All posts by Bill Pratt

Creation, Evolution

Which Evolution Debate Will Soon Be History?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In a recent USA Today article, the headline read “Scientist: Evolution debate will soon be history.”  The first line of the article is, “Noted paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey predicts skepticism over evolution will soon be history.”  What do we make of this article?

The first thought that should come to your mind when you read this headline is the following: “Which definition of evolution is Leakey using?”  As I pointed out in a blog post a few weeks ago, there are at least 6 definitions of evolution that are commonly employed.

Unfortunately, you have to read about 10 paragraphs before getting to the answer, and even here the reporter barely covers it.  Perhaps this is because Leakey failed to provide a definition, or maybe the reporter saw no need to clearly define the term (both of these are problematic since the whole article is talking about the evolution debate ending).

So which definition of evolution is it?  Here is Leakey, quoted in the article:

If you don’t like the word evolution, I don’t care what you call it, but life has changed.  You can lay out all the fossils that have been collected and establish lineages that even a fool could work up.  So the question is why, how does this happen? It’s not covered by Genesis. There’s no explanation for this change going back 500 million years in any book I’ve read from the lips of any God.

The best I can tell is that we’re talking about definition 3 from the previous blog post: limited common descent: the idea that particular groups of organisms have descended from a common ancestor.  It is possible Leakey is referring to other definitions, but he never makes himself clear, and so we are left to guess.  He makes no mention of natural selection, universal common descent, or genetic mutations.

If Leakey is referring to limited common descent, then there is no debate at all, and he is arguing against imaginary skeptics.  Virtually every creationist accepts limited common descent.

If, however, Leakey is specifically talking about human evolution (since that is what he is an expert in), then there are several different takes from the creationist community.

Theistic evolutionists would have no problem saying that hominid (pre-human) fossils represent human ancestors.  For them, God placed a soul in the first modern humans, but planned for the process of evolution to provide the bodies.

For old earth creationists, the pre-human hominids were created by divine special creation hundreds of thousands, and even millions, of years ago.  They deny a direct evolutionary link between these hominids and modern humans.

For young earth creationists, hominid fossils represent either extinct offshoots of humans, or extinct apes, these two groups not being evolutionarily related.  Remember that for them, God specially created all major kinds of animals recently in the earth’s history (6,000 to 20,000 years ago).  Since that time, animal life has been rapidly evolving.  Therefore, there is a direct evolutionary link between some of the hominid fossils and humans (such as Neanderthal), but there is no direct evolutionary link between the ape-like hominids and humans.

Those in the intelligent design community may fall into any of these three groups, or they may have even other interpretations of the hominid fossil data.

The point of all this is that there are numerous definitions of evolution and there are numerous views about human evolution.  Before any debate about evolution can end, there is going to have to be a clear definition of terms and then strong evidence marshaled.  This article fails to do either.

As a footnote, Leakey says his reason for wanting the evolution debate to end is the following:

If you get to the stage where you can persuade people on the evidence, that it’s solid, that we are all African, that color is superficial, that stages of development of culture are all interactive, then I think we have a chance of a world that will respond better to global challenges.

What is truly bizarre about this statement is that I’m not aware of anyone from the creationist community who denies any of this.  Certainly Christian creationists have no problem affirming that all humans are descended from the same place, and would even go one further and say that we are descended from the same two people.  We would also affirm that all human races are equal in the eyes of God, and nobody disputes that development of culture is interactive.  I have no idea who Leakey is arguing against in these remarks, and so the main thrust of Leakey’s thoughts are completely lost on me.

Historical Christ, New Testament Reliability

Why Should We Not Believe Those Who Claim Jesus Never Existed?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Bart Ehrman, the agnostic New Testament scholar, who is no friend to Christianity, is back again with a new book called Did Jesus Exist?  I have not read the book yet, but I came across an article written by Ehrman a couple months ago in the Huffington Post that is worth quoting at length.

Ehrman starts out the article by acknowledging that there is a small, but vocal group of skeptics who deny that Jesus ever existed.

