If you’re going to argue against evolution you probably need a more compelling argument than this.
Category: Christianity
Timelapse: The Milky Way speaks…
This timelapse of the Milky Way is just stunning. I hope heaven has a button where you can just watch stuff timelapse style.
I think last time I posted one of these, or maybe the time before, someone quoted the first half of Psalm 19 on my Facebook wall. It’s a sensational bit of inspired poetry to be reflecting on while enjoying this sort of thing.
1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
3 They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
4 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.
5 It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
6 It rises at one end of the heavens
and makes its circuit to the other;
nothing is deprived of its warmth.
In other news I’m going all sentimental. Parenthood has changed me.
Thanks to Andrew for posting this video on the St. Eutychus Facebook page – I welcome your content suggestions, and that’s a great way to do it.
Fervr.net up for a webby
Fervr.net is a great site, full of great resources. And its up for the chance to win a great award – a Webby. The Internet equivalent of the Oscars. And you can vote for it. And you should. It is a popularity contest.
Some goodness from Calvin on “natural desires” and sin
The idea that God shouldn’t condemn behaviour he has built into humanity isn’t recent, and its flaws are pretty much dealt with in the opening pages of the Bible.
The idea that God shouldn’t judge natural behaviour operates on some shaky assumptions about the goodness of nature, that Catholic theologians have essentially supported. But the real answer to this dilemma comes from understanding just how big the effect of the fall was on human nature.
Here’s Calvin’s answer to the objection from hundreds of years ago. I’m reading the Institutes (again) for an assignment, and I’m wishing I’d read it before I wrote my ethics essay last semester because it’s good stuff.
“If any one thinks it absurd thus to condemn all the desires by which man is naturally affected, seeing they have been implanted by God the author of nature, we answer, that we by no means condemn those appetites which God so implanted in the mind of man at his first creation, that they cannot be eradicated without destroying human nature itself, but only the violent lawless movements which war with the order of God. But as, in consequence of the corruption of nature, all our faculties are so vitiated and corrupted, that a perpetual disorder and excess is apparent in all our actions, and as the appetites cannot be separated from this excess, we maintain that therefore they are vicious; or, to give the substance in fewer words, we hold that all human desires are evil, and we charge them with sin not in as far as they are natural, but because they are inordinate, and inordinate because nothing pure and upright can proceed from a corrupt and polluted nature.”
Calvin’s Institutes, 3.3.12
DoubtingDawkins.com: Best thing to come out of Global Atheist convention
So Q&A was a bit of a letdown, even for those of us who had low expectations. But one cool thing that’s come from the world’s leading atheist thinkers descending on Melbourne this week is this website. DoubtingDawkins.com from OutreachMedia. Which provides some food for thought for Dawkins fans. Each of the statements is a link. That took me a little while to figure out.
It features some pretty sharp videos. Like these.
Praying away the gays: some responses from people who disagree with my last post
I’m not one to shy away from criticism. And I enjoy a good conversation where different ideas are presented and debated in the marketplace of ideas.
It’s fair to say that I have, in the past, been quite critical of those lobbying our politicians, from the outside, for the legislation of Christian moral values. Because I think on the whole it’s bad for the mission of the gospel. These groups don’t talk about Jesus enough. They tackle issues that play well with the people who fund them, but ignore the issues I think Jesus would have been concerned about in modern Australia. They confuse people about what the gospel is because they talk about morality, but not forgiveness, and sin but not grace. That’s my case. It’s not that I disagree with their views (or God’s views) on what sin is and isn’t. It’s just that I don’t think running around pretending the sky is falling in, and that the world will end if the word marriage is redefined (polygamy anybody?), is constructive for telling people how to find their identity in Jesus. And I think it’s often unloving to the minorities they choose to single out.
A friend shared the link to my post about “pray away the gay” on her Facebook wall. She has some involvement with the ACL and Family First, and many of her friends are card carrying members of the Christian right. Particularly one Jack Sonnemann, it’s fair to say he disagreed with my post. I sought his permission to post the conversation in the interest of presenting you, dear reader, with a “balanced” approach to the issue. Here it is, uncensored. There are moment when he refers to some comments from other people on the same thread – whose permission I haven’t received.
Feel free to respond to either of us in the comments – I will be supplying Jack with a link to this post. I don’t know if he’ll chime in though, but I will be inviting him to.
A conversation with Jack Sonnemann, Director, Australian Federation for the Family
Jack Sonnemann
I read the st-eutychus link and thought it to be pure unadulterated crap.
