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The last two posts I did in this series were basically points made by Carl Sagan on abortion but refuted by Adrian Rogers (pictured below). Today I am going refute Sagan’s point on abortion by using the scientific argument from my atheist friend Dr. Kevin R. Henke who is a scientist. (I first got to know Kevin R. Henke after reading his story in Ed Babinski’s book “Leaving the Fold.”)

Carl Sagan pictured below:

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Recently I have been revisiting my correspondence in 1995 with the famous astronomer Carl Sagan who I was introduced to when reading a book by Francis Schaeffer called HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT written in 1968. 

Francis Schaeffer

I was blessed with the opportunity to correspond with Dr. Sagan, and in his December 5, 1995 letter Dr. Sagan went on to tell me that he was enclosing his article “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. I am going to respond to several points made in that article. Here is a portion of Sagan’s article (here is a link to the whole article):

Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan pictured above

 “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”

by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan

For the complete text, including illustrations, introductory quote, footnotes, and commentary on the reaction to the originally published article see Billions and Billions.

The issue had been decided years ago. The court had chosen the middle ground. You’d think the fight was over. Instead, there are mass rallies, bombings and intimidation, murders of workers at abortion clinics, arrests, intense lobbying, legislative drama, Congressional hearings, Supreme Court decisions, major political parties almost defining themselves on the issue, and clerics threatening politicians with perdition. Partisans fling accusations of hypocrisy and murder. The intent of the Constitution and the will of God are equally invoked. Doubtful arguments are trotted out as certitudes. The contending factions call on science to bolster their positions. Families are divided, husbands and wives agree not to discuss it, old friends are no longer speaking. Politicians check the latest polls to discover the dictates of their consciences. Amid all the shouting, it is hard for the adversaries to hear one another. Opinions are polarized. Minds are closed.

Is it wrong to abort a pregnancy? Always? Sometimes? Never? How do we decide? We wrote this article to understand better what the contending views are and to see if we ourselves could find a position that would satisfy us both. Is there no middle ground? We had to weigh the arguments of both sides for consistency and to pose test cases, some of which are purely hypothetical. If in some of these tests we seem to go too far, we ask the reader to be patient with us–we’re trying to stress the various positions to the breaking point to see their weaknesses and where they fail.

In contemplative moments, nearly everyone recognizes that the issue is not wholly one-sided. Many partisans of differing views, we find, feel some disquiet, some unease when confronting what’s behind the opposing arguments. (This is partly why such confrontations are avoided.) And the issue surely touches on deep questions: What are our responses to one another? Should we permit the state to intrude into the most intimate and personal aspects of our lives? Where are the boundaries of freedom? What does it mean to be human?

Of the many actual points of view, it is widely held–especially in the media, which rarely have the time or the inclination to make fine distinctions–that there are only two: “pro-choice” and “pro-life.” This is what the two principal warring camps like to call themselves, and that’s what we’ll call them here. In the simplest characterization, a pro-choicer would hold that the decision to abort a pregnancy is to be made only by the woman; the state has no right to interfere. And a pro-lifer would hold that, from the moment of conception, the embryo or fetus is alive; that this life imposes on us a moral obligation to preserve it; and that abortion is tantamount to murder. Both names–pro-choice and pro-life–were picked with an eye toward influencing those whose minds are not yet made up: Few people wish to be counted either as being against freedom of choice or as opposed to life. Indeed, freedom and life are two of our most cherished values, and here they seem to be in fundamental conflict.

Let’s consider these two absolutist positions in turn. A newborn baby is surely the same being it was just before birth. There ‘s good evidence that a late-term fetus responds to sound–including music, but especially its mother’s voice. It can suck its thumb or do a somersault. Occasionally, it generates adult brain-wave patterns. Some people claim to remember being born, or even the uterine environment. Perhaps there is thought in the womb. It’s hard to maintain that a transformation to full personhood happens abruptly at the moment of birth. Why, then, should it be murder to kill an infant the day after it was born but not the day before?

As a practical matter, this isn’t very important: Less than 1 percent of all tabulated abortions in the United States are listed in the last three months of pregnancy (and, on closer investigation, most such reports turn out to be due to miscarriage or miscalculation). But third-trimester abortions provide a test of the limits of the pro-choice point of view. Does a woman’s “innate right to control her own body” encompass the right to kill a near-term fetus who is, for all intents and purposes, identical to a newborn child?

We believe that many supporters of reproductive freedom are troubled at least occasionally by this question. But they are reluctant to raise it because it is the beginning of a slippery slope. If it is impermissible to abort a pregnancy in the ninth month, what about the eighth, seventh, sixth … ? Once we acknowledge that the state can interfere at any time in the pregnancy, doesn’t it follow that the state can interfere at all times?

Abortion and the slippery slope argument above

This conjures up the specter of predominantly male, predominantly affluent legislators telling poor women they must bear and raise alone children they cannot afford to bring up; forcing teenagers to bear children they are not emotionally prepared to deal with; saying to women who wish for a career that they must give up their dreams, stay home, and bring up babies; and, worst of all, condemning victims of rape and incest to carry and nurture the offspring of their assailants. Legislative prohibitions on abortion arouse the suspicion that their real intent is to control the independence and sexuality of women…

And yet, by consensus, all of us think it proper that there be prohibitions against, and penalties exacted for, murder. It would be a flimsy defense if the murderer pleads that this is just between him and his victim and none of the government’s business. If killing a fetus is truly killing a human being, is it not the duty of the state to prevent it? Indeed, one of the chief functions of government is to protect the weak from the strong.

If we do not oppose abortion at some stage of pregnancy, is there not a danger of dismissing an entire category of human beings as unworthy of our protection and respect? And isn’t that dismissal the hallmark of sexism, racism, nationalism, and religious fanaticism? Shouldn’t those dedicated to fighting such injustices be scrupulously careful not to embrace another?

Adrian Rogers’ sermon on animal rights refutes Sagan here

There is no right to life in any society on Earth today, nor has there been at any former time… : We raise farm animals for slaughter; destroy forests; pollute rivers and lakes until no fish can live there; kill deer and elk for sport, leopards for the pelts, and whales for fertilizer; entrap dolphins, gasping and writhing, in great tuna nets; club seal pups to death; and render a species extinct every day. All these beasts and vegetables are as alive as we. What is (allegedly) protected is not life, but human life.

Genesis 3 defines being human

And even with that protection, casual murder is an urban commonplace, and we wage “conventional” wars with tolls so terrible that we are, most of us, afraid to consider them very deeply… That protection, that right to life, eludes the 40,000 children under five who die on our planet each day from preventable starvation, dehydration, disease, and neglect.

Those who assert a “right to life” are for (at most) not just any kind of life, but for–particularly and uniquely—human life. So they too, like pro-choicers, must decide what distinguishes a human being from other animals and when, during gestation, the uniquely human qualities–whatever they are–emerge.

The Bible talks about the differences between humans and animals

Despite many claims to the contrary, life does not begin at conception: It is an unbroken chain that stretches back nearly to the origin of the Earth, 4.6 billion years ago. Nor does human life begin at conception: It is an unbroken chain dating back to the origin of our species, hundreds of thousands of years ago. Every human sperm and egg is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, alive. They are not human beings, of course. However, it could be argued that neither is a fertilized egg.

In some animals, an egg develops into a healthy adult without benefit of a sperm cell. But not, so far as we know, among humans. A sperm and an unfertilized egg jointly comprise the full genetic blueprint for a human being. Under certain circumstances, after fertilization, they can develop into a baby. But most fertilized eggs are spontaneously miscarried. Development into a baby is by no means guaranteed. Neither a sperm and egg separately, nor a fertilized egg, is more than a potential baby or a potential adult. So if a sperm and egg are as human as the fertilized egg produced by their union, and if it is murder to destroy a fertilized egg–despite the fact that it’s only potentially a baby–why isn’t it murder to destroy a sperm or an egg?

Hundreds of millions of sperm cells (top speed with tails lashing: five inches per hour) are produced in an average human ejaculation. A healthy young man can produce in a week or two enough spermatozoa to double the human population of the Earth. So is masturbation mass murder? How about nocturnal emissions or just plain sex? When the unfertilized egg is expelled each month, has someone died? Should we mourn all those spontaneous miscarriages? Many lower animals can be grown in a laboratory from a single body cell. Human cells can be cloned… In light of such cloning technology, would we be committing mass murder by destroying any potentially clonable cells? By shedding a drop of blood?

All human sperm and eggs are genetic halves of “potential” human beings

All human sperm and eggs are genetic halves of “potential” human beings. Should heroic efforts be made to save and preserve all of them, everywhere, because of this “potential”? Is failure to do so immoral or criminal? Of course, there’s a difference between taking a life and failing to save it. And there’s a big difference between the probability of survival of a sperm cell and that of a fertilized egg. But the absurdity of a corps of high-minded semen-preservers moves us to wonder whether a fertilized egg’s mere “potential” to become a baby really does make destroying it murder.

Opponents of abortion worry that, once abortion is permissible immediately after conception, no argument will restrict it at any later time in the pregnancy. Then, they fear, one day it will be permissible to murder a fetus that is unambiguously a human being. Both pro-choicers and pro-lifers (at least some of them) are pushed toward absolutist positions by parallel fears of the slippery slope.

This position of only when the life of the mother is in danger is not an extreme position (see below)

Another slippery slope is reached by those pro-lifers who are willing to make an exception in the agonizing case of a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest. But why should the right to live depend on the circumstances of conception? If the same child were to result, can the state ordain life for the offspring of a lawful union but death for one conceived by force or coercion? How can this be just? And if exceptions are extended to such a fetus, why should they be withheld from any other fetus? This is part of the reason some pro-lifers adopt what many others consider the outrageous posture of opposing abortions under any and all circumstances–only excepting, perhaps, when the life of the mother is in danger.