That is the claim made by a small but growing cadre of (published ) writers, bloggers and Internet junkies who call themselves mythicists.  This unusually vociferous group of nay-sayers maintains that Jesus is a myth invented for nefarious (or altruistic) purposes by the early Christians who modeled their savior along the lines of pagan divine men who, it is alleged, were also born of a virgin on Dec. 25, who also did miracles, who also died as an atonement for sin and were then raised from the dead.

There are several mythicists who have written comments on my blog in the past, so I am quite familiar with them.  So what credence should we give the mythicists?  Here is Ehrman’s take:

Few of these mythicists are actually scholars trained in ancient history, religion, biblical studies or any cognate field, let alone in the ancient languages generally thought to matter for those who want to say something with any degree of authority about a Jewish teacher who (allegedly) lived in first-century Palestine.  There are a couple of exceptions: of the hundreds — thousands? — of mythicists, two (to my knowledge) actually have Ph.D. credentials in relevant fields of study. 

But even taking these into account, there is not a single mythicist who teaches New Testament or Early Christianity or even Classics at any accredited institution of higher learning in the Western world.  And it is no wonder why.  These views are so extreme and so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real experts that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land on in a bona fide department of biology.

Ehrman, who certainly doesn’t accept everything in the New Testament as historical, nevertheless argues that historical kernels about Jesus are there:

With respect to Jesus, we have numerous, independent accounts of his life in the sources lying behind the Gospels (and the writings of Paul) — sources that originated in Jesus’ native tongue Aramaic and that can be dated to within just a year or two of his life (before the religion moved to convert pagans in droves).  Historical sources like that are pretty astounding for an ancient figure of any kind.  Moreover, we have relatively extensive writings from one first-century author, Paul, who acquired his information within a couple of years of Jesus’ life and who actually knew, first hand, Jesus’ closest disciple Peter and his own brother James.  If Jesus did not exist, you would think his brother would know it.

Ehrman adds:

Moreover, the claim that Jesus was simply made up falters on every ground. The alleged parallels between Jesus and the “pagan” savior-gods in most instances reside in the modern imagination: We do not have accounts of others who were born to virgin mothers and who died as an atonement for sin and then were raised from the dead (despite what the sensationalists claim ad nauseum in their propagandized versions).

Why bother quoting Ehrman about Jesus?  Because, when you have someone who is clearly not a Christian, who has written several books attacking the reliability of the New Testament, standing up and agreeing with Christians about something, we should pay attention.  I don’t agree with much that Ehrman writes, but I can at least agree with him on this: Jesus really existed and we can know about him from the New Testament documents.

Historical Christ, Islam, Resurrection

How Does Paul’s Testimony Compare to Muhammad’s Testimony?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In a previous blog post, I was quoting from historical scholar Mike Licona on the importance of the apostle Paul’s testimony about Jesus’ resurrection.  There are skeptics, however, who want to discount Paul.  One such skeptic is atheist Michael Martin, who questions why Christians accept Paul’s testimony, but not Muhammad’s testimony about the angel Gabriel.

Mike Licona picks up the challenge in his book The Resurrection of Jesus:

Martin cites as a primary source of revelation the conversion of Muhammad from polytheism to monotheism based on an appearance to him of the angel Gabriel.  According to Muhammad, Gabriel directly communicated revelation from heaven: the Qur’an.  So why accept Paul’s testimony while rejecting Muhammad’s?

Martin’s point has some weight.  Muhammad’s testimony that Gabriel revealed the Quran to him appears four times in the Qur’an. Accordingly, both the Qur’an and Paul may qualify as providing eyewitness testimony.  However, Martin overlooks some very important differences.

What are the differences between Paul and Muhammad?  There are several that need to be examined:

First, the overall sources for the event are far from equal in quality.  Outside of the Quranic texts, the appearance of Gabriel to Muhammad is found in the early biographies and hadith, all of which were written more than two hundred years after Muhammad’s death.  These are secondary sources that are, in a sense, similar to Luke’s accounts of Paul s conversion.  However, Luke’s accounts are much closer to the time of the events they purport to describe and may even be provided by a traveling companion of Paul, whereas the Muslim sources are more than two hundred years removed from Muhammad.

