Why I Will Not Support Same Sex Marriage

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Same sex marriage has been a very topical subject in Scotland over recent weeks, with the launch of a consultation by the Scottish National Party (SNP) — which closes this Friday — on whether marriage in Scotland should be redefined to effectively legalise gay marriage and religious ceremonies for civil partnerships.

The Scottish government has stated that it was its original position that marriage should be redefined, though Nicola Sturgeon — the Health Secretary — has said that religious organisations should not be forced to perform same-sex weddings should they not want to. We’ll see how long that lasts. After all, SNP MSP John Mason — a Christian — sparked a row earlier this year following his support for a parliamentary motion that no religious group should be compelled to approve of or facilitate same-sex unions. According to Nicola Sturgeon, a survey of Scottish Social Attitudes has revealed that over 60% of Scots endorse the proposed change, with 19% dissenting.

The curious thing about this whole controversy is that same sex couples can already enter into a ‘civil partnership’ which effectively offers them all the same legal recognition and rights that marriage does. The only real difference is that the ceremonies are not able to be performed in religious premises. It is also curious that most homosexuals with whom I have spoken concerning this issue have no desire for a religious marriage ceremony. For those reasons, I am inclined to be skeptical that this controversy was ever really about marriage — it’s about legitimisation. It’s about making a declaration — a statement — that homosexual and heterosexual relationships are equally valid.

For the record, it is my position that there is no Biblical warrant or support for homosexual relationships. And while I think that generally Scripture ought not be the dictator of public policy, this case strikes me as different because they are seeking to involve Christian — or otherwise religious — institutions. Christian organisations ought to base their activity on Christian principles. It is thus very relevant what the Christian worldview entails on the matter.

Now, there are various  reasons why a revision of the current (traditional) view of marriage, in my opinion, would be overall non-conducive to society’s best interests. For one thing, if the definition of marriage is fundamentally malleable, then are we to expect to hear next from those seeking “equal rights” for polygamous marriage (as is already seen in Canada)? How can you grant legitimacy to one and not the other? After all, they use essentially the same arguments. Indeed, The Guardian recently published an interesting article entitled “Polygamy in Canada: A Case of Double Standards”, observing,

“What the polygamists argued is that this new definition discriminates against them because it continues to insist on monogamy in the same way that the previous definition insisted on both monogamy and heterosexuality. It was a logical argument that was rejected by Bauman who in his judgment gave a spirited defence of the virtues of monogamy as being a fundamental principle of western civilisation.

Bauman said that the preservation of monogamous marriage “represents a pressing and substantial objective for all of the reasons that have seen the ascendance of monogamous marriage as a norm in the west,” and that “the law seeks to advance the institution of monogamous marriage, a fundamental value in western society from the earliest of times.” He also launched an