By far the most common reason for abortion worldwide is birth control. So shouldn’t opponents of abortion be handing out contraceptives and teaching school children how to use them? That would be an effective way to reduce the number of abortions. Instead, the United States is far behind other nations in the development of safe and effective methods of birth control–and, in many cases, opposition to such research (and to sex education) has come from the same people who oppose abortions.continue on to Part 3

For the complete text, including illustrations, introductory quote, footnotes, and commentary on the reaction to the originally published article see Billions and Billions.

The attempt to find an ethically sound and unambiguous judgment on when, if ever, abortion is permissible has deep historical roots. Often, especially in Christian tradition, such attempts were connected with the question of when the soul enters the body–a matter not readily amenable to scientific investigation and an issue of controversy even among learned theologians. Ensoulment has been asserted to occur in the sperm before conception, at conception, at the time of “quickening” (when the mother is first able to feel the fetus stirring within her), and at birth. Or even later.

Different religions have different teachings. Among hunter-gatherers, there are usually no prohibitions against abortion, and it was common in ancient Greece and Rome. In contrast, the more severe Assyrians impaled women on stakes for attempting abortion. The Jewish Talmud teaches that the fetus is not a person and has no rights. The Old and New Testaments–rich in astonishingly detailed prohibitions on dress, diet, and permissible words–contain not a word specifically prohibiting abortion. The only passage that’s remotely relevant (Exodus 21:22) decrees that if there’s a fight and a woman bystander should accidentally be injured and made to miscarry, the assailant must pay a fine.

I sent a letter to Carl Sagan that included an article by Greg Koukl that answers Sagan’s argument on 8-30-95 and that probably prompted Sagan to send me the article on 12-5-95. It can be found at this link https://thedailyhatch.org/2019/04/02/carl-sagans-response-to-my-8-30-95-letter-to-him-about-abortion/

Here below is the genetic argument for personhood:

My good friend Dr. Kevin R. Henke is a scientist and also an atheistic evolutionist. I had a lot of discussions with Kevin over religious views. I remember going over John 7:17 with him one day. It says:

John 7:17 (Amplified Bible)

¹⁷If any man desires to do His will (God’s pleasure), he will know (have the needed illumination to recognize, and can tell for himself) whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking from Myself and of My own accord and on My own authority.

I challenged Kevin to read a chapter a day of the Book of John and pray to God and ask God, “Dear God, if you are there then reveal yourself to me, and I pledge to serve you the rest of my life.”

Kevin did that and he even wrote down the thoughts that came to his mind and sent it to me and these thoughts filled a notebook.

Kevin did not become a Christian, but I am still praying for him. I do respect Kevin because he is an honest man. Interestingly enough he  told me that he was pro-life because the unborn baby has all the genetic code at  the time of conception that they will have for the rest of their life. Below are some other comments by other scientists:

Dr. Hymie Gordon (Mayo Clinic): “By all criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception.”

Dr. Micheline Matthews-Roth (Harvard University Medical School): “It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception.”

Dr. Alfred Bongioanni (University of Pennsylvania): “I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception.”

Dr. Jerome LeJeune, “the Father of Modern Genetics” (University of Descartes, Paris): “To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion . . . it is plain experimental evidence.”

Back on April 27, 2009 Fox News ran a story by Hollie McKay(“Supermodel Kathy Ireland Lashes Out Against Pro Choice,”) on Jill Ireland.

It’s no secret that the majority of Hollywood stars are strong advocates for a woman’s right to choose whether or not she wants to terminate a pregnancy, however former “Sports Illustrated” supermodel-turned-entrepreneur-turned-author Kathy Ireland has gone against the grain of the glitterati and spoken out against abortion.

“My entire life I was pro-choice — who was I to tell another woman what she could or couldn’t do with her body? But when I was 18, I became a Christian and I dove into the medical books, I dove into science,”Ireland told Tarts while promoting her insightful new book “Real Solutions for Busy Mom: Your Guide to Success and Sanity.”

“What I read was astounding and I learned that at the moment of conception a new life comes into being. The complete genetic blueprint is there, the DNA is determined, the blood type is determined, the sex is determined, the unique set of fingerprints that nobody has had or ever will have is already there.”

However Ireland admitted that she did everything she could to avoid becoming a believer in pro-life.

“I called Planned Parenthood and begged them to give me their best argument and all they could come up with that it is really just a clump of cells and if you get it early enough it doesn’t even look like a baby. Well, we’re all clumps of cells and the unborn does not look like a baby the same way the baby does not look like a teenager, a teenager does not look like a senior citizen. That unborn baby looks exactly the way human beings are supposed to look at that stage of development. It doesn’t suddenly become a human being at a certain point in time,” Ireland argued. “I’ve also asked leading scientists across our country to please show me some shred of evidence that the unborn is not a human being. I didn’t want to be pro-life, but this is not a woman’s rights issue but a human rights issue.”

ReferencesEdit

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Related posts:

Taking on Ark Times Bloggers on various issues Part F “Carl Sagan’s views on how God should try and contact us” includes film “The Basis for Human Dignity”

April 8, 2013 – 7:07 am

I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control  and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)

Carl Sagan v. Nancy Pearcey

March 18, 2013 – 9:11 am

On March 17, 2013 at our worship service at Fellowship Bible Church, Ben Parkinson who is one of our teaching pastors spoke on Genesis 1. He spoke about an issue that I was very interested in. Ben started the sermon by reading the following scripture: Genesis 1-2:3 English Standard Version (ESV) The Creation of the […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Atheists Confronted, Current Events | TaggedBen Parkinson, Carl Sagan | Edit | Comments (0)

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 4 of series on Evolution)

May 24, 2012 – 1:47 am

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Below is an excerpt from a paper by Carl Sagan on abortion followed by an excerpt from a sermon by Adrian Rogers.

Carl Sagan pictured below:

_________

Recently I have been revisiting my correspondence in 1995 with the famous astronomer Carl Sagan who I was introduced to when reading a book by Francis Schaeffer called HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT written in 1968. 

Francis Schaeffer

I was blessed with the opportunity to correspond with Dr. Sagan, and in his December 5, 1995 letter Dr. Sagan went on to tell me that he was enclosing his article “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. I am going to respond to several points made in that article. Here is a portion of Sagan’s article (here is a link to the whole article):

Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan pictured above

 “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”

by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan

For the complete text, including illustrations, introductory quote, footnotes, and commentary on the reaction to the originally published article see Billions and Billions.

Adrian Rogers (1931-2005) I shared my correspondence with Carl Sagan with Dr Rogers and the fact that many of my letters to Sagan contained material from Rogers.

The issue had been decided years ago. The court had chosen the middle ground. You’d think the fight was over. Instead, there are mass rallies, bombings and intimidation, murders of workers at abortion clinics, arrests, intense lobbying, legislative drama, Congressional hearings, Supreme Court decisions, major political parties almost defining themselves on the issue, and clerics threatening politicians with perdition. Partisans fling accusations of hypocrisy and murder. The intent of the Constitution and the will of God are equally invoked. Doubtful arguments are trotted out as certitudes. The contending factions call on science to bolster their positions. Families are divided, husbands and wives agree not to discuss it, old friends are no longer speaking. Politicians check the latest polls to discover the dictates of their consciences. Amid all the shouting, it is hard for the adversaries to hear one another. Opinions are polarized. Minds are closed.

Is it wrong to abort a pregnancy? Always? Sometimes? Never? How do we decide? We wrote this article to understand better what the contending views are and to see if we ourselves could find a position that would satisfy us both. Is there no middle ground? We had to weigh the arguments of both sides for consistency and to pose test cases, some of which are purely hypothetical. If in some of these tests we seem to go too far, we ask the reader to be patient with us–we’re trying to stress the various positions to the breaking point to see their weaknesses and where they fail.

In contemplative moments, nearly everyone recognizes that the issue is not wholly one-sided. Many partisans of differing views, we find, feel some disquiet, some unease when confronting what’s behind the opposing arguments. (This is partly why such confrontations are avoided.) And the issue surely touches on deep questions: What are our responses to one another? Should we permit the state to intrude into the most intimate and personal aspects of our lives? Where are the boundaries of freedom? What does it mean to be human?

Of the many actual points of view, it is widely held–especially in the media, which rarely have the time or the inclination to make fine distinctions–that there are only two: “pro-choice” and “pro-life.” This is what the two principal warring camps like to call themselves, and that’s what we’ll call them here. In the simplest characterization, a pro-choicer would hold that the decision to abort a pregnancy is to be made only by the woman; the state has no right to interfere. And a pro-lifer would hold that, from the moment of conception, the embryo or fetus is alive; that this life imposes on us a moral obligation to preserve it; and that abortion is tantamount to murder. Both names–pro-choice and pro-life–were picked with an eye toward influencing those whose minds are not yet made up: Few people wish to be counted either as being against freedom of choice or as opposed to life. Indeed, freedom and life are two of our most cherished values, and here they seem to be in fundamental conflict.

Let’s consider these two absolutist positions in turn. A newborn baby is surely the same being it was just before birth. There ‘s good evidence that a late-term fetus responds to sound–including music, but especially its mother’s voice. It can suck its thumb or do a somersault. Occasionally, it generates adult brain-wave patterns. Some people claim to remember being born, or even the uterine environment. Perhaps there is thought in the womb. It’s hard to maintain that a transformation to full personhood happens abruptly at the moment of birth. Why, then, should it be murder to kill an infant the day after it was born but not the day before?

As a practical matter, this isn’t very important: Less than 1 percent of all tabulated abortions in the United States are listed in the last three months of pregnancy (and, on closer investigation, most such reports turn out to be due to miscarriage or miscalculation). But third-trimester abortions provide a test of the limits of the pro-choice point of view. Does a woman’s “innate right to control her own body” encompass the right to kill a near-term fetus who is, for all intents and purposes, identical to a newborn child?