For example, Luke is reporting events in Acts that allegedly occurred between A.D. 30-62 and is writing between A.D. 61-90.  He is writing 31-60 years after the events and may have personally known some of the subjects.  In the case of the biographies and hadith, the earliest sources are more than two hundred years removed from the subjects and could not have had any first-, second-, third- or fourth-hand acquaintance with them. Accordingly, although the biographies and hadith probably contain some traditions that go back to Muhammad, those traditions are not of the same historical quality of the traditions preserved in the New Testament literature.

Second, Paul’s experience is in a sense corroborated by other eyewitnesses who claimed that the risen Jesus had appeared to them.  Friend and foe alike reported that the resurrected Jesus had appeared to them in both individual and group settings.  On the other hand, Muhammad is the only one who claimed to have been visited by Gabriel in connection with the rise of Islam.

Third, Muhammad’s dissatisfaction with the paganism and idolatry in his society existed prior to his alleged revelations.  Thus no conversion from polytheism occurred as a result of his religious experience, even according to Muslim sources.  On the other hand, Paul seems to have been quite content with and extremely sold out to his strict sect within Judaism.  Indeed, he was on his way to arresting Christians on his own initiative when his experience occurred.  Muhammad’s experience confirmed his views, while Paul’s opposed his.

Perhaps most important of all, however, is that historians need not deny that Muhammad had an experience that he interpreted as a supernatural being appearing to him.  They are at liberty to support an alternate explanation to Muhammad’s for the experience just as they do for the experiences of Jesus’ disciples.

There you have it: a quick and concise summary of some key differences between the testimony of Paul and the testimony of Muhammad.  I consider Martin’s challenge answered.

Historical Christ, Resurrection

Why Do Two Skeptics Discount Paul’s Testimony about the Resurrection of Jesus?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Historical scholar Mike Licona, in his book The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, argues that the apostle Paul’s writings are critical to historical research on Jesus’ resurrection.  But some skeptics disagree.  Licona explains:

Given the historical nuggets provided by Paul that can assist historians in their investigation of the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus, it is not surprising to find a few who have attempted to downplay its value.  Roy Hoover writes, “No New Testament text claims that the risen Jesus appeared to anyone who had not been a follower of Jesus or who did not become a believer.”

This is quite a move, simply writing off those who became believers after they were convinced that they had seen the risen Jesus.  Hoover fails to address the question of what may have led them to this belief against their previous wishes to reject who they believed was a false messiah.  So how does Hoover account for Paul’s experience?  He writes, “The risen Jesus was seen by one Pharisee who was a zealous enemy of the early church—Paul, from Tarsus; but so far as we know, Paul never met the Jesus of history and cannot, therefore, be counted among his enemies.”  

Licona wonders how this criterion of needing to meet someone to be counted among that person’s enemies makes any sense.

If we followed Hoover’s logic, no one fighting against the Nazis in World War II or imprisoned in one of the Nazi death camps could consider Hitler his enemy unless he had personally met him!

Licona also cites atheist philosopher Michael Martin, who offers a similar argument.  Here is Martin himself: 

Why should the fact that Paul persecuted Christians and was subsequently converted to Christianity by his religious experience be given special existential significance?  Whatever his past record at the time of his report he was a zealous, religious believer and not a religious skeptic.

Licona continues:

For Martin, it seems that in order to be regarded as a credible witness, it is not good enough to be opposed to everything about Christianity, including its followers; one must also be no less than an agnostic.  But as we observed earlier, historians are quite unanimous in their opinion that there is no neutrality when it comes to these matters.  When we speak of bias the knife cuts both ways, and it is quite clear that some religious skeptics reveal their own bias, which is antireligious in nature.

It is amazing to me that Licona even has to make this point.  You can figure out by reading any religious skeptic’s writing, very quickly, that they are burdened with the same kinds of biases that religious proponents are.  None of us can escape our biases completely, but it seems that religious skeptics, like Martin and Hoover, believe that they can.

