Extermination and War

Chilling piece from Joe Carter in Culture11 about how China and India, among other countries, are exterminating shocking numbers of baby girls in the womb. Hey, if abortion is legal and accepted, what right do any of us have to tell Indian and Chinese mothers they may not kill their baby daughters -- sorry, female fetuses -- because they'd prefer to have boys? Right, feminists?

Beyond the confluence of feticide and sexism, Carter foresees violence in the womb leading to violence elsewhere:

Even if we set aside the moral horror of a world that is killing its daughters, this oft-ignored trend of female feticide could pose a greater threat than many of the high-profile concerns that are touted by the media. For instance, the Chinese government says that by the year 2020 the men in that country will outnumber women by 300 million--roughly the entire population of the United States.

Imagine hordes of men, numbering in the hundreds of millions, who will never be able to have sexual contact with a woman, never be able to marry, and never leave a descendant to carry on their lineage. Think about the level of anger and frustration that will be generated. Now consider the fact that the number of males fit for military service (ages 18-49) in the U.S. is currently and remains steady at 54 million.

This happens alot to me....

Maybe all the time actually.

I can't figure out why some things become such a huge deal before legitmacy is proved.

Maybe I am missing something. And I know my bias comes out in these types of things, but nothing has appeared with these types of news stories to make me regret showing bias. Actually, there's been nothing, ever, at all to make me re-think my bias in these situations. That, as the media purports will happen, has my faith been shaken and rocked to its core. Everytime these things prove to be fakes, frauds, or were completely misinterpretted.

James Ossuary (Or "Loss Tomb of Jesus)? - Fake
Gospel of Judas? - Grossly embrassing for National Geographic
Tomb of Jesus? - That was the same thing as the James Ossuary, and yet, it made it's way back to the forefront under a different name and had the backing of "famous" people like James Tabor and James Cameron. Books, TV shows, etc., etc., etc. Big oops on that one

So why keep going?

So, why is Dan Brown-esque hysteria allowed to happen?

So, what am I missing with the newest discovery that, get this, goes from having no evidence at all to almost no evidence at all that Messianic resurection was an option.

There are elements in the Jesus story -- and in other stories in the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) -- that have analogues in other traditions. If this new discovery proves to be exactly what some think it is, so what? How does that falsify the resurrection of Jesus? It certainly makes it easier to believe that the Jesus cultists, so to speak, made it all up. But couldn't you say the same thing about the messianic prophecies in the Hebrew Bible -- that Jesus's followers, knowing about the prophecies as part of the Jewish tradition, adapted the story of their Lord's life and death and resurrection to fit those prophecies? I mean, if you're determined to disbelieve, there are plenty of reasons to disbelieve. And if,like me, you're determined to believe, material evidence doesn't much matter, does it? Especially when that material evidence continues to fall short time and time again.

My reaction to this latest news is, "Ho hum." But maybe I fail to grasp its true significance. What say you?

Darwinmania!!!!!

I found this New York Times column zooming around some other blogs and found it to be an interesting look at Charles Darwin and the likely festivities that will surround two important anniversaries soon to be celebrated. And what better group of people to discuss this than all 2 of you:

The party is about to begin.

In a week or so, the trumpets will sound, heralding the start of 18 months of non-stop festivities in honor of Charles Darwin. July 1, 2008, is the 150th anniversary of the first announcement of his discovery of natural selection, the main driving force of evolution. Since 2009 is the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth (Feb. 12), as well as being the 150th anniversary of the publication of his masterpiece, "On the Origin of Species" (Nov. 24), the extravaganza is set to continue until the end of next year. Get ready for Darwin hats, t-shirts, action figures, naturally selected fireworks and evolving chocolates. Oh, and lots of books and speeches.

But hold on. Does he deserve all this? He wasn't, after all, the first person to suggest that evolution happens. For example, his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, speculated about it towards the end of the 18th century; at the beginning of the 19th, the great French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck made a strong case for it. Lamarck, however, failed to be generally persuasive because he didn't have a plausible mechanism -- he could see that evolution takes place, but he didn't know how. That had to wait until the discovery of natural selection.

The author goes on to explain just why Darwin, who wasn't the first to think of natural selection either, deserves the parties that will be held in his honor; and I'd tend to agree, for the most part.

As a Creationist, you'd think I'd have problems with Darwin's theories. Kinda, sort of. Call it riding the fence if you will. But here is the best way I can explain it:

I believe that God made the world and everything in it (I wasn't around during this time, so I really can't speak to the timeline or how long it took God to do all of this); I believe that He directly created the souls not only of the first two fully human creatures on Earth, but that He continues this act of direct creation of the souls of every human being in existence. In other words, the human body may have been formed by evolution (but not from monkeys or even "neanderthal" as in the stereotypical thought that enters everyone's mind when I said neanderthal), but the immortal soul of every human being is not something which developed naturally, or exists as a naturally occurring characteristic of the material existence of humans.

The real conflict between religion and science often comes about when science claims that the ability to demonstrate certain empirical truths automatically disproves the existence of the non-material. This is no less true for the various debates that have arisen about ideas based on Darwin's observations than it has been for other similar conflicts. Those followers of Darwin who say that evolution and natural selection prove that there is no God, as man no longer requires a Creator, or that there is no immortal soul, as such a thing could hardly have evolved and can't be empirically observed anyway, are stepping outside the bounds of science and into metaphysics, where by definition they have no business; the tools of empiricism are useless in the realm of the transcendent realities.

But the strict empiricist doesn't believe that there are transcendent realities. All is physical, all is observable, all is the result of brain chemistry or hormones or the twirl and dance of deoxyribonucleic acid. Love isn't a many-splendored thing, but the predictable and combined result of proximity, the observable qualities of the other that strike the observer's eye as desirable, and the activity of certain physical and chemical processes; beauty may not be in the eye of the beholder, but what does it matter so long as the proper hormonal response is achieved?

And hate is in the gut--literally--and crime located somewhere in the glandular systems, and free will is an illusion that we've evolved to believe in because otherwise the sheer randomness and preprogrammed nature of our choices would drive us to despair--or, at least, to whatever physical/chemical combination "despair" really is.

So for the empiricist, any talk of God being involved in the creation of the world, even if religious believers are quite willing to entertain the notion that it pleased God to set evolution in motion (provided we retain our beliefs about the soul, which the strictest empiricists don't believe in anyway) still isn't acceptable. For certain people whose beliefs in non-creation and the non-Creator are inextricably tied to their beliefs about science and about all of reality, this is not a compromise they can live with--it seems as though they must convert believers to their non-belief, so ardently do they insist that evolution proves that God is not.

It does no such thing, of course. And I can't help but wonder just what sort of biochemical impulses the strict empiricist-evolutionist blames for his unhappiness with the whole notion.