We believe that many supporters of reproductive freedom are troubled at least occasionally by this question. But they are reluctant to raise it because it is the beginning of a slippery slope. If it is impermissible to abort a pregnancy in the ninth month, what about the eighth, seventh, sixth … ? Once we acknowledge that the state can interfere at any time in the pregnancy, doesn’t it follow that the state can interfere at all times?

Abortion and the slippery slope argument above

This conjures up the specter of predominantly male, predominantly affluent legislators telling poor women they must bear and raise alone children they cannot afford to bring up; forcing teenagers to bear children they are not emotionally prepared to deal with; saying to women who wish for a career that they must give up their dreams, stay home, and bring up babies; and, worst of all, condemning victims of rape and incest to carry and nurture the offspring of their assailants. Legislative prohibitions on abortion arouse the suspicion that their real intent is to control the independence and sexuality of women…

And yet, by consensus, all of us think it proper that there be prohibitions against, and penalties exacted for, murder. It would be a flimsy defense if the murderer pleads that this is just between him and his victim and none of the government’s business. If killing a fetus is truly killing a human being, is it not the duty of the state to prevent it? Indeed, one of the chief functions of government is to protect the weak from the strong.

If we do not oppose abortion at some stage of pregnancy, is there not a danger of dismissing an entire category of human beings as unworthy of our protection and respect? And isn’t that dismissal the hallmark of sexism, racism, nationalism, and religious fanaticism? Shouldn’t those dedicated to fighting such injustices be scrupulously careful not to embrace another?

For the complete text, including illustrations, introductory quote, footnotes, and commentary on the reaction to the originally published article see Billions and Billions.

Here is an excerpt of a message from Adrian Rogers on DOES CHARACTER COUNT?

Here’s a final trait of leadership that God requires. A leader must protect the weak and the helpless.

In Proverbs 31:8-9, God says to King Lemuel, “Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction. Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.”

A president, or any leader, must speak up for those who can’t speak up for themselves, those who are about to be destroyed. When a president is inaugurated, he takes a pledge to defend the nation. There are many defenseless people in America today, and they’re depending on the government to defend them. The President should be standing up for the unborn, the most defenseless of all those who cannot speak for themselves.

I once testified in Washington before a Senate committee dealing with abortion. After I left the room there at the Capitol, a female lawyer met me in the hall. “You don’t understand,” she said. “You’re a man, so you don’t understand what a trauma it is to have an unwanted pregnancy.”

I said to her, “Do I understand you to say that if somebody traumatizes you, you can eliminate them? Because you’re traumatizing me right now. What if I were to put both my thumbs on your windpipe and strangle you right now? At least you could scream or run. But a baby in its mother’s womb can’t do either.”

She just turned and walked off. I’m sure she told someone, “That Baptist preacher said he was going to strangle me!” But I only said, “What if?”

It’s the job of a ruler to speak up for the unborn! “Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction,” God commands the one in authority. Someone may say, “But Pastor Rogers, abortion is legal.” Then hear these verses: “Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law? They gather themselves together against the soul of the righteous, and condemn the innocent blood” (Ps. 94:20-21).

If a throne of iniquity is one that uses the law to commit evil, then what we have in America today is a throne of iniquity! Laws are passed to shed innocent blood. But NOTHING IS POLITICALLY RIGHT THAT IS MORALLY WRONG.

Jeremiah said concerning evil King Jehoiakim, “Thine eyes and thine heart are not but for thy covetousness, and for to shed innocent blood, and for oppression, and for violence, to do it” (22:17). The prophet Habakkuk warned, “Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity!” (2:12).

The king, the prince, the president, must be the protector of the helpless. This is the character that God requires.

Related posts:

Taking on Ark Times Bloggers on various issues Part F “Carl Sagan’s views on how God should try and contact us” includes film “The Basis for Human Dignity”

April 8, 2013 – 7:07 am

I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control  and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)

Carl Sagan v. Nancy Pearcey

March 18, 2013 – 9:11 am

On March 17, 2013 at our worship service at Fellowship Bible Church, Ben Parkinson who is one of our teaching pastors spoke on Genesis 1. He spoke about an issue that I was very interested in. Ben started the sermon by reading the following scripture: Genesis 1-2:3 English Standard Version (ESV) The Creation of the […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Atheists Confronted, Current Events | TaggedBen Parkinson, Carl Sagan | Edit | Comments (0)

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 4 of series on Evolution)

May 24, 2012 – 1:47 am

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 4 of series on Evolution) The Long War against God-Henry Morris, part 5 of 6 Uploaded by FLIPWORLDUPSIDEDOWN3 on Aug 30, 2010 http://www.icr.org/ http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWA2http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWASGhttp://www.fliptheworldupsidedown.com/blog _______________________ I got this from a blogger in April of 2008 concerning candidate Obama’s view on evolution: Q: York County was recently in the news […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted, Current Events, President Obama | Edit| Comments (0)

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Adrian Rogers: Will God Impeach America

Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 1 | Abortion of the Human…

Carl Sagan pictured below:

_________

Recently I have been revisiting my correspondence in 1995 with the famous astronomer Carl Sagan who I was introduced to when reading a book by Francis Schaeffer called HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT written in 1968. 

Francis Schaeffer

I was blessed with the opportunity to correspond with Dr. Sagan, and in his December 5, 1995 letter Dr. Sagan went on to tell me that he was enclosing his article “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. I am going to respond to several points made in that article. Here is a portion of Sagan’s article (here is a link to the whole article):

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Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan pictured above

 “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”

by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan

For the complete text, including illustrations, introductory quote, footnotes, and commentary on the reaction to the originally published article see Billions and Billions.

The issue had been decided years ago. The court had chosen the middle ground. You’d think the fight was over. Instead, there are mass rallies, bombings and intimidation, murders of workers at abortion clinics, arrests, intense lobbying, legislative drama, Congressional hearings, Supreme Court decisions, major political parties almost defining themselves on the issue, and clerics threatening politicians with perdition. Partisans fling accusations of hypocrisy and murder. The intent of the Constitution and the will of God are equally invoked. Doubtful arguments are trotted out as certitudes. The contending factions call on science to bolster their positions. Families are divided, husbands and wives agree not to discuss it, old friends are no longer speaking. Politicians check the latest polls to discover the dictates of their consciences. Amid all the shouting, it is hard for the adversaries to hear one another. Opinions are polarized. Minds are closed.

Is it wrong to abort a pregnancy? Always? Sometimes? Never? How do we decide? We wrote this article to understand better what the contending views are and to see if we ourselves could find a position that would satisfy us both. Is there no middle ground? We had to weigh the arguments of both sides for consistency and to pose test cases, some of which are purely hypothetical. If in some of these tests we seem to go too far, we ask the reader to be patient with us–we’re trying to stress the various positions to the breaking point to see their weaknesses and where they fail.

In contemplative moments, nearly everyone recognizes that the issue is not wholly one-sided. Many partisans of differing views, we find, feel some disquiet, some unease when confronting what’s behind the opposing arguments. (This is partly why such confrontations are avoided.) And the issue surely touches on deep questions: What are our responses to one another? Should we permit the state to intrude into the most intimate and personal aspects of our lives? Where are the boundaries of freedom? What does it mean to be human?

Of the many actual points of view, it is widely held–especially in the media, which rarely have the time or the inclination to make fine distinctions–that there are only two: “pro-choice” and “pro-life.” This is what the two principal warring camps like to call themselves, and that’s what we’ll call them here. In the simplest characterization, a pro-choicer would hold that the decision to abort a pregnancy is to be made only by the woman; the state has no right to interfere. And a pro-lifer would hold that, from the moment of conception, the embryo or fetus is alive; that this life imposes on us a moral obligation to preserve it; and that abortion is tantamount to murder. Both names–pro-choice and pro-life–were picked with an eye toward influencing those whose minds are not yet made up: Few people wish to be counted either as being against freedom of choice or as opposed to life. Indeed, freedom and life are two of our most cherished values, and here they seem to be in fundamental conflict.

Let’s consider these two absolutist positions in turn. A newborn baby is surely the same being it was just before birth. There ‘s good evidence that a late-term fetus responds to sound–including music, but especially its mother’s voice. It can suck its thumb or do a somersault. Occasionally, it generates adult brain-wave patterns. Some people claim to remember being born, or even the uterine environment. Perhaps there is thought in the womb. It’s hard to maintain that a transformation to full personhood happens abruptly at the moment of birth. Why, then, should it be murder to kill an infant the day after it was born but not the day before?

As a practical matter, this isn’t very important: Less than 1 percent of all tabulated abortions in the United States are listed in the last three months of pregnancy (and, on closer investigation, most such reports turn out to be due to miscarriage or miscalculation). But third-trimester abortions provide a test of the limits of the pro-choice point of view. Does a woman’s “innate right to control her own body” encompass the right to kill a near-term fetus who is, for all intents and purposes, identical to a newborn child?

Carl Sagan recognizes that an unborn baby logically does belong to human race it seems. It comes down to if we respect human life or not.

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Child abuse has been rising dramatically in the last forty years.

In 1972 there were 60,000 reported child-abuse incidents in the U.S.  In
1976, the number had soared to over 500,000!  Child Abuse is now the fifth most frequent cause of death among children.  (Francis Shaeffer and Dr.  C.  Everett Koop, “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?”, Crossway Books, Westchester, IL.)

In the film and book Whatever Happened to the Human Race? you will see Dr. C. Everett Koop make this comment (in 1979):

There are those who try and justify abortions by saying that abortions get rid of unwanted children and therefore will cut down on child abuse, but consider this, since 1973 there have been 6 million abortions in the USA and there are therefore 6 million fewer children than there would have been without the liberal abortion ruling and yet child abuse has increased in incidents year by year from that date.