The reason any person writes about anything is because they have interest in the subject they are writing about.  Nobody writes about subjects they care nothing about, and if they did, we would rightly ignore most of what they write.  Paul deeply cared about what happened to Jesus, and we should, therefore, pay close attention to what he said.  To discount his testimony because he became a believer is the height of hyper-skepticism.

Creation, Philosophy

What Is Nothing?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

There seems to be a lot of confusion over the word nothing, when scientists and philosophers are talking cosmology.  Philosophers, when speaking about the origin of the universe, will ask questions like, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” or “Did the universe come from nothing?”

When philosophers ask these questions, they have a very specific definition of the word nothing in mind.  They mean, by nothing, that literally no thing exists.  It is the non-existence of everything.  Seems simple enough, right?

Obviously not to some scientists, who cannot seem to grasp this concept of nothing.  We hear from them that the universe can indeed come from nothing.  For example, the universe could come from a quantum vacuum.  Or it could come from the law of gravity.  Or it could come from all the laws of physics.  Or from positive and negative energy in equilibrium.

But wait!  All of these examples of nothing are something.  They are definitely not nothing.  Quantum vacuums and gravity and energy are all very much something.  They are things that exist, and so they are not nothing.

When a scientist tells us that the universe came from nothing, but then he goes on to describe nothing to us, he is absolutely not talking about nothing.  Nothing cannot be described.  Nothing has no properties, no existence, no substance.  It is no thing.

Where does this leave us?  Positing physical laws, energy, or quantum anything as the causes of the universe does not answer the philosophers’ questions of “Why is there something rather than nothing?” or “Did the universe come from nothing?”  In fact, science, in principle, cannot answer these questions because they are philosophical questions, not available to scientific investigation. 

Anyone who tries to answer these questions with scientific explanations is simply confused about what is being asked.

General Apologetics

Should Christians Borrow Ideas from Non-Christians?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In the Book of Exodus, God commands Moses to tell the Israelites to take plunder from the Egyptians, and the Israelites did so as they were preparing to leave:

The Israelites did as Moses instructed and asked the Egyptians for articles of silver and gold and for clothing. The Lord had made the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the people, and they gave them what they asked for; so they plundered the Egyptians. (Ex. 12:35-36)

There is an interesting application of these verses to the thinking Christian. Saint Augustine noted, in his On Christian Teaching, the following:

The Egyptians not only had idols and crushing burdens which the people of Israel detested and from which they fled. They also had vessels and ornaments of gold and silver, and clothing, which the Israelites leaving Egypt secretly claimed for themselves as if for a better use. Not on their own authority did they make this appropriation, but by the command of God. Meanwhile, the Egyptians themselves, without realizing it, were supplying the things which they were not using properly. In the same way, all the teachings of the pagans have counterfeit and superstitious notions and oppressive burdens of useless labor. Any one of us, leaving the association of pagans with Christ as our leader, ought to abominate and shun them.

In other words, the Israelites took things (i.e., gold, silver, and clothing) from the Egyptians, things which the Egyptians were using to oppress, and put them to a better use. In the same way, says Augustine, just like gold, silver, and clothing, Christians may take ideas (or teachings) from non-Christians and put them to good use. However, we should shun the improper ways non-Christians use these same ideas.

Some have argued that Christians should shun all teachings by non-Christians. One example of this is the accusation sometimes heard from neotheists that the medieval church fathers borrowed illicitly from the Greek philosophers. Philosopher and theologian Norman Geisler responds to these critics:

Christian theologians of every age have been influenced to one degree or another by the prevailing philosophy of their day. But neotheists themselves are not immune from this: They reveal the influence of the prevailing process theology of our time. This in itself does not make their view of God wrong; neither does any influence by Greek philosophy make the classical view of God wrong. In the final analysis, the question is whether it was a good influence or a bad one—whether there are biblical and rational grounds for it or not. Rejecting a view because of its source is the genetic fallacy. It is not a matter of whether the reason is Greek, but whether it is good.

What is important about borrowing from non-Christians is that we take only what can be put to a proper Christian use. We leave what is intrinsically antithetical to Christian belief behind. In addition, we should avoid denigrating any idea just because of where or whom it came from. As Geisler points out, this is the genetic fallacy.