Nathan Campbell
Thanks Jack. I’m glad you enjoyed it so much and provided such constructive feedback.
Jack Sonnemann
I am very glad to have my battle scars standing up for Jesus in the public arena. I was just given a GLORIA award by the sodomite community for being one of the 10 most effective men in Australia thwarting the implimentation of the homosexual agenda, given an “Outstanding Achievement Award in Federal Parliament for protecting women and children from sexual exploitation, I have been featured, attacked and defamed in ALL of Australia’s porn publications, sued in the Supreme Court by one of our states Atty Gen, “targeted for destruction” by the professional pornographers, etc. There is a price to pay for our Christianity but I am afraid Sir Weary Dunlop was correct when he said, “The problem with Australia is that we have wimps in the pulpits and cowards in the pews.”
Nathan Campbell
Hi Jack. That’s great. I’m thrilled you’ve got scars and awards. I’m thrilled you’re protecting people. I’m just worried that the gospel of grace easily becomes a gospel of morality when we’re only ever quoted on moral issues in the public sphere and I’d prefer my pulpit to be used telling people the gospel and having them realise they need to reinvent their identity in Christ. Not telling people that they’re abominations or horrible sinners.
Jack Sonnemann
What a shame you do not know the gospel of grace is a moral one. Apparently you take authority over your pulpit. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards is heresy to you?
Jack Sonnemann
Sorry. We do have a better guide than reason and I have even had God’s Holy Word – just a guess but I think you are a Obama (who calls the Koran holy) sympathiser – printed in Penthouse magazine.
Nathan Campbell
Yes Jack.I’m sure it’s this sort of balanced approach to understanding people you disagree with that won you your sodomites award.I’m sorry, I can’t tell if you’re deliberately interpreting my words in the most twisted way possible. There’s a difference between telling people they need to not be sinners to be right with God (moralism) and telling people they need Jesus because all people are sinful and have turned away from God (the gospel). The problem is that the media don’t really handle nuance all that well when reporting our opposition to immorality, and we often don’t nuance what we say well, so the overwhelming perception of what the gospel is is that people need to be good to be saved.
I don’t really understand any of your second comment about Obama or Penthouse magazine.
Jack Sonnemann
Vikki Nathan just doesn’t get it. No wonder we lead the developed world in violent and sexual assault, no wonder we lead the world in amphetamine and marijuana use, no wonder our children kill themselves more than anywhere else in the world, no wonder abotrion is our most common operation, we allow our daughters to become whores and we sell and display pornography to our children under such “Christian” leadership. Sadly I am reminded of Neh 4 where we are supposed to fight for our wives, daughters, sons and families yet the men turned back in the day of battle. A good definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. I, for one, will continue to fight. Eph 5:11
Nathan Campbell
Jack, this has been a fun conversation. I’m thrilled that somehow I am responsible for marijuana use (amongst other things) because I think we should be telling people they need Jesus.Glad to have virtually met you. Do you mind if I reproduce this conversation as a post on my blog? It presents a very different view to my original post, and I’m not afraid of criticism of my ideas.
Nathan Campbell
Though I can’t say I feel like you’ve been particularly logical in your treatment of my statements, or particularly fair in your assessment of my character.
Jack Sonnemann
I care not what you think of my comments and you can always post anything I say wherever you like. Just be sure you quote me fully as some just do a half-***ed job.
Nathan Campbell
Hmm. I’ll quote you in full, except I’ll avoid foul language and slightly censor that last comment. And I’ll provide a link here for you to check in case you feel like I’ve misrepresented you.
Jack Sonnemann
Sorry to have hurt your ‘feelings’. I can see how important they are to you.
Nathan Campbell
Hi Jack, I’m pretty thick skinned. I just think the way you’re treating me in this thread, someone you’ve never met who owns the name of Jesus, who is a brother in the Lord, demonstrates one of the inconsistencies with your approach to politics. Given that Jesus says the world will know that we are his disciples by how we love one another…
Nathan Campbell
If this sort of bullying approach to disagreement is the way you approach political discourse I’m going to suggest that your manner is as problematic to me as the content of your message.
Planning your Easter Services – check out Sandbible.com
My friends Tim and Wade are very amazing. They are brothers. They make incredible sand drawings (well, Tim does) and turn them into movies (well, Wade does), and they put them on the internet for people to use. The best bit about these drawings is that they are drawings of the Christmas and Easter stories.
They’re sensational quality and I heartily endorse them.
I think the plan is to end up with the whole Gospel of Luke. But these things take time. Like sands through the hourglass. Only it’s sand spread out on glass.