Related posts:

Taking on Ark Times Bloggers on various issues Part F “Carl Sagan’s views on how God should try and contact us” includes film “The Basis for Human Dignity”

April 8, 2013 – 7:07 am

I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control  and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)

Carl Sagan v. Nancy Pearcey

March 18, 2013 – 9:11 am

On March 17, 2013 at our worship service at Fellowship Bible Church, Ben Parkinson who is one of our teaching pastors spoke on Genesis 1. He spoke about an issue that I was very interested in. Ben started the sermon by reading the following scripture: Genesis 1-2:3 English Standard Version (ESV) The Creation of the […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Atheists Confronted, Current Events | TaggedBen Parkinson, Carl Sagan | Edit | Comments (0)

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 4 of series on Evolution)

May 24, 2012 – 1:47 am

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 4 of series on Evolution) The Long War against God-Henry Morris, part 5 of 6 Uploaded by FLIPWORLDUPSIDEDOWN3 on Aug 30, 2010 http://www.icr.org/ http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWA2http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWASGhttp://www.fliptheworldupsidedown.com/blog _______________________ I got this from a blogger in April of 2008 concerning candidate Obama’s view on evolution: Q: York County was recently in the news […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted, Current Events, President Obama | Edit| Comments (0)

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 3 of series on Evolution)

May 23, 2012 – 1:43 am

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 3 of series on Evolution) The Long War against God-Henry Morris, part 4 of 6 Uploaded by FLIPWORLDUPSIDEDOWN3 on Aug 30, 2010 http://www.icr.org/ http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWA2http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWASGhttp://www.fliptheworldupsidedown.com/blog______________________________________ I got this from a blogger in April of 2008 concerning candidate Obama’s view on evolution: Q: York County was recently in the news […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted, Current Events, President Obama | Edit| Comments (0)

Carl Sagan versus RC Sproul

January 9, 2012 – 2:44 pm

At the end of this post is a message by RC Sproul in which he discusses Sagan. Over the years I have confronted many atheists. Here is one story below: I really believe Hebrews 4:12 when it asserts: For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Atheists Confronted, Current Events, Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Bill Elliff, Carl Sagan, Jodie Foster, RC Sproul | Edit | Comments (0)

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 4 of series on Evolution)jh68

November 8, 2011 – 12:01 am

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 4 of series on Evolution) The Long War against God-Henry Morris, part 5 of 6 Uploaded by FLIPWORLDUPSIDEDOWN3 on Aug 30, 2010 http://www.icr.org/ http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWA2http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWASGhttp://www.fliptheworldupsidedown.com/blog _______________________ This is a review I did a few years ago. THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 3 of series on Evolution)

November 4, 2011 – 12:57 am

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 3 of series on Evolution) The Long War against God-Henry Morris, part 4 of 6 Uploaded by FLIPWORLDUPSIDEDOWN3 on Aug 30, 2010 http://www.icr.org/ http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWA2http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWASGhttp://www.fliptheworldupsidedown.com/blog______________________________________ I was really enjoyed this review of Carl Sagan’s book “Pale Blue Dot.” Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot by Larry Vardiman, Ph.D. […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Atheists confronted: How I confronted Carl Sagan the year before he died jh47

May 19, 2011 – 10:30 am

In today’s news you will read about Kirk Cameron taking on the atheist Stephen Hawking over some recent assertions he made concerning the existence of heaven. Back in December of 1995 I had the opportunity to correspond with Carl Sagan about a year before his untimely death. Sarah Anne Hughes in her article,”Kirk Cameron criticizes […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted | Edit | Comments (2)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 18 “Michelangelo’s DAVID is the statement of what humanistic man saw himself as being tomorrow” (Feature on artist Paul McCarthy)

April 25, 2014 – 8:26 am

In this post we are going to see that through the years  humanist thought has encouraged artists like Michelangelo to think that the future was extremely bright versus the place today where many artist who hold the humanist and secular worldview are very pessimistic.   In contrast to Michelangelo’s DAVID when humanist man thought he […]

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Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 1 | Abortion of the Human…

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

___________

Carl Sagan pictured below:

Carl Sagan pictured below:

I

Carl Sagan pictured below:

_________

Recently I have been revisiting my correspondence in 1995 with the famous astronomer Carl Sagan who I was introduced to when reading a book by Francis Schaeffer called HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT written in 1968.

Francis Schaeffer

I was blessed with the opportunity to correspond with Dr. Sagan, and in his December 5, 1995 letter Dr. Sagan went on to tell me that he was enclosing his article “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. I am going to respond to several points made in that article. Here is a portion of Sagan’s article (here is a link to the whole article):

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 “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”

by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan

For the complete text, including illustrations, introductory quote, footnotes, and commentary on the reaction to the originally published article see Billions and Billions.

The issue had been decided years ago. The court had chosen the middle ground. You’d think the fight was over. Instead, there are mass rallies, bombings and intimidation, murders of workers at abortion clinics, arrests, intense lobbying, legislative drama, Congressional hearings, Supreme Court decisions, major political parties almost defining themselves on the issue, and clerics threatening politicians with perdition. Partisans fling accusations of hypocrisy and murder. The intent of the Constitution and the will of God are equally invoked. Doubtful arguments are trotted out as certitudes. The contending factions call on science to bolster their positions. Families are divided, husbands and wives agree not to discuss it, old friends are no longer speaking. Politicians check the latest polls to discover the dictates of their consciences. Amid all the shouting, it is hard for the adversaries to hear one another. Opinions are polarized. Minds are closed..

—

Sometimes people want to separate reality from their political and social views. Many liberals I have talked to refuse to admit that there is a notable size of Muslims who actually believe in Jihad. It is true that in the ancient history of Christianity there were religious wars, but today the murders by religious zealots are done primarily by Muslims.

In the movie Contact we see Carl Sagan’s view that radical Christian zealots are willing to attack peace-loving people.

I think that Carl Sagan sees himself as a real-life Dr. Eleanor Arroway. He sees himself as one independent thinker amongst a sea of religious/militaristic/governmental zombies. He is Jodi Foster, sitting there in front of a board of interviewers, battling that scourge called “religion” that oppresses ninety-something percent of the world. Much like Jodi Foster, Sagan is determined to prove that wormholes and aliens exist, which will, in turn, prove that God does not exist. Step aside you bomb-strapped Jesus freaks! Step aside you closed minded military guys who wants to nuke the world… make way for progress! Make way for Science!

(beware of this man)

_

Seriously, though, Sagan must have had a few disenchanting experiences with religion, probably some sect of Christianity. The same is probably true of Jodi Foster as well, or else she would not have taken that role.

In his review of Contact evangelical Ray Bohline notes:

Two other characters in the film outline Sagan’s view of the modern evangelical right. The long-haired preaching zealot is portrayed as a dangerous man, out of control and out of touch with reality. He later borrows a trick from Muslim fundamentalists by sacrificing himself in an attempt to derail the multinational project to build the travel machine.

Sam Harris rightly noted earlier on Bill Maher’s show that liberals are still getting “agitated over the abortion clinic bombings that happened in 1984” but they are not upset at what is happening in the Muslim world right now!!!! There is really no comparison at all between Christianity and Islam concerning the areas of freedom of religion, freedom of the press and political freedom.

I was saddened to learn of the passing of Dr. Nicolaas Bloembergen on September 5, 2017. I always enjoyed corresponding with him during the last three decades. He brought up the issue of Religious wars to me in 1995 which I responded to him back then, and also he discussed the issue of abortion with me. I also took the time to write him back concerning that issue too.  Then on July 1, 2016, I was honored to get a call from Dr. Bloembergen, and we discussed several issues such as his abandonment of his childhood faith that he was brought up in, and I mentioned that Charles Darwin had gone through a similar situation. He seemed to know a lot about Darwin’s background.

On July 3, 2016, I responded to our phone call with an email that basically recapped several things that Dr. Bloembergen and I had discussed in our phone discussion 2 days before. I pointed out to him on the phone that day that each religion was different and that in recent history it was Islam fanatics that were guilty of so much killing, and Dr Bloembergen seemed to resist that by saying that Muslims are not getting treated very well.I addressed this in my email of July 3rd that is posted below. So far in 2017 there are have been 1,049 attacks and 6,571 fatalities by Muslim radicals. In fact, on October 31, 2017, Eight people are killed and almost a dozen injured when a 29-year-old man in a rented pickup truck drives down a busy bicycle path near the World Trade Center in New York. The suspect has been identified as Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov. Authorities found a note near the truck used in the incident, claiming the attack was made in the name of ISIS, a senior law enforcement official said.

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Also CNN Reported: 