In my own education at Southern Evangelical Seminary, we frequently read books and articles written by non-Christians in order to familiarize ourselves with the most prominent thinkers of the past and present. Although much of what I read is antithetical to Christianity, some of it is not.

We are not reading these materials simply to learn how best to counter their arguments – though that is one reason to read them. We are also reading the material to gain insights on important philosophical and scientific issues.

Here is an example. One of the most famous agnostic philosophers of the 20th century was Bertrand Russell, a man who was strongly anti-Christian. Yet in reading some of his works I learned that he was a neutral monist.

What is interesting about neutral monism is that it rejects metaphysical materialism (which affirms that all that exists is matter and energy). Since materialism is the primary metaphysical opponent of Christian dualism in the 21st century, Russell’s arguments against materialism can be put to use by Christians who believe that materialism is an entirely inadequate metaphysical position.

On the other hand, an example of an idea intrinsically opposed to Christianity would be the Hindu teaching that God is all and all is God. If we tried to apply this idea directly to God, we would be in grave error. The Bible clearly teaches that God created the world, and that He exists independently from it. God can never be equated with the world, as if they are one and the same. In this case, we cannot borrow this Hindu idea and apply it to God.

Countless other examples could be given, but what is imperative is to always ground everything we learn in the biblical Christian worldview. If we stay in that framework, there are many ideas from non-Christians, and even anti-Christians, that we can rightfully borrow. Likewise, it follows that we cannot rightly discern what to borrow, or what to leave behind, unless we truly and thoroughly understand biblical Christianity.

Evolution

Is There Any Scientific Controversy Over Darwinian Evolution? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

I am told again and again by blog commenters that there is absolutely no controversy over any aspects of Darwinian evolution among those who study biology in the scientific community.  Here is a typical quote from a recent commenter, who was speaking about the pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute’s advocacy of teaching the controversy over certain aspects of evolution:

There is no scientific controversy. None. Not one bit. At all. This is purely a religiously motivated, and intentionally manufactured one, to appear as a scientific controversy. But appearances can be deceiving, especially when it is done intentionally to try to create controversy where none exists in scientific terms, one that does not match up to the evidence science has revealed from the reality we share.

But this is simply not true.  There is plenty of controversy in the world of evolutionary biology.  You just have to read.

I thought it would be helpful to point out just one prominent biologist’s disagreement with the standard evolutionary account.  His name is James Shapiro and he is a molecular biologist at the University of Chicago.  A pro-ID scholar, William Dembski, wrote a review of Shapiro’s latest book, Evolution: A View from the 21st Century, where he carefully describes Shapiro’s disagreement with the standard account.

Dembski starts by quoting evolutionary geneticist Jerry Coyne, who gives a succinct definition of evolution:

There is only one going theory of evolution, and it is this: organisms evolved gradually over time and split into different species, and the main engine of evolutionary change was natural selection.  Sure, some details of these processes are unsettled, but there is no argument among biologists about the main claims . . .  While mutations occur by chance, natural selection, which builds complex bodies by saving the most adaptive mutations, emphatically does not.  Like all species, man is a product of both chance and lawfulness.

Dembski continues:

Coyne here depicts the form of Darwinism that currently reigns, what is called the neo-Darwinian synthesis, which combines classical Darwinism (which holds to universal common ancestry, evolutionary gradualism, and natural selection) with modern genetic theory (which locates the source of heritable variation in genetic mutations, i.e., writing errors in DNA).

So, if this is the standard view of evolution, and there is no controversy over it, then we should expect Shapiro to agree with his colleague, right?  Wrong.  According to Dembski,

Of all these elements, Shapiro only subscribes to one, namely, universal common ancestry, or common descent, the claim that all organisms trace their lineage to a common ancestor (thus making all organisms alive today cousins). On every other point, Shapiro demurs.

Read that again.  Shapiro only agrees with common descent and disagrees with the rest of Coyne’s description of evolution.

