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The issue of Abortion is a very central one in our culture today and I will do a series of posts on my correspondence with Carl Sagan concerning this issue.

Unplanned Official Trailer – In Theaters March 29

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I mailed a letter to Carl Sagan on August 30, 1995 and it included a letter that I had published that very day in the Democrat-Gazette. Here is the letter below:

My letter to the editor to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette was published on August 30, 1995 and appeared under the title THE HUMANIST WORLD VIEW. Here below is the published letter:

George Foehringer (Voices, August 1) is critical of those fundamentalist Christians who use the Bible as their basis for morals, and he praises the “enlightenment brought about by scientists and humanists.”

The Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer best to this charge when he said, “First, the superior attitude toward Christianity–as if Christianity had all the problems and humanism had all the answers–is quite unjustified.

“The humanists of the enlightenment two centuries ago thought they were going to find all the answers, but as time has passed, this optimistic hope has been proved wrong. 

“Second, this humanist world view has also brought us the present devaluation of human life.”

Schaeffer is referring to the humanist view toward abortion and infanticide. 

Adrian Rogers, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, has rightly said, “Secular Humanism and so-called abortion rights are inseparably linked together.”

The pro-abortion movement in America has benefited from support from such humanists as Lester R. Brown, James Farmer, Sol Gordon, Matthew Ies Spetter, Richard Dawkins, Kendrick Frazier, Gordon Stein and Gerald R. Larue. 

Likewise, the infanticide movement was given a lift in 1978 when Francis Crick, a Nobel Laureate and a humanist, said that no newborn infant should be declared human until it has passed certain tests regarding its genetic endowment and that if it fails these tests, it forfeits the right to live. The humanist world view does devalue life. 

Everette Hatcher III, Little Rock, Arkansas 

In a letter from Carl Sagan dated December 5, 1995, Sagan disagreed with me concerning the close relationship between atheistic evolutionists and the abortion movement. I know this was true of skeptics such as Sean Carroll, Michael Shermer, Noam Chomsky, Jonathan Haidt, Daniel Dennett, Alan M. Dershowitz, Jared Diamond,  Bart D. Ehrman,  Melvin Konner,  Lawrence Krauss, Colin McGinn,  Leonard Mlodinow, P.Z. Myers,  Massimo Pigliucci, Steven Pinker, Lisa Randall, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Craig Venter, James D. Watson,  Frank Wilczek, Steven Weinberg,  and Edward O. Wilson.

Thanks for your recent letter about evolution and abortion. The correlation is hardly one to one; there are evolutionists who are anti-abortion and anti-evolutionists who are pro-abortion.

This most recent presidential election does seem to disprove Sagan’s point since it was the prolife evangelical vote that pushed Trump over the finish line.

Richard Dawkins was the 1997 Humanist of the Year and his pro-abortion views are well known. Moreover, on March 13, 2013, Dawkins tweeted, 

With respect to those meanings of “human” that are relevant to the morality of abortion, any fetus is less human than an adult pig.

I know how Dawkins and his humanist friends think. Since 1994 I have tried to read the works of humanists and then correspond with them. In fact, some of them have been past Humanists of the Year such as Steven Pinker 2007, Daniel Dennett 2005, Edward O. Wilson 2000, Lloyd Morain 1995, and Albert Ellis 1972. 

Since Carl Sagan was the 1982 Humanist of the Year himself, I thought it would be obvious to him too that humanists are radically pro-abortion. 

The following is an excerpt from Roy Speckhardt’s Creating Change Through Humanism (Humanist Press, 2015):

In the 1960s, the AHA was active in challenging the illegality of abortion. It was the first national membership organization to support abortion rights, even before Planned Parenthood expanded to address the issue. Humanists were instrumental in the founding of leading pro-choice organizations such as the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and NARAL Pro-Choice America. These organizations continue to defend and support elective abortion rights.

In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented  against abortion (Episode 1),  infanticide (Episode 2),   euthenasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close look at the truth claims of the Bible.

I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video below. It is very valuable information for Christians to have.  Actually I have included a video below that includes comments from him on this subject.

SURGEON GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES
In office January 21, 1982 – October 1, 1989
PRESIDENT	Ronald Reagan George H. W. Bush

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER
Founder of the L’Abri community
BORN	Francis August Schaeffer January 30, 1912

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