Terrorist Attacks by Vehicle Fast Facts

Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch encouraged its Western recruits to use trucks as weapons. A 2010 webzine article, “The Ultimate Mowing Machine” called for deploying a pickup truck as a“mowing machine, not to mow grass but mow down the enemies of Allah.”In September 2014, ISIS spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani called for lone wolf attacks using improvised weaponry, “If you are not able to find an IED or a bullet, then single out the disbelieving American, Frenchman or any of their allies. Smash his head with a rock or slaughter him with a knife or run him over with your car or throw him down from a high place or choke him or poison him.”Timeline:
March 3, 2006 – Mohammed Taheri-azar, an Iranian-American, drives an SUV into an area crowded with students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Nine people sustain minor injuries during the attack, which Teheri-azar later says is retribution for the killing of Muslims overseas. He is convicted of attempted murder in 2008 and is sentenced to 33 years in prison.October 22, 2014 – A three-month old girl and an Ecuadorian tourist are killed when a driver swerves into a crowd at a light rail station in Jerusalem. The driver, Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi is shot and killed by police. Israeli media reported he published militant writing on Facebook and supported Hamas, a fundamentalist Islamic group that has conducted attacks in Gaza and the West Bank, but his family denied he supported Hamas or any terror organization.July 14, 2016 – After a Bastille Day fireworks display in Nice, France, a man drives a 20-ton rental truck into the crowd, striking and killing 86 people. The attacker, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31, a Tunisian national, drives nearly a mile on the beachfront promenade before he is shot and killed by authorities. French officials say Bouhlel seemed to become radicalized “very quickly” by ISIS propaganda before the attack. He also suffered from mental illness, according to his father.November 28, 2016 –At Ohio State University, 11 people are injured when a student, Abdul Razak Ali Artan, 18, carries out a car and knife attack. A campus police officer shoots and kills Artan, whom police believe inspired by ISIS and the radical cleric, Anwar al-AwlakiDecember 19, 2016 – A Tunisian man drives a tractor trailer into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people. In the wake of the attack, authorities conduct a manhunt for Anis Amri, 24, throughout Europe. He is shot and killed by police in Milan, Italy, four days after the attack. Hours after Amri dies, ISIS releases a video of him pledging allegiance to the terrorist group.March 22, 2017 – A man drives an SUV into a crowd on the sidewalk along the Westminster Bridge in London, killing at least four. After ramming the car into a barrier outside the House of Parliament, the driver exits the vehicle and stabs a police officer to death. The attacker is then gunned down by a police officer. The assailant, Khalid Masood, 52, of West Midlands, reportedly had a criminal record and may have had connections to violent extremism, British Prime Minister Theresa May says.April 7, 2017 – At least four people are killed when a truck drives into pedestrians on a busy street in the center of Stockholm, Sweden, before crashing into a department store. The attacker, Rakhmat Akilov, a 39-year-old from Uzbekistan, admitted to carrying out a “terrorist crime,” his lawyer says.June 3, 2017 – Seven people are killed in two terror attacks in central London before police shoot three suspects dead, the Metropolitan police say. The violence begins when a van swerves into throngs of pedestrians on London Bridge. The suspects then jump out the van and proceed on foot to nearby Borough Market, a popular nightlife spot, where witnesses say they produce knives and slash indiscriminately at people in restaurants and bars. At least 48 people are taken to hospitals, according to the London Ambulance Service. Authorities announce 12 arrests the next day.June 19, 2017 – Just after midnight, a van plows into a group of pedestrians who had attended late-night prayers at London’s Finsbury Park Mosque, killing one man and injuring 11 people. The driver is arrested at the scene for attempted murder and further held on suspicion of terrorism offenses. The suspect is later identified as Darren Osborne, 47, a resident of Cardiff in Wales, according to multiple UK media outlets.August 16-18, 2017 –At least 13 people are killed and about 100 are injured on August 17th after a van plows through a crowd of people in a popular tourist district in Barcelona, Spain. Two suspects are arrested, but the driver gets away, according to police. ISIS’ media wing, Amaq, issues a statement claiming responsibility, saying that the attackers are “soldiers of the Islamic State.” On August 18th, in Cambrils, a coastal city around 100 kilometers from Barcelona, five attackers drive an Audi A3 into several pedestrians, killing one. The attackers are shot and killed by police. A house explosion on August 16th, in Alcanar, south of Barcelona, is also believed to be connected to the attacks.September 30-October 1, 2017 – On September 30 in Edmonton, Canada, a man purposely strikes a police officer with a white Chevrolet Malibu before jumping out of the vehicle, stabbing the officer several times with a knife and fleeing on foot. There is an ISIS flag in the car, which is later seized as evidence. Just before midnight that same day, a police officer stops a U-Haul truck at a checkpoint and recognizes the driver’s name as similar to that of the Chevrolet’s registered owner. The U-Haul truck then speeds off towards downtown Edmonton. During the chase, the truck deliberately attempts to hit pedestrians in crosswalks and alleys, injuring at least four pedestrians. Abdulahi Hasan Sharif, 30, a Somali refugee, is later charged with five counts of attempted murder, dangerous driving, criminal flight causing bodily harm and possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose.October 31, 2017 – Eight people are killed and almost a dozen injured when a 29-year-old man in a rented pickup truck drives down a busy bicycle path near the World Trade Center in New York. The suspect has been identified as Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov. Authorities found a note near the truck used in the incident, claiming the attack was made in the name of ISIS, a senior law enforcement official said

I wanted to share with you a correspondence I had with Dr. Nicolaas Bloembergen of Harvard. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1981 and was born in Dordrecht, the Netherlands on March 11, 1920. He spent the last two years of World War II hiding from the Nazis. I found his story very interesting.

In his September 6, 1995 letter to me he wrote:

Less zealotry and more compassion for those who have different concepts of the world from yours would help make this world more livable.

I RESPONDED IN AN EARLIER POST WITH WHAT I RESPONDED WITH IN 1995. Below are some more thoughts on this issue.Is religion the cause of most wars? March 28, 2016, by Laneatheism, Religion, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, wars 0 Comment

Is religion the cause of most wars? Well, according to Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, avowed proponents of the New Atheism (nothing new about the substance, just voiced in a new and vitriolic tone), the answer is yes, religion is the cause of most wars. Harris states that religion is, “the most prolific source of violence in our history” (The End of Faith page 27). Not to be outdone, Richard Dawkins offers the claim that, “There’s no doubt that throughout history religious faith has been a major motivator for war and for destruction.” When one hears such ‘truth’ claims being propounded, a simple, but yet, the profound question must be asked, “is that true?” Sad to say, most people don’t take the time to ask this simple three-word question when hearing such supposed truth claims.

I thought it would be interesting to take Harris and Dawkins’ claims, and ask the question, “but is that true?” and then follow the evidence where it leads. The following are a list of facts (not rhetoric) that help to bring Harris and Dawkins supposed truth claim out of the darkness and into the light:

 In 5 millennia worth of wars—1,763 total—only 123 (or about 7%) were religious in nature (according to author Vox Day in the book The Irrational Atheist).  If you remove the 66 wars waged in the name of Islam, it cuts the number down to a little more than 3%.  A second scholarly source, The Encyclopedia of War edited by Gordon Martel, confirms this data, concluding that only 6% of the wars listed in its pages can be labeled religious wars.  William Cavanaugh’s book, The Myth of Religious Violence, exposes the “wars of religion” claim.  a recent report (2014) from the Institute for Economics and Peace further debunks this myth.  A strong case can be made that atheism, not religion, and certainly not Christianity, is responsible for a far greater degree of bloodshed. Indeed, R.J. Rummel’s work in Lethal Politics and Death by Government has the secular body count at more than 100 million…in the 20th century alone.

Atheist and anthropologist, Scot Atran, in his book, God and the Ivory Tower, offers the following summary on the issue, “Moreover, the chief complaint against religion—that it is history’s prime instigator of intergroup conflict—does not withstand scrutiny. Religions issues motivate only a small minority of recorded wars. The Encyclopedia of Wars surveyed 1,763 violent conflicts across history; only 123 (7 percent) were religious. A BBC-sponsored “God & War” audit, which evaluated major conflicts over 3,500 years and rated them on a 0-5 scale for religious motivation (Punic Wars=0 Crusades=5), found that more than 60% had no religious motivation. Less than 7% earned a rating greater than 3. There was little religious motivation for the internecine Russian and Chinese conflicts or the world wars responsible for history’s most lethal century of international bloodshed.”

The conclusion: between 6-7% of all wars have been religious in nature. (the Islamic dynamic set aside) When you consider that the body count that has been tallied in the 20th century under atheist/naturalist/Darwinian evolution promoting governments has come to over 100 million, one has to ask, “what ideology is truly the driving force behind the vast majority of wars waged by humanity?” The evidence does seem somewhat conclusive, doesn’t it?

There is no arguing that religion has been the cause of war and violence on occasion, but it is a gross overstatement, exaggeration and distortion of the facts to say that “the most prolific source of violence in our history” has been “religious faith.” Obviously, Harris and Dawkins are not historians, nor have they consulted the experts in the field of history.

The Bible is specific as to the cause of war, that of the “lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life,” which James sums up in his epistle: “From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.” James 4:1-3

Jesus gave us the antidote to lust, and as such, wars: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:38-45 ESV)

Religion & War–Dr. Ravi Zacharias New Atheist proponents often condemn and points the finger at religion for the suffering of the earth, and in particular, as being the cause of most of the wars and suffering that results. Ravi Zacharias deals with this alleged truth claim head-on in the following video clip.

Related posts:

Taking on Ark Times Bloggers on various issues Part F “Carl Sagan’s views on how God should try and contact us” includes film “The Basis for Human Dignity”

April 8, 2013 – 7:07 am

I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control  and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)

Carl Sagan v. Nancy Pearcey

March 18, 2013 – 9:11 am

On March 17, 2013 at our worship service at Fellowship Bible Church, Ben Parkinson who is one of our teaching pastors spoke on Genesis 1. He spoke about an issue that I was very interested in. Ben started the sermon by reading the following scripture: Genesis 1-2:3 English Standard Version (ESV) The Creation of the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Atheists Confronted, Current Events | TaggedBen Parkinson, Carl Sagan | Edit | Comments (0)

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 4 of series on Evolution)

May 24, 2012 – 1:47 am

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 4 of series on Evolution) The Long War against God-Henry Morris, part 5 of 6 Uploaded by FLIPWORLDUPSIDEDOWN3 on Aug 30, 2010 http://www.icr.org/ http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWA2http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWASGhttp://www.fliptheworldupsidedown.com/blog _______________________ I got this from a blogger in April of 2008 concerning candidate Obama’s view on evolution: Q: York County was recently in the news […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted, Current Events, President Obama | Edit| Comments (0)

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 3 of series on Evolution)

May 23, 2012 – 1:43 am

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 3 of series on Evolution) The Long War against God-Henry Morris, part 4 of 6 Uploaded by FLIPWORLDUPSIDEDOWN3 on Aug 30, 2010 http://www.icr.org/ http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWA2http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWASGhttp://www.fliptheworldupsidedown.com/blog______________________________________ I got this from a blogger in April of 2008 concerning candidate Obama’s view on evolution: Q: York County was recently in the news […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted, Current Events, President Obama | Edit| Comments (0)