Thus, when it comes to the claim that evolution proceeds gradually, Shapiro writes (p. 89): “Do the sequences of contemporary genomes fit the predictions of change by ‘numerous, successive slight variations,’ as Darwin stated, or do they contain evidence of other, more abrupt processes…? The data are overwhelmingly in favor of the saltationist school that postulated major genomic changes at key moments in evolution.”

If Shapiro simply left matters there, however, he might align himself with proponents of punctuated equilibrium who, keeping faith as much as possible with neo-Darwinism, see the principal source of biological variation in genetic copying errors, otherwise known as “mutations.”  But Shapiro rejects  this view as well.  For him, variation, which is always the creative potential of any evolutionary theory (no variation, no evolution), is not a random affair at all.  Rather, organisms intelligently control their variation and thereby facilitate the evolutionary process.

Shapiro writes (143): “Living cells and organisms are cognitive (sentient) entities that act and interact purposefully to ensure survival, growth, and proliferation. They possess corresponding sensory, communication, information-processing, and decision-making capabilities.  Cells are built to evolve; they have the ability to alter their hereditary characteristics rapidly through well-described natural genetic engineering and epigenetic processes as well as cell mergers.”

Dembski then concisely summarizes Shapiro’s view of evolution:

Organisms behave purposefully.  They evolve themselves.  They do this by intentionally modifying their own DNA.  Within neo-Darwinism, DNA is a read-only memory subject to occasional copying errors.  For Shapiro, DNA is a read-write memory, with the organism itself deciding when and where to modify its DNA.

Enough said, I think.  Shapiro differs dramatically from evolutionary orthodoxy.  He is representative of the active debate that is occurring among scientists who study evolution.  Why should these differing views not be openly discussed?  Why am I told that there is no controversy when there clearly is?  Let’s just admit that there are scientific debates within the evolutionary community, instead of pretending they don’t exist.

Gay Marriage, Marriage

Why Should You Vote “For” the NC Marriage Protection Amendment?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Tomorrow is a big day in North Carolina because we are casting votes on whether a marriage protection amendment should be added to the state constitution, something that a large number of other states have already done.  I have written on marriage and gay marriage in the past, and you can go read those posts if you’d like (some of the links are found at the bottom of this post under “related posts”). 

But what I want to do today is quote an email I received from my friend, Mark.  It was written by pastor John Held, and I think captures many of the important points in this debate.  Please take a couple of minutes to read it below, and don’t forget to vote “for” the amendment tomorrow, if you are a citizen of North Carolina.

Responding to the Opposition to the Marriage Protection Amendment

In their opposition of the Marriage Protection Amendment (MPA), anti-amendment activists (strongly supported by national homosexual advocacy groups) are intentionally using the terms “anti-gay,” “discriminatory,” “bigotry,” and “harmful” to describe the Marriage Protection Amendment. This is part of a well thought-through, strategic tool designed to engender an emotional response from uninformed North Carolinians.
 
As outlined in their book After The Ball, Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, both gay activists, explain:

In any campaign to win over the public, gays must be portrayed as victims in need of protection so that straights will be inclined by reflex to adopt the role of protector…[this will] lay the groundwork for the process of conversion by helping straights identify with gays and sympathize with their underdog status.

Homosexual activists have made no secret of the fact that the redefinition of marriage is number one on their social agenda. The popular accusations being made against the Marriage Protection Amendment fall into this “victim imagery” strategy.

Nothing about the Marriage Protection Amendment is anti-homosexual, and it does not represent an attack on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Transgender (LGBT) individuals.

The Marriage Protection Amendment states, “that marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state.”  It is a pro-marriage amendment with the sole intention of preserving and promoting the
historic definition of marriage as a public institution that binds men and women together to create the best environment for raising children. The amendment elevates current North Carolina law to the level of a constitutional amendment to protect the definition of
marriage from being redefined by either activist judges or politicians. 

It has been claimed that the Marriage Protection Amendment “writes discrimination into the state constitution…” Understandably, the term “discrimination” immediately creates in people’s minds the image of other people being unfairly excluded from something that is available to everyone else.  Of course, it is true that marriage, by definition, is an exclusive institution – in the sense that it is not open to everyone who wants to get married.  For example, children cannot get married, an adult cannot marry a child under a certain age, certain blood relatives cannot get married (a mother to her son, father to his daughter, brother to his sister), a man cannot marry two women, and a man cannot marry a woman who is married to someone else.
 