God hates Radiohead
I am a pretty big Radiohead fan. I am thrilled to be going to see them in Brisbane at the end of this year. But I can understand the substance of Westboro Baptist’s assessment, which they put forward when justifying a protest at one of their shows this week.
“freak monkeys with mediocre tunes”
This is actually a pretty culturally engaged assessment. For many years Radiohead have used this little critter as their emblem. Unfortunately for Westboro it’s a bear, not a monkey.
Image Credit: Wikimedia
Anyway.
Here’s some more that is wrong with Radiohead. Or at least, more that Radiohead’s continued success in their post-melodic era.
“Meanwhile, God is undoing this nation and effecting all of your lives, with the moth that quietly eats the very fabric of your national garment. Radiohead is just such an event.”
And so, here is the Phelps family, with hangers on, outside Radiohead’s show in Kansas (via Pitchfork).
Getting in touch with your inner Luther
I’m currently working on an essay on the Reformation. When I say currently, I mean for the last four hours I’ve been finishing my reading with just a few more articles. No seriously. Just a few more. And on Tuesday I’ll write my thoughts into something cohesive, which will then be submitted by Friday.
That’s the plan.
Anyway. I’ve been enjoying reading some of the polemics written around the period of the Reformation. And while I probably owe much of my theological heritage to John Calvin, as a Presbyterian, I find Luther resonates a bit better with my personality, as a young hot-head blogger.
Anyway. The Luther Insult Generator has been doing the rounds online. Its popularity led to a server change, and thus a change in web address. So. Update your bookmarks. Snot-nose.
Friends don’t let friends jump on 1 and 3…
Four garish items of clothing.
Three dance moves.
Two Eric Cantona lookalikes.
One bad song.
No rhythm.
Recipe for musical disaster.
When slippery slopes attack: why abortion is intellectually untenable
I’m not a single issue voter. And I recognise that abortion is a hot-button issue where different worldviews can produce divergent results.
Maybe I feel more strongly about this now that I’m a father, and that I’ve had the experience of watching, via ultrasound, and feeling, via my hands, the development of a baby in the womb. Maybe it’s the experience of watching my daughter’s eyes take in the world around her for the first time… but some recent Australian developments around the issue of terminating pregnancies just makes me sick about the callous nature of modern life.
It makes me despair about the kind of world my daughter will grow up in – where the implications of moving away from a Christian view of human life will start to be truly felt. If we are just a sack of cells, with nothing to distinguish us from the animals, then everything is fair game. There are no checks and balances. No cohesive account of why life is important. Harm based accounts of ethical behaviour are so very arbitrary and will always be decided by the subjective interests of the powerful, or the majority.
As it currently stand there’s such a mish-mash of values being thrown into the moral/ethical/legal pot that something’s got to give. Holding a consistent position beyond valuing all life (or seeing all human life as representing God’s image) just throws multiple spanners into the works. I’ll get to a solution, of sorts, later. Well. I’ll rehash a solution that I’ve posted once before…
Anyway. Here’s a selection of situations in Australia that have prompted my ire.
First, Western Australia is set to join Queensland, in affirming that a wanted fetus is a human.
“Attorney-General Christian Porter is drafting the new laws and will introduce them into State Parliament later this year.
Under present laws, an unborn baby has no legal status and is not recognised by the courts.
But Mr Porter said the new fetal homicide laws would create a new criminal code offence of causing death or grievous bodily harm to an unborn child.
Based on a law already in force in Queensland, it would carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
Offenders who kill or intend to kill an unborn baby by assaulting a mother will face mandatory life imprisonment – the same as a murder charge in all but exceptional circumstances.”
But here’s the kicker.
“He said he intended to consult further with the groups about the Government’s reforms in the coming weeks, but confirmed the legislation would not in any way affect the law relating to abortion in WA.
“The proposed legislation will be drafted to require an unlawful act to be done to the mother before any penalty can apply,” Mr Porter said. “This ensures these changes will not affect a mother’s right to make decisions regarding her pregnancy.”
There would be no limit on when an unborn baby was considered to be a human life.”
So that’s clearly a little inconsistent. And elevates wantedness to incredible significance when it comes to personhood. Which is just bizarre.
But there’s a precedent at play here in recent Australian history – there was a massive public outcry, which highlighted this inconsistency, when a Melbourne hospital terminated the wrong twin in a bungled abortion last year. Again – the unwanted twin was disabled, and would most likely have not lived long, or have been a burden, on the parents. So “wantedness” became the factor by which a decision about the personhood of this twin was essentially made.