Carl Sagan versus RC Sproul

January 9, 2012 – 2:44 pm

At the end of this post is a message by RC Sproul in which he discusses Sagan. Over the years I have confronted many atheists. Here is one story below: I really believe Hebrews 4:12 when it asserts: For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Atheists Confronted, Current Events, Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Bill Elliff, Carl Sagan, Jodie Foster, RC Sproul | Edit | Comments (0)

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 4 of series on Evolution)jh68

November 8, 2011 – 12:01 am

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 4 of series on Evolution) The Long War against God-Henry Morris, part 5 of 6 Uploaded by FLIPWORLDUPSIDEDOWN3 on Aug 30, 2010 http://www.icr.org/ http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWA2http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWASGhttp://www.fliptheworldupsidedown.com/blog _______________________ This is a review I did a few years ago. THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 3 of series on Evolution)

November 4, 2011 – 12:57 am

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 3 of series on Evolution) The Long War against God-Henry Morris, part 4 of 6 Uploaded by FLIPWORLDUPSIDEDOWN3 on Aug 30, 2010 http://www.icr.org/ http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWA2http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWASGhttp://www.fliptheworldupsidedown.com/blog______________________________________ I was really enjoyed this review of Carl Sagan’s book “Pale Blue Dot.” Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot by Larry Vardiman, Ph.D. […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Atheists confronted: How I confronted Carl Sagan the year before he died jh47

May 19, 2011 – 10:30 am

In today’s news you will read about Kirk Cameron taking on the atheist Stephen Hawking over some recent assertions he made concerning the existence of heaven. Back in December of 1995 I had the opportunity to correspond with Carl Sagan about a year before his untimely death. Sarah Anne Hughes in her article,”Kirk Cameron criticizes […]

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Francis and Edith Schaeffer pictured below

Recently I have been revisiting my correspondence in 1995 with the famous astronomer Carl Sagan who I was introduced to when reading a book by Francis Schaeffer called HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT written in 1968.

It took me over 20 years to figure out why Carl Sagan wrote these following words to me:

But if you think God is necessary to understand the world, then why do you not ask the next question of where God came from? And if you say “God was always here,” why not say that the universe was always here? 

I had sent many articles to Carl Sagan but it wasn’t until today that I identified which one prompted Sagan to ask me this question. It must have been because Sagan was responding to these words below from the article by Greg Koukl “Sagan and Scientism,” that I sent him in 1994:

For hundreds of years, since the time of Kant, there has been an aggressive effort by scientists to prove and demonstrate that the universe is infinite. Part of the reason for that is that if the universe if infinite then they don’t have to acknowledge a creator.

It may be a little hard to explain this but simply put, if there is an infinite series of events like there would have to be in the universe if it was infinitely old, it would be akin to trying to start this process to trying to jump off an infinitely high building into an infinitely bottomless pit. The point is that there would be no place for you to even think about jumping because any place you would jump would be a type of terminus, a type of beginning and then it would not be infinite. Any point of departure would be a beginning. So there are serious problems with there even being an infinite chain of events like that or the material order of the universe being infinite…It’s kind of like if you were in the process of an infinite chain of events, if you tried to move forward in those events, one step forward would flip you one step backwards into eternity and you would never make any progress. There can’t be an actual infinite like in the universe. These are very strong arguments against the universe being infinite and if scientists would have taken this into consideration they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble. It took them 150 years to finally come to the conclusion that there is no infinite universe, something philosophers could have told them for very good reasons a long time before that.

On Dec 5, 1995 Carl Sagan while suffering from cancer took time to finally answer the 4 letters I had written to him up to that point.(I don’t know if he ever listened to the tapes I had sent him.) in one of the letters I included the article “Sagan and Scientism” by Greg Koukl. Here is his response: 

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.You argue that God exists because otherwise we could not understand the world in our consciousness. But if you think God is necessary to understand the world, then why do you not ask the next question of where God came from? And if you say “God was always here,” why not say that the universe was always here? On abortion, my views are contained in the enclosed article (Sagan, Carl and Ann Druyan {1990}, “The Question of Abortion,” Parade Magazine, April 22.)

I responded with a two page letter on Jan 10, 1996 and I never heard back again from Dr. Sagan and he died on Dec 20, 1996. His wife Ann Druyan reported that many people of faith reached out to Sagan in last few months of his life, but he never left his agnosticism.

Below is the article by Greg Koukl in its entirety.

Sagan and Scientism

Greg Koukl

When science reasons it reasons inductively and it reasons basically the same way as we would reason about the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I saw the Daily Breeze “Parade” and on the cover of the magazine is a picture of Carl Sagan and Anne Druyan. Carl Sagan you know, of course, is of the “billions and billions” fame talking about the cosmos. He has written a new book with Druyan called Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors . When you turn the page there’s a picture of a chimpanzee. And the title of this excerpt is called “What Makes Us Different?” It’s really phenomenal reading through this piece and you will do yourself a favor in doing that.

What’s phenomenal in one way is the timing of this because this relates very closely to things we talked about yesterday and have been talking about the last couple of weeks in a couple of different ways. Most obviously the questions that have been raised about the nature of the human soul over the last couple of weeks and also Dr. Moreland’s remarks yesterday as we talked about his book Immortality and the Existence of the Soul. And not only that, but some comments I made a couple of weeks ago on the problem of the death of humanness and the trend, the philosophical trend that is happening in this country that is dehumanizing man. In other words, when asked the question “What does is mean to be human?” the answer increasingly is that it means absolutely nothing at all.

The profound significance of this particular article, and I guess of the book that this article is a portion of by Carl Sagan and Anne Druyan, is that they not only come to the same conclusion that there is no fundamental difference between men and animals qualitatively only quantitatively–and I’ll get into that in a moment–but that they are making these pronouncements with the white coat on, so to speak, as the high priests of the new religion which is scientism. He is making a fundamental statement of truth about the nature of humanity. If that truth is believed then it has radical ramifications for a great variety of different issues in our culture, all that have to do with the nature of humanness at its very core.

I want to speak to this issue in a little more detail and talk about Carl Sagan’s presuppositions and his viewpoint about science. I can’t speak to the whole article, it’s too long, there’s a lot in there. I think those who have been listening to this show for any length of time have been gaining some tools I hope that will allow you to look at this article from a different light and to understand what is being said and why some of the things being alleged are not sound. I would invite you to get a hold of the article and peruse it.

Let me read how this starts. “What does it mean to be human? This question and an attempt to find an answer permeates and propels the important new work Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Carl Sagan and Anne Druyan.” Apparently published by Raymond House. “Pulling together a vast body of scientific information to trace the origins and evolution of life on earth, the authors address some of the fundamental questions of life itself. In this excerpt they examine the behavior of other animals and measure it against human ability.”

Carl Sagan then asks the question, “Why are we so different from animals? Or are we? Most of the philosophers,” and here’s the key paragraph for our discussion, “conventionally judged great thought that humans are fundamentally different from other animals because of an immaterial ‘something’ for which no scientific evidence has been produced, that resides somewhere in the body of humans and in no one else on earth. Only a few argue, as Charles Darwin did, that the differences between our species and others are only difference of degree.” He goes on then to argue that, in fact, the differences in our species are only differences in degree. Charles Darwin was right and the philosophers who speculated on some immaterial human force that resided in the body were wrong.

But why does he say they’re wrong? He says they’re wrong because science has not produced any evidence that justifies a belief in the soul. There are two questions that I have to ask regarding that statement because it underlies the rest of the article and quite possibly the rest of the book. Sagan is trying to be rigidly scientific in his analysis and he’s saying if we come up with truth in science then we have to accept that truth because it’s the prevailing truth and, even if it has unpleasant implications for the areas of morals and ethics and human value and the like, we still have to face up to the truth.

It assumes a couple of things. First of all, his comments and analysis assumes that science tells us true things. In other words, whatever science says is true. It corresponds to the world as it really is. And the second thing suggests that science is the only thing that gives us truth. Ergo his statement regarding the soul, this immaterial something, because scientific evidence has not been produced to demonstrate that.

Let me take the first point. Does science tell us true things? Now many people presume that that’s the case. I am not suggesting that a person cannot come to a reasonable assessment of something being true by using science. But the implication is that science, because of the scientific method, somehow refines information to a point and focuses it such that we can look at that point and say that this is something that is true and will not change.

You need to understand that there is a tremendous amount of debate within the area of philosophy of science, and it is philosophy of science that asks these kinds of questions, not science. Scientists don’t ask the question “What is science about and what can science do?” It is a second order discipline of philosophy of science that asks these questions. In the area of philosophy of science there’s a tremendous amount of debate as to whether science does tell us true things. As a matter of fact there’s a lot of debate as to whether science is one particular thing at all. Does the scientific method actually exist? And very trenchant arguments have been offered to demonstrate that the scientific method per se, or some particular methodology necessarily that identifies something as scientific, simply does not exist. Instead, what we have is a constellation of procedures and disciplines that when worked together and used inductively can help us to come to some reasonable understanding of truth. Those understandings may be wrong. They are not absolute. But they represent evidence that brings us to a reasonable conclusion.

As a matter of fact, when you look at the history of science it is really a history of replacement of scientific views rather than confirmation. Just a cursory look at the history of science shows that to be true. It seems like it’s not unusual at all to pick up your paper and find that what scientists believed at one time they now believe something entirely different. So if we look at the history of science it doesn’t demonstrate that what science has always presented to us is absolutely true because what science believes is continually changing. That’s one point.

I will make the point that when science reasons it reasons inductively and it reasons basically the same way as we would reason about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It brings different pieces of information to bear on a particular point and if the information is valid then the point is valid. But it’s the same procedure that we use to discuss lots of different things and there’s nothing sacrosanct about the so-called “scientific method” in itself. So don’t fall for the illusion that there is something inerrant about the scientific method and scientific ability at arriving at truth because it is not inerrant at all and there’s a tremendous amount of debate in the area of philosophy of science as to what exactly science can accomplish for us.