When the law defines marriage as between one man and one woman it does not prohibit any homosexual person from marrying, they would just have to marry in the same way that everyone else in society has to marry – they would have to marry someone of the opposite sex. This right is extended equally to all unmarried adults in the society.
 
When homosexuals claim that they want to marry another person of the same sex, they are not simply claiming the right to marry that is available to everyone else in society.  They are claiming a new right that has not previously been available to anyone in this society.  Such a right has been denied to everyone in the society, prior to this time; so, it is not discriminating against them to say that this kind of right is denied to them.

By way of analogy, if a man claimed that he wanted to marry his sister (or any of the examples given above), he is really claiming the right to redefine marriage according to his own desires and preferences.  He is not just claiming a private right for himself, but is
claiming a right to change the definition of marriage that has been adopted by the whole society.  And the law is correct when it denies him the right to do this.  Therefore, restricting marriage to one man and woman does not violate anyone’s fundamental rights. In fact, what the marriage protection amendment actually does is preserve the unique and special understanding of marriage that has existed in nearly every civilization since the beginning of time from the ongoing attempts to strip marriage of its core meaning and purpose.

Christians should also recognize that the end result of the redefinition of marriage is the silencing of the Church on the biblical understanding of sex, gender, and the family.  Granted, for individual churches and denominations that have either rejected the authority of Scripture or re-interpreted Scripture (abandoning grammatical-historical hermeneutical principles), so that the Bible’s clear teaching is muddled, this is not an issue – they have already capitulated to the current culture.  Yet, in places where same-sex marriage has been legalized, religious freedom and free-speech (of individuals and churches that hold to traditional marriage) are under attack in the name of promoting the full acceptance of homosexuality.  The Marriage Protection Amendment would help protect the ability of the church to continue to proclaim what Scripture teaches about sex, gender, and marriage, including what the Bible says about homosexual activity (and adultery and fornication and pornography and all other forms of soul-destroying sin).
 
The accusation that the Marriage Protection Amendment will harm children is unfounded.  Even the liberal British philosopher Bertrand Russell said, “But for children, there would be no need of any institution concerned with sex…It is of children alone that sexual relations become of importance to society.”  No fact has been more convincingly established by social science literature then the fact that children are best served when reared in a home with a married mother and father. Just because other broken family forms exist (from single mothers to same-sex partners) does not mean that the marital norm for society should be redefined in order to keep the children in these families from feeling different.  In a post-Genesis 3 world, not every family will reflect the marital ideal of one man and one woman provides for individuals and society at large.

The Marriage Protection Amendment is really about one thing: preserving the historic understanding of sexuality, gender, and the family in North Carolina and protecting the rights of parents (and the church) to transmit traditional values about these core issues to the next generation.

Evolution

How Is Evolution Defined? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In part 1, we looked at 6 definitions of evolution and explained how different Christian creationist positions deal with them.  If you recall, definition 6 was the most controversial:

6. “Blind watchmaker” thesis: the idea that all organisms have descended from common ancestors solely through unguided, unintelligent, purposeless, material processes such as natural selection acting on random variations or mutations; that the mechanisms of natural selection, random variation and mutation, and perhaps other similarly naturalistic mechanisms, are completely sufficient to account for the appearance of design in living organisms.

Jay Richards has several interesting things to say about definition 6 that are worth repeating:

Of all the senses of evolution, this one seems to fit with theism like oil with water. According to the blind watchmaker thesis, all the apparent design in life is just that—apparent. It’s really the result of natural selection working on random genetic mutations. (Darwin proposed “variation.” Neo-Darwinism attributes new variations to genetic mutations.)

The word “random” in the blind watchmaker thesis carries a lot of metaphysical baggage. In Neo-Darwinian theory, random doesn’t mean uncaused; it means that the changes aren’t directed—they don’t happen for any purpose. Moreover, they aren’t predictable, like gravity, and don’t occur for the benefit of individual organisms, species, or eco-systems, even if, under the guidance of natural  selection, an occasional mutation might enhance a species odds of survival.