Now here’s the icing on the cake. For years. Pro-life, or anti-abortion, activists have been employing a potentially fallacious slippery slope argument against allowing any abortion. Suggesting that once you allow abortion, to be consistent, you should allow the termination of a newborn baby. Because drawing the line at birth is arbitrary. It’s becoming increasingly arbitrary as the miracles of modern medicine mean the viability date for fetus outside the womb is an increasingly early thing.
Most reasonable thinkers have cautioned this kind of argument as being logically incoherent. In the absence of actual evidence of a slippery slope, these arguments are basically setting up a straw man position and not engaging with your opponents with respect.
But now. The slippery slope has been pointed to by a couple of Australian academics. Ethicists. Who recognise that it is incredibly inconsistent to draw a line under a person’s personhood at birth. They’ve argued, in an article published in the Journal of Medical Ethics (PDF), that post birth problem children, who represent an unwanted burden for their parents, should also be terminated. Because they are not morally sentient beings, so therefore not people.
After arguing that children with certain pathologies that would limit a normal life, a reason that would normally constitute grounds for abortion, should also be legitimately terminated after birth, these ethicists go on to suggest that though children with conditions like Down Syndrome can be said to be “happy” – they may present an unfair burden on the parents (the idea that life is to be “fair” is based on some questionable presuppositions).
“Nonetheless, to bring up such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole, when the state economically provides for their care. On these grounds, the fact that a fetus has the potential to become a person who will have an (at least) acceptable life is no reason for prohibiting abortion.
Therefore, we argue that, when circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible.”
This seems like a horrible satire. But it’s published in a legitimate journal.
Lest we be mistaken about what they’re arguing for:
“Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where
abortion would be”
It goes down hill from there…
“Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk. Accordingly, a second terminological specification is that we call such a practice ‘after-birth abortion’ rather than ‘euthanasia’ because the best interest of the one who dies is not necessarily the primary criterion for the choice, contrary to what happens in the case of euthanasia.”
Here’s where they try to draw a line to define personhood.
“Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’. We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this
existence represents a loss to her.”
Now. I’m no published ethicist. But having a newborn baby in the house gives me a little bit of perspective on this. My baby, who is two months old, cries when she is hungry. She has done since birth. She stops crying when she is fed. At this point I would argue that her cries are indicative of a desire to keep on living, via being fed. I don’t know how one could establish a definitive sense of loss short of asking the person – which would rule out personhood until a baby is old enough to comprehend his or her existence.
At this point we start to see the problem with a general social shift away from a Christian anthropology. A view that people are special because they are created different to the rest of the animals.
“This means that many nonhuman animals and mentally retarded human individuals are persons, but that all the individuals who are not in the condition of attributing any value to their own existence are not persons. Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life. Indeed, many humans are not considered subjects of a right to life: spare embryos where research on embryo stem cells is permitted, fetuses where abortion is permitted, criminals where capital punishment is legal.”
So you can’t kill a functional monkey. But you can kill a disabled baby. The logic here is so thoroughly inconsistent it is staggering.
In applying the logic to themselves – the authors of this study suggest that potentiality is not a valid consideration. You can’t say “well that baby or fetus would have become like us” – because once the decision is made, it’s a moot point.
“If a potential person, like a fetus and a newborn, does not become an actual person, like you and us, then there is neither an actual nor a future person who can be harmed, which means that there is no harm at all. So, if you ask one of us if we would have been harmed, had our parents decided to kill us when we were fetuses or newborns, our answer is ‘no’, because they would have harmed someone who does not exist (the ‘us’ whom you are asking the question), which means no one. And if no one is harmed, then no harm occurred.”
This is where harm based metaethics fall apart. Who decides and defines harm if not the powerful?
The worst bit, I think, is that they rule out adoption as an option – because adoption may cause future psychological harm to the mother, where the decision to coldly and callously end the life of the child will not. In their logic. This is “potential harm” based on some studies done somewhere. Somehow that is more legitimate than speculating about the effect of terminating a living baby on the mother’s emotional well being.
“Accordingly, healthy and potentially happy people should be given up for adoption if the family cannot raise them up. Why should we kill a healthy newborn when giving it up for adoption would not breach anyone’s right but possibly increase the happiness of people involved (adopters and adoptee)?
Our reply is the following. We have previously discussed the argument from potentiality, showing that it is not strong enough to outweigh the consideration of the interests of actual people. Indeed, however weak the interests of actual people can be, they will always trump the alleged interest of potential people to become actual ones, because this latter interest…
…On this perspective, the interests of the actual people involved matter, and among these interests, we also need to consider the interests of the mother who might suffer psychological distress from giving her child up for adoption. Birthmothers are often reported to experience serious psychological problems due to the inability to elaborate their loss and to cope with their grief.