So for Carl Sagan, for example, to say with impunity that there must not be a soul because science has not demonstrated any proof for it and come to his other conclusions is a little bit overreaching his bounds in the terms of the limitations of science.

The second point is this, not only is there some question that science always tells us true things, but the second question and implication of his statements is that science is the only thing that gives us truth. People have suggested that there is a soul, philosophers have talked about that. Our conversation yesterday was a philosophical one about the existence of the soul. But then Carl Sagan says that this is something for which no scientific evidence has been produced. The implication is that if there is no scientific evidence then it’s not something worthy of being believed.

Now this notion that only the physical world exists–in our case only the brain exists in regards to personhood, there are no unseen vital forces–is kind of a kid sister to the concept of scientism. Scientism states this: only that which can be proved by science is true. Science can only prove things about the physical world, therefore if it doesn’t prove something about the nonphysical world, which it’s really not equipped to do, then the only rational belief is that only physical things exist and non-physical things like the mind or the soul don’t exist. That is the doctrine of scientism and let me give you two thoughts on that. (Everything is coming in twos here today.)

With regards to his statement that scientific evidence is the thing that really makes something true or not, which is the heart and soul of the concept of scientism, I just learned a little earlier talking to Dr. Moreland that science has after a fashion demonstrated the soul. It doesn’t have a tremendous amount of evidence there but this is an interesting thing to ponder. When the brains of some people are opened they can touch the brain with electrodes to stimulate different memories and the like. This is why some people have argued that memories are merely a chemical kind of response and don’t have any relationship to a self, a separate soul, a person other than the brain. But when scientists have stimulated part of the brain and the patient is conscious, the patient can actually tell whether a memory is being stimulated by the scientist or whether the memory is being brought forward out of their own consciousness. They say, “Hey, you did that. I didn’t.”

This makes a very powerful point. “You stimulated that memory, I didn’t.” Who’s the “I?” The “I” was the person inside there, the “I” is the soul. So there’s a distinction between a chemical response that produces a memory and a volitional response that produces a memory. So it is not entirely true that there is not scientific evidence for the existence of the soul because there is some.

But there’s another point that’s actually quite a bit more important. That’s the fundamental point of whether science is the only road to truth. And there are actually three different ways to refute that. And it’s very straight forward. You can almost sum them up under one concept. The idea is that if science is the only way to truth then science itself is self-refuting because science is built on a series of truths that cannot be demonstrated by science but must be in place even for science to be valid.

For example, is orderliness in the universe an illusion or is that real? Is the external world knowable at all? Are the intellect and the five senses reliable tools to examine the world? Are values like “be objective” or “report data honestly” appropriate in the scientific endeavor? Is nature basically uniform? Do numbers in truth exist? Do the laws of logic apply to reality? All of these things are non-scientific questions but they relate to the issue of truth that must necessarily be in place for science even to be practiced.

So the point I’m making is that if you hold the belief that science is the only thing that is a measure of truth, then science is in hot water because science can’t justify itself. Science is not the sole arbiter of truth. Ethics is another source of truthful information. Philosophy is another source of truthful information. History…Do you know that even mathematics is not scientific? Math is used in science, it underlies science, but you cannot prove math scientifically. So the point is this, its an empty claim by Dr. Sagan that the soul can’t exist because no scientific evidence has been produced to support the idea that there is a soul. There can be other kinds of evidence that are not merely scientific yet be very valid.

What’s really amazing, my friends, is that these things I’m telling you are not new. These are things that have been hashed out by great thinkers for a long time. These are very sound and powerful conclusions that philosophers of science have arrived at when discussing the nature of science. What is unfortunate is that this discussion has by and large been missed by the population and this allows people like Carl Sagan, who should know better, to make statements like he has in this article and book. It’s misleading about the nature of science but people believe it. This is one unfortunate thing about the treatment of scientific issues because people simply aren’t honest about the philosophic issues behind the science. I don’t know if Carl Sagan is trying to mislead here or he doesn’t accept the arguments in the philosophy of science or maybe he just doesn’t know them. Scientists characteristically are not specialists in trying to tell you what science is, they just do it.

I’ll give you one example of what I was talking about with scientism and whether there are other sources of truth outside of science. For hundreds of years, since the time of Kant, there has been an aggressive effort by scientists to prove and demonstrate that the universe is infinite. Part of the reason for that is that if the universe if infinite then they don’t have to acknowledge a creator. This is a self-conscious enterprise, by the way. I’m not reading in motives that aren’t there. These people were aware of what they were doing so much so that at one point even Albert Einstein suggested a universal constant which was completely invented because what he’d been doing up to that time seemed to indicate without any doubt that the universe had a beginning. He introduced this thing that didn’t exist to change his equations to imply that the universe had no beginning at all and was infinite. He later said that that was the worst mistake of his career and abandoned it. Now we all know that the universe had a beginning and that’s what the whole Big Bang is about. I want to make the point that for a hundred years or so there was a strong effort to try to demonstrate that the universe was infinite.

A point that Dr. Moreland made yesterday from a philosophic perspective is really helpful in dealing with this particular issue. There may be things like possible infinites. We think about the numbers that could be infinite. But whether there’s an actual infinite or not is another problem. Can we actually count an actual infinite amount of numbers? Or could there be an infinite amount of time in which matter existed? And Dr. Moreland argued yesterday that was not possible.

It may be a little hard to explain this but simply put, if there is an infinite series of events like there would have to be in the universe if it was infinitely old, it would be akin to trying to start this process to trying to jump off an infinitely high building into an infinitely bottomless pit. The point is that there would be no place for you to even think about jumping because any place you would jump would be a type of terminus, a type of beginning and then it would not be infinite. Any point of departure would be a beginning. So there are serious problems with there even being an infinite chain of events like that or the material order of the universe being infinite.

It’s kind of like if you were in the process of an infinite chain of events, if you tried to move forward in those events, one step forward would flip you one step backwards into eternity and you would never make any progress. There can’t be an actual infinite like in the universe. These are very strong arguments against the universe being infinite and if scientists would have taken this into consideration they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble. It took them 150 years to finally come to the conclusion that there is no infinite universe, something philosophers could have told them for very good reasons a long time before that.

One other thought about Carl Sagan and the application he argues in this piece. It has to do with the difference between man and animals qualitatively. He suggests there is no difference and he makes an argument for animal rights. If man is just a highly developed animal and there is no substantial qualitative difference then animals should have the same rights as humans. Now this you might think would be good because it elevates animals to the level of human. But I want to tell you something, it does not work that way. The other way of saying it is that human have no more rights than animals. So this would not be the ascent of animal rights. It would be the descent and the destruction of human rights.

There’s a very important reason why this is the case. It’s because one always needs to ask the question if one has the right to something else, where do these rights come from? A right is a just claim to something. To suggest that a person has a just claim to something he must make a reference to some standard of justice. Justice is an appeal to a higher authority of some sort. If animals and man are the same and there is just the physical world, it’s fruitless to appeal to any higher order of justice that transcends the physical world that then would give us rights. If we are just merely animals, then nothing would have any rights because there is no transcendent standard that anyone can appeal to in order to justify their right claims. Logic requires them to absolutely abandon the concept of rights.

What’s ironic in this whole discussion is the analysis for man and what ends up happening here. Man become merely material. He becomes a determined individual caught in the flow of cause and effect. As Dr. Francis Schaeffer put it, man becomes “cosmic junk.” The modern analysis of man takes one of two extreme positions. Either man is god, which is the New Age way of looking at things, or man is an animal, he is cosmic junk. In other words, he is everything or he is nothing. The Christian message puts man rights in the middle. He has transcendent value but he is not God Himself.

Francis Schaeffer pictured below:

Anyway that’s some thoughts on Carl Sagan. I encourage you to take a look at the article, especially in light of our recent conversations.ARTICLE | TOPICSAPOLOGETICSSCIENCE

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The First And Primary Cause

Christian apologists—defenders of the Christian faith—have used a number of arguments in order to demonstrate the ra-tionality of belief in God. One of the most popular of these is the cosmological argument, which defends the existence of God on the basis of cause and effect. Since every effect must have a cause, there must be one cause that started everything. One eternally exist-ing cause set everything in motion, creating effects that then caused other effects that then caused other effects and so on. This eternally existing cause is God.

We have already seen that chance cannot be this cause because chance has no causal power. The universe’s self-creation is likewise impossible because something cannot come from nothing. Confront-ed by this dilemma, some have persisted in denying the existence of God by denying the reality of cause and effect itself.

The work of philosopher David Hume is often cited to justify the denial of cause and effect. Hume used the illustration of the pool table to argue that we cannot know for certain which causes produce which effects. Although we strike a cue ball with a pool stick, he said, we cannot prove that the striking of the ball with the stick makes the ball move. All we have seen for certain is a relationship of contiguity—a relationship where one event follows after another. We may assume that the stick made the ball move, but we cannot be certain of that. It could be that an unseen force actually caused the movement. Hume’s thinking here can lead to a radical skepticism, and as Christians we say that the unseen force of God’s decree, the pool stick, the player’s movement of the stick, and perhaps something else all made the ball move. In any case, Hume was not denying cause and effect outright; he just believed we cannot identify causes with certainty.

The law of causality is one of those axioms that is indisputable. Every effect must have a cause, for an effect, by definition, is some-thing that is caused. Thus, for anything to exist, an uncaused some-thing—or someone—must exist. This “uncaused cause,” as it were, must have the power of being in itself and must be the first, primary cause of everything else. It must depend on nothing else. It must not be an effect, for if it is an effect of something else, it cannot be the very first cause that brought everything into existence. Nothing created qualifies as this first, primary cause. Only God, the eternal Creator, can be the reason why there is something rather than nothing.