The blind watchmaker thesis is more or less the same as Neo-Darwinism as its leading advocates understand it. It is usually wedded to some materialistic origin of life scenario, which isn’t about biological evolution per se. This so-called chemical evolution is often combined with biological evolution as two parts of a single narrative.

Unfortunately, the blind watchmaker thesis isn’t an eccentric definition of the word evolution. It’s textbook orthodoxy. For instance, Harvard paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson explained evolution by saying, “Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.” Darwin himself understood his theory this way: “There seems to be no more design,” he wrote, “in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the winds blow.”

And here’s how the late Darwinist Ernst Mayr put it: “The real core of Darwinism, however, is the theory of natural selection. This theory is so important for the Darwinian because it permits the explanation of adaptation, the ‘design’ of the natural theologian, by natural means, instead of by divine intervention.” Notice that Mayr says, “instead of.”

These are representative quotes from the literature. From the time of Darwin to the present, Darwinists have always contrasted their idea with the claim that biological forms are designed or created. That’s the whole point of the theory.

Theists claim that the world, including the biological world, exists for a purpose; that it is, in some sense, designed. The blind watchmaker thesis denies this. So anyone wanting to reconcile strict Darwinian evolution with theism has a Grade A dilemma on his hands.

Evolution

How Is Evolution Defined? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

One of the first things I was taught in my seminary classes was to carefully define terms and concepts before launching into a debate over them.  So many times, when I see two people arguing about a topic, they are using different definitions for the same words.  It’s impossible to have a productive discussion with someone when you don’t agree on how to define terms.

Recently I read a great article in the Christian Research Journal (Vol. 35 / No. 1 / 2012), written by Jay Richards, on the topic of evolution and its varying definitions.  The article is entitled “Thinking Clearly about God and Evolution.”  I thought I would excerpt some portions of the article because I think it will be helpful to all of us when we discuss this controversial subject.

Richards writes:

It’s a lot easier to define theism than to define evolution. It’s been called the ultimate weasel word. In an illuminating article called “The Meanings of Evolution,” Stephen Meyer and Michael Keas attempt to catch the weasel by distinguishing six different ways in which “evolution” is commonly used:

1. Change over time; history of nature; any sequence of events in nature.

2. Changes in the frequencies of alleles in the gene pool of a population.

3. Limited common descent: the idea that particular groups of organisms have descended from a common ancestor.

4. The mechanisms responsible for the change required to produce limited descent with modification, chiefly natural selection acting on random variations or mutations.

5. Universal common descent: the idea that all organisms have descended from a single common ancestor.

6. “Blind watchmaker” thesis: the idea that all organisms have descended from common ancestors solely through unguided, unintelligent, purposeless, material processes such as natural selection acting on random variations or mutations; that the mechanisms of natural selection, random variation and mutation, and perhaps other similarly naturalistic mechanisms, are completely sufficient to account for the appearance of design in living organisms.

As Christians, what are we to make of these 6 different definitions of evolution?  Definitions 1-4 are almost universally accepted by young earth, old earth, and theistic evolutionists.  They all agree that plant and animal populations have changed over time, that there is limited common descent, and that natural selection acting on random mutation does affect plant and animal populations.

Definition number 5 is where young earth and old earth creationists get off the boat.  These folks believe that God specially created different kinds of plants and animals at specific moments in earth’s history.  Old earth creationists stretch out those creative acts over some 3.5-4 billion years, whereas young earth creationists compact those creative acts into a 6-day period.  In either case, it would be impossible for  universal common descent to be true.  Finally, theistic evolutionists would have no problem with definition 5.

Definition 6 is where even theistic evolutionists disembark.  Why?  Because they do not accept that evolution is “unguided, unintelligent, [and] purposeless.”  God is behind evolution and He planned it out and executed on the plan through the initial conditions and physical laws that he put in place.

In part 2, I will excerpt some further insightful comments from Richards on definition 6, which is by far the most controversial definition of evolution.