Tag Archives: conservatives

General Apologetics, Human Nature

Can a Fetus Gestate In a Box?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

As someone who greatly respects the traditions and wisdom handed down from antiquity, I find myself constantly amazed at the way modern man wants to deny inconvenient bits of reality.  Bits such as:

  • Boys and girls are biologically different in significant ways.
  • Children can only be produced when a man and a woman unite in sexual reproduction.
  • When a small group of people is given a tremendous amount of power over a larger group of people, the small group will inevitably oppress the larger group.
  • No amount of education will ever eradicate human sin.
  • If you tell men that they don’t have to commit to women in order to have sex with them, marriages will decrease and divorces will increase.
  • As the traditional nuclear family goes, so goes civilization.
  • Human institutions that rely on centralized command and control inevitably fail as they grow larger.
  • The wisdom given us by our ancestors has been repeatedly tested and proved to work, so we ignore it at great peril.

I’m sure my conservative friends could add numerous bits of reality to this list, but I think you get the point. Those of us who find any of these bits of reality to be inconvenient are struggling in vain. This is the way the world is and has always been, and we have to adapt ourselves to it.

Obviously there are other parts of reality that we can change and should change, but oddly enough, we usually only know that our current reality needs to change because the wisdom of our ancestors tells us what is wrong with our current reality.

For example, I know that abortion on demand is wrong because life is sacred and an innocent life should never be taken without proper justification. I know these things from the highest traditions that have been passed down to us.

I also know that we should be constantly fighting against poverty, disease, and any form of human enslavement, as all of these bits of reality degrade sacred human life, life that is made in the image of God.

Do conservatives fight against the status quo? Absolutely. The difference is that conservatives fight against those things which actually can be changed about reality, while non-conservatives often fight against those bits of reality which cannot be changed. What’s even worse about this second approach is that these folks will force the rest of us, through legislative or judicial fiat, into hopeless social experiments that inevitably backfire and do far more damage than any good they might have achieved.

I was watching the Monty Python comedy, The Life of Brian, recently, and was reminded in a humorous way how silly those people are who want to change unchangeable realities. To set the scene, there are 3 men (Reg, Rogers, and Stan) and a woman (Judith), who are part of a radical Jewish political group, discussing and debating their political demands. During their discussion, one of the men, Stan, announces that he wants to become a woman. We pick it up there:

Reg: Why don’t you shut up about women, Stan? You’re putting us off.

Stan: Women have a perfect right to play a part in our movement, Reg.

Rogers: Why are you always on about women, Stan?

Stan: I want to be one.

Reg: What?

Stan: I want to be a woman. From now on, I want you all to call me Loretta.

Reg: What?

Loretta (Stan): It’s my right as a man.

Judith: Well, why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?

Loretta (Stan): I want to have babies.

Reg: You want to have babies?!

Loretta (Stan): It’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants them.

Reg: But…you can’t have babies!

Loretta (Stan): Don’t you oppress me!

Reg: I’m not oppressing you, Stan. You haven’t got a womb. Where is the fetus going to gestate? You’re going to keep it in a box?

Loretta (Stan): Sniff.

Judith: Here, I’ve got an idea. Suppose you agree that he can’t actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody’s fault, not even the Romans, but that he can have the right to have babies.

Rogers: Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister! Sorry.

Reg: What’s the point?

Rogers: What?

Reg: What’s the point of fighting for his right to have babies, when he can’t have babies?

Rogers: It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.

Reg: Symbolic of his struggle against reality.












Atheism, General Apologetics, Morality, Profanity



What Do Political Liberals and Atheists Have In Common?



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According to an August 2008 poll by Barna Group, they are both far more likely than conservatives and evangelical Christians to engage in behaviors such as unmarried sex, viewing pornography, lying, getting drunk, and gossipping.   These results, sadly, are not surprising to me, as previous poll data and personal experience have proven these facts true over and over.


With regard to liberals vs. conservatives, here are the statistics when respondents were asked what behaviors they engaged in during the previous week:


On average, adults who describe themselves as “mostly liberal” on sociopolitical issues were twice as likely as those who describe themselves as “mostly conservative” to participate in activities that conflict with traditional moral perspectives. In particular, liberals were five times more likely to participate in unmarried sex (20% vs. 4%), more than three times as likely to view pornography (30% vs. 8%), more than twice as likely to lie (21% vs. 8%) and to get drunk (17% vs. 7%), and twice as likely to engage in retaliation (13% vs. 6%) and gossip (17% vs. 9%).


Atheists and agnostics don’t fare much better when compared to evangelical Christians:


Examining people’s faith perspectives revealed that evangelicals were the group most likely to follow traditional morality while atheists and agnostics were the faith segment most likely to reject those ways.


Among evangelicals, profanity (16%) and pornography (12%) were the most common transgressions. Fewer than 5% of evangelicals had engaged in gossip (4%), inappropriate sex (3%), gambling (2%), lying (1%) or drunkenness (less than one-half of one percent).


In contrast, among skeptics (atheists and agnostics) participation in the eight behaviors ranged from a low of 11% (retaliating) up to a high of 60% (using profanity). While evangelicals averaged 6% participation in each of the eight behaviors mentioned, skeptics averaged five times that level (29%). Other common acts among skeptics included exposure to pornography (50%), gossip (34%) and drunkenness (33%).


What to make of these results?  Although it is possible for atheists to live moral lives, they often do not, when compared to strong Christians.  Again, there is no surprise here for those of us who have come from non-belief to belief, as adults.  We remember how we were before Christ changed us from the inside out.  If Christ does not live inside you, you face an impossible battle.  Rather than gloat, as believers, we should humbly thank God for what He’s done for us.  The atheist lives just like we would without God’s grace.