims to mitigate the damage done to L.G.B.T. people by what it calls “religion-based bigotry.”

Gold told me that church leaders must be made “to take homosexuality off the sin list.”

His commandment is worthy — and warranted.

Not “must be persuaded,” but “must be made.” Compelled. Forced. And not forced to change our behavior, but forced to change what we believe. Because You Must Approve. 

And just how do Bruni and his militant Social Justice Warriors plan to force us to repudiate our beliefs? We are going to find out. Indiana and Arkansas showed that most Americans don’t much care about religious liberty — and in fact, people like Bruni and the newspaper he works for have contempt for it, at least when it is practiced by “conservative Christians.”

3. Another response to the Bruni article by Owen Strachan:

Our worship is now compelled and instructed, just as in days past. But we are not dealing with a state church, or at least not an established one. We are dealing with a cultural intelligentsia that offers us a grand bargain: we can give up our sexual ethics and be just fine, or we can hold onto them and be smashed into conformity. It’s really this stark: the Bible should be “rightly bowing”–Bruni’s actual phrase!–to secular rationalism. In other words, we have an authority, and it is not Scripture. It is the culture. 

4. Ross Douthat responds to RFRA objections in “Interview With a Christian”:

[S]egregationists felt justified by scripture too. They got over it; their churches got over it; so will yours.

It’s not that simple. The debate about race was very specific to America, modernity, the South. (Bans on interracial marriage were generally a white supremacist innovation, not an inheritance from Christendom or common law.) The slave owners and segregationists had scriptural arguments, certainly. But they were also up against one of the Bible’s major meta-narratives — from the Israelites in Egypt to Saint Paul’s “neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free.”

That’s not the case with sex and marriage. The only clear biblical meta-narrative is about male and female. Sex is an area of Jewish law that Jesus explicitly makes stricter. What we now call the “traditional” view of sexuality was a then-radical idea separating the early church from Roman culture, and it’s remained basic in every branch of Christianity until very recently. Jettisoning it requires repudiating scripture, history and tradition in a way the end of Jim Crow did not.

5. Scott Ott explains how a reporter set up a mom and pop pizza place in “Story About First Business to ‘Publicly Vow to Reject Gay Weddings’ Was Fabricated Out of Nothing”:

Memories Pizza didn’t blast out a news release. They didn’t contact the media, nor make a stink on Twitter or Facebook. They didn’t even post a sign in the window rejecting gay-wedding catering jobs. They merely answered questions from a novice reporter who strolled into their restaurant one day – who was sent on a mission by an irresponsible news organization.

6. More details from Dreher on what the resulting internet mob did to Memories Pizza: “Into the Christian Closet.”

7. Andrew Walker has an idea for how Christian bakeries could respond to governmental coercion in “A Note from Creator Cakes”: 

So, we will serve same-sex wedding services. We will do so unhappily and with a bothered conscience. But if we must do so with a bothered conscience, we reserve the right as a condition of the marketplace to bother others' consciences as well. If we are coerced into baking for events we disagree with, we will return the favor and use the funds of those we disagree with to fund the organizations they disagree with. If you are unhappy with this new policy or it conflicts with your own convictions about marriage, we invite you to take your business elsewhere.