It is true that grief and sense of loss may accompany both abortion and after-birth abortion as well as adoption, but we cannot assume that for the birthmother the latter is the least traumatic. For example, ‘those who grieve a death must accept the irreversibility of the loss, but natural mothers often dream that their child will return to them. This makes it difficult to accept the reality of the loss because they can never be quite sure whether or not it is irreversible.”
One thing you can be sure of is that terminating the life of a child is irreversible. Another thing you can be sure of is that this article won’t be all that palatable with doctors who have to consider the prospect of ending a viable baby’s life (the Hypocratic Oath would seem to prevent such action). But really – the foundational truth here is that once you move away from viewing all human life as carrying the image of God – which is one of the fundamentally important points of Genesis 1 and 2, ignoring questions of science, you don’t really have a leg to stand on when it comes to coherently describing why human life is a good thing, and why it should be protected.
While this will be a minority voice at the table when it comes to setting of policies regarding the rights of a fetus – legislation that is very much on the table particularly in the case of Western Australia… one of the things we, as a church, can and should be doing in Australia is speaking out and saying that we do want these children.
Adoption is a policy solution. Especially if we, as Christians who believe in reconciliation, offer mothers the chance to be involved in their children’s lives – a form of reversible adoption. I think what we should be campaigning for, every time we open our mouths about abortion, is a changing of Australia’s horrendously complex adoption laws. This means being radically prepared to add additional mouths at the table in our family homes. But wow. If infanticide is the alternative – which is a label the authors of this ethics paper tried hard to avoid. Then it is part of the Christian witness to step in and uphold the value of life. Doing that was a driver of change in the Roman Empire – where infanticide was a common practice. Unwanted babies were exposed. Left to die. And the church started collecting them. Caring for them. And challenging the established practice.
Here’s a letter from a travelling father to a mother:
“”Know that I am still in Alexandria…. I ask and beg you to take good care of our baby son, and as soon as I received payment I shall send it up to you. If you are delivered (before I come home), if it is a boy keep it, if a girl, discard it.””
Here’s Justin Martyr on the practice of discarding, or exposing, children and the church’s rejection of it (which often took the form of rescuing exposed children lest they end up in lives of prostitution.:
“But as for us, we have been taught that to expose newly-born children is the part of wicked men; and this we have been taught lest we should do any one an injury, and lest we should sin against God, first, because we see that almost all so exposed (not only the girls, but also the males) are brought up to prostitution…
And again [we fear to expose children], lest some of them be not picked up, but die, and we become murderers.”
And perhaps my favourite, Tertullian, responding to claims that Christian rites involved child sacrifice (which they didn’t).
“But in regard to child murder, as it does not matter whether it is committed for a sacred object, or merely at one’s own self-impulse—although there is a great difference, as we have said, between parricide and homicide—I shall turn to the people generally. How many, think you, of those crowding around and gaping for Christian blood,—how many even of your rulers, notable for their justice to you and for their severe measures against us, may I charge in their own consciences with the sin of putting their offspring to death? As to any difference in the kind of murder, it is certainly the more cruel way to kill by drowning, or by exposure to cold and hunger and dogs. A maturer age has always preferred death by the sword. In our case, murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fœtus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to the birth…
You first of all expose your children, that they may be taken up by any compassionate passer-by, to whom they are quite unknown; or you give them away, to be adopted by those who will do better to them the part of parents.”
There’s nothing new under the sun. This sort of callous disregard for human life was something best left in the past, and part of the church’s heritage it should be proud of. And embrace. A cursory glance at Wikipedia’s infanticide article demonstrates the pivotal role we played, through embracing unwanted children, in changing the way western society viewed life. We can do it again. And we should.
The other compelling Christian factor in this argument is that the gospel brings a message of wantedness not just to the discarded or “unwanted” child, but to the mother as well. We value people because Jesus valued us. And because God not only implanted his image in humanity, but calls humans to be his people. We’re adopted into his family. We are wanted by God. That’s the essence of a Biblical anthropology, and its a reality which is heightened for the Christian. Which gives us a precedent to follow, and provides a mandate for us to love and seek the unwanted. This, I think, is the most compelling anthropology going round, and it makes sense of life from conception to death. It only really competes with the view put forward by these ethicists – because they’re right. This is the natural outcome of viewing humanity as a fleshy sack of bones and organs. Only these two options have any sense of cohesion.
That is all.