Coram Deo

It is logically necessary that God exists. Because anything exists, there must be a first, primary cause of all else, and only the self-existent God of Scripture can fill that role. Only Christianity can offer true, ultimate meaning to people because only Christianity reveals to us the first, primary cause of all things. We are blessed to know this God, who gives life and meaning to His people.

Passages for Further Study

Daniel 6:26
John 5:2

First published in Tabletalk Magazine, an outreach of Ligonier. For permissions, view our Copyright Policy.

Question Evolution

Greg Koukl

Evolution is dancing on the Titanic.

The current evolution/creation controversy is based on two fundamental errors. First, the issue is cast as a conflict between the indisputable facts of science and the dogmatic faith of religious fundamentalists. Second, two entirely different definitions of science are used interchangeably, obscuring the true nature of the discussion.

Facts vs. Faith

Douglas Futuyma opens Science on Trial, his compelling polemic against creationism, with these words: “Fifty-seven years after the Scopes trial, fundamentalist religion and evolutionary biology are again fiercely at odds, and science is still on trial.” Douglas Futuyma, Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates Inc., 1983), p. 4.

Futuyma’s words echo the sentiments of the academic rank and file: Creationists are obscurantist flat-earthers whose commitment to superstition keeps them in darkness. The verdict of science is clear. Darwinian evolution is an indisputable fact.

This characterization is simply false.

Following the complete failure of the Origin of Life Conference in Berkeley in the late 80’s to produce a plausible scenario for how life itself chemically evolved, Dr. Robert Shapiro wrote a book entitled Origins: A Skeptic’s Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth. (“Creation” here refers to biochemical evolution.) Shapiro is an educated skeptic, an eminent chemist from New York University and an expert in his field. In his book he decimates the reigning ideas of how life could have evolved from non-life.

Michael Denton wrote Evolution: A Theory in Crisis to show that the original scientific objections to evolution that faced Darwin–and were argued powerfully by his contemporaries–still apply after more than 100 years of scientific research and progress.

Both of these books were written by non-religious people raising scientific objections to evolution. Shapiro remains an evolutionist, hoping that the future will turn up more evidence for biochemical evolution than the past has been able to produce. Denton ends his analysis with this statement: “The Darwinian theory is the great cosmogenic myth of the twentieth century,” and then adds, “like the Genesis-based cosmology which it replaced.”

You have no friends of religion here. These men are inside of the established scientific community, not outside of it. Yet each offers scientifically rigorous and compelling arguments against the idea that known natural processes are adequate to explain the biological complexity of our world.

Michael Behe is a cellular biologist with impeccable credentials. In his book Darwin’s Black Box, he shows that the irreducible complexity of life can’t be explained by Darwinian gradualism.

James Shapiro of the University of Chicago, a molecular biologist and a deeply committed evolutionist, made this candid remark in response to Behe’s work:

There are no detailed Darwinian accounts for the evolution of any fundamental biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations. It is remarkable that Darwinism is accepted as a satisfactory explanation for such a vast subject–evolution–with so little rigorous examination of how well its basic theses work in illuminating specific instances of biological adaptation or diversity.  James Shapiro, “In the Details…What?,” National Review, September 19, 1996, pp. 62-65.

Niles Eldridge, one of the world’s leading experts in vertebrate fossils, describes the actual situation paleontologists face:

No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long. It never seems to happen. Assiduous collecting up cliff faces yield zigzags, minor oscillations, and the very occasional slight accumulation of change–over millions of years, at a rate too slow to account for all the prodigious change that has occurred in evolutionary history. When we do see the introduction of evolutionary novelty, it usually shows up with a bang, and often with no firm evidence that the fossils did not evolve elsewhere! Evolution cannot forever be going on somewhere else. Yet that’s how the fossil record has struck many a forlorn paleontologist looking to learn something about evolution.”  Niles Eldridge, Reinventing Darwin: The Great Debate at the High Table of Evolutionary Theory (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1995), p. 95.

This problem is so severe it has spawned an entirely new school of evolutionary thinking–punctuated equilibrium, championed by Harvard paleontologist Stephen J. Gould. It’s also spawned a bitter feud between Gould’s camp and traditional Darwinists like Richard Dawkins who still hold to gradualism in spite of the paucity of fossil evidence for it.

Phillip Johnson has made a fair observation when he states, “If eminent experts say that evolution according to Gould is too confused to be worth bothering about, and others equally eminent say that evolution according to Dawkins rests on unsubstantiated assertions and counterfactual claims, the public can hardly be blamed for suspecting that grand-scale evolution may rest on something less impressive than rock-solid, unimpeachable fact.”

We are within our rights to question the stability of the entire enterprise. But the minute we do, we run into a second problem.

Two Faces of Science

Science has two definitions. The first is the most well known. Science is about a methodology–observation, experimentation, testing, etc.–that allows researchers to discover the facts about the world. Presumably, this is what evolution is about–the facts of science. Science in this sense has prompted the litany of concerns expressed above by evolutionists.

The second definition of science involves the philosophy of naturalistic materialism: matter and energy governed by natural law. Any view that doesn’t conform to this definition is not scientific.

These two definitions are not always compatible. Evolution is a case in point. At first blush it seems like evolution is about scientific facts. But when facts suggest design, the second definition is invoked. The philosophy always trumps the methodology. That is, any scientific methodology (first definition) that supports intelligent design is summarily disqualified by scientific philosophy (second definition) as “religion disguised as science.”

Futuyma says, “Where science insists on material, mechanistic causes that can be understood by physics and chemistry, the literal believer in Genesis invokes unknowable supernatural forces.” Douglas Futuyma, Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates Inc., 1983), p. 12

Creationists claim, however, that these forces are knowable, at least in principle. Consider this analogy. When a dead body is discovered, an impartial investigation of the scene might indicate foul play and not accident. In the same way, evidence could, in principle, indicate an agent in creation rather than chance. This is not faith vs. evidence, but evidence vs. evidence.

Notice how Futuyma conflates these definitions in the following statement taken from Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution, the most widely used college evolutionary textbook:

The fact is, in a scientific sense, there can be no evidence for supernatural special creation. Belief in special creation must rest on faith, on the authority of the Bible and its most literal interpreters. The fundamental conflict, then, is between two incompatible ways to knowledge. Science emphasizes evidence and logical deduction, and is forever uncertain. It deals not with irrefutable facts engraved on stone tablets, but with hypotheses that may be refuted by tomorrow’s experiments and concepts formulated by fallible human minds. The best scientific education encourages skepticism, questioning, independent thought, and the use of reason.”  Douglas Futuyma, Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates Inc., 1983), p. 18

How does Douglas Futuyma know in advance there “can be no evidence for supernatural special creation”? Because it’s stipulated by definition. Even if evidence is available, it cannot be allowed. Further, no independent thought regarding the fact of evolution (as opposed to the method of evolution) is allowed either, in spite of Futuyma’s assertions to the contrary. Any denial of evolution is simply not “science.”

Darwinism as Dogma

Clearly, the paradigm is paramount and everything must be done to save it. Harvard Genetics Professor Richard Lewontin is very candid about this fact. In The New York Review of Books he makes this remarkable admission:

Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs…in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.[6] [emphasis in the original]

Here Richard Lewontin, distinguished Harvard Genetics Professor, admits that the apparatus of science is not geared to pursue the truth wherever it may lead, but rather to produce philosophically acceptable answers.

Phillip Johnson sums it up: “The reason for opposition to scientific accounts of our origins, according to Lewontin, is not that people are ignorant of facts, but that they have not learned to think from the right starting point.”

Presumed Guilty

Once one presumes evolution, many of the pieces seem to fit. If you simply presume someone associated with a crime is guilty, you’re bound to find some pieces of evidence that appear incriminating. But if your suspect produces an airtight alibi, you must rework your presumptions.

In the same way, Darwinism has fatal flaws, in spite of some circumstantial evidence for common ancestry. The mechanism (natural selection) is not adequate to do the work it needs to do. Behe and others have made this clear. The gradualist pathways from one transition to another cannot be reconstructed, as Gould has pointed out. Robert Shapiro of NYU admits there is no current evidence that life could come from non-life. Paleontologists can compare fossils all they want, but if evolutionary processes cannot even produce the most basic amino acid sequences necessary for life, then the game can’t even get started.

To label creationist efforts as “religious zealots conducting stealth campaigns,” as one editorial did, skirts the issue entirely. It is easier to dismiss any objections to evolution as flat-earth religion than to intelligently and fairly engage the facts in public discourse.

Three Errors

The view that “religious” theories should not intrude in science is guilty of a several of logical errors.

First, it commits the either/or fallacy by asserting that a view is either scientific or religious. Design models might have some factual support. We see the blending, for example, in near-death experience (NDE) research, or conclusions about the existence of a Creator based on Big Bang cosmology.

Second, it commits the straw-man fallacy by assuming that creationists make no use of scientific methods. This is not the case. Creationists are happy to present an abundance of scientific evidence for their view, if they’re allowed. This evidence needs to be addressed instead of disqualified.

Third, it assumes that the reigning scientific views do not have religious significance. This is false. All cosmological views have metaphysical significance. If evolutionary naturalism is true, the only place for God is in the imagination of the faithful.

Read This Book!

I want to recommend a book that gets right to the heart of this issue in a clear and accessible way. It’s called An Easy-to-Understand Guide for Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds by Phillip Johnson.

You’ll get first-rate advice on how to be a player in this discussion without getting bogged down in unnecessary details. You don’t need a technical background, just a simple game plan. It’s an easy read and a powerful tool that will help you expose the real issue in this debate.

The evolution/creation controversy is not about evidence. It’s about the power of an academic elite to enforce a philosophy. This fact is becoming increasingly obvious to the public. Once this becomes clear, then evolution will have to stand on its own merits and it won’t be able to do so.

Evolutionists are dancing on the Titanic. If it were not for philosophical strong-arming in the field of science, Darwinism would have become an historical curiosity long ago. It’s only a matter of time before the iceberg hits.

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