Continue reading “Justice and Mercy at Ground Zero”
Competing for the Prize
In the middle of the Chicago Cubs incredible season and play off run, so far, in which the Cubs knocked off the team with the second best record in baseball (the Pirates) and then the first best record in baseball (the Cardinals), I have to pause. and, I am reminded about what is most important in life. Continue reading “Competing for the Prize”
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The Reconciliation of Science and Religion
The reconciliation of science and religion may seem unlikely to some. Though the Renaissance period grew alongside the Reformation, and advancements in science during that time were largely pioneered by men of faith, science began to deviate from faith during the Enlightenment period. I suppose that the divergence of science and faith that began in the Enlightenment period is somewhat like the Protestant movement separating from the Catholic Church.
As one grew alongside the other, however, and both having roots in the same soil, it is inevitable that separation cannot be complete or total.
To the chagrin of modern materialists, the connection cannot and will not be severed.
Many atheists would of course embrace the idea that science can falsify religious claims. However, if this is the case, then religion may fall within the purview of science. The claim that religion and science may overlap is a claim that atheists have fought vigorously in the courts to reject. The reason for this is that if science can falsify religious claims, then it is also conceivable that it can give evidence for the truth of religious claims.
It is also maintained that science deals only with the physical world as its subject matter. While this is a methodological statement, many believe that science only deals with the physical world because that is all that exists. However, this is not a statement of science; instead, it is a philosophical statement that can neither be verified through the senses nor falsified through reason. Alvin Plantinga, J.P. Moreland, and several other philosophers of science have written extensively on this understanding of science. The problem with this materialistic criterion is that it fails its own test. That is, definitions are not physical, concepts are not physical, and meaning is not physical, and these things are what the materialist uses to define science. Therefore, if definitions, concepts, and meaning exist, then not everything that exists is physical.
Of course one could believe that non-physical reality exists, but claim that science merely deals with the physical attributes of the world. That is all well and good, but would merely suggest that religion and science do not talk to each other. Yet, as shown above, one could clearly use science to show certain religious beliefs to be false. And, as I also mentioned earlier, if one can used scientific fields to disprove religious claims, science may also be used to justify the beliefs of many religious claims.
From the blog post, Is Science the Enemy of Religion?, written by Shannon Holzer.
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Open Apology to My Children and Wife
The wages of sin is death. We all know that. But, who has not sinned? I am painfully aware of my own sin, yet I continue to fall into sin, wretched man that I am.
I have prayed to God for His forgiveness, as all of my sin is ultimately sin against God, and I know that God forgives me. He placed all of the sin of mankind on the shoulders of His son and allowed Him to be crucified, sacrificed for – sacrificed for me. God shed his glory and became man to take on my sin and the sin of the world gladly to rescue us from ourselves
I do not deserve it, yet I know He freely offers me that forgiveness, and I dare not reject such a sacrifice.
At the same time, I am keenly aware that the sin I have committed, the sin that has affected me, does not affect me alone.
Continue reading “Open Apology to My Children and Wife”
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Valuable Consideration
The Planned Parenthood videos have exposed the soft underbelly of the abortion industry. Some would say it is much ado about nothing, but methinks they doth protest too much.
The defenders and supporters have focused on the “lie” that Planned Parenthood profits from the sale of aborted fetal organs (“baby parts”). They do not call them human remains, though that is what they are. So much of the battle ground in this debate is over words, as if a rose by any other name is not a rose.
The defenders would like shift the focus on words and whether there was “profit” and “reasonable consideration”, never mind what we saw. A perfect example is found in the popular factcheck.org article, Unspinning the Planned Parenthood Video. The article goes to length to explain that Planned Parenthood does not “profit” for the sale of the fetal body parts. In the process, it directs our attention to the cold words in in the federal statutes:
The video itself highlights a portion of title 42 of the U.S. code, which reads: “It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human organ for valuable consideration for use in human transplantation if the transfer affects interstate commerce.” The law does include fetal tissue in its definitions. It says that the term “valuable consideration” doesn’t include “reasonable payments” for removal, transportation, preservation and other associated costs.
The statute referenced provides as follows:
(2) The term “valuable consideration” does not include the reasonable payments associated with the removal, transportation, implantation, processing, preservation, quality control, and storage of a human organ or the expenses of travel, housing, and lost wages incurred by the donor of a human organ in connection with the donation of the organ.
While the Pro-Life activists and politicians who are opposed to abortion have tried to claim that Planned Parenthood is illegally profiting from the sale of “baby parts”, and Planned Parenthood and their defenders have claimed those accusations are “lies”, the discussion entirely misses the point. I will come back that, but let us look at the profit issue.
“Valuable consideration” in general legal parlance means, simply, something of value, anything of value really. It means quid pro quo, an exchange of something for something, without quantifying the two somethings. In other words, “valuable consideration” does not depend on whether the exchange is proportionate or fair; it only matters that something of value is given and gotten.
The federal law that addresses the sale of human tissue, however, uses “valuable consideration” in a more unique and specific way. The definition excludes “reasonable payments” (essentially covering costs). We could argue whether the $30-$100 Planned Parenthood gets for the fetal organs it sells is reasonable or covers costs, but that would be an exercise in missing the forest for the trees.
Technically, Planned Parenthood does not make any profit, regardless of the consideration received for its services and sales. Planned Parenthood is organized as a nonprofit corporation. It does not have profits and never will. All of the funds it raises go back into the organization (including payment of the salaries of its employees and officers). There are no “profits” for a nonprofit corporation.
The shocking aspect of the Planned Parenthood videos is not the consideration they obtain for the brains, livers and other organs and parties of babies that are aborted in their clinics, but the callous, cold, clinical, even joking way they talk of dismembering, crushing and cutting into babies to “harvest” their parts.
We should not be distracted by mere verbiage. Watch the videos. Listen to the way the Planned Parenthood executives talk about what they are doing. If we are not alarmed at how callously and coldly they chit chat about what they are doing, we should also be alarmed at how much our consciences have been seared by ignoring and trivializing the killing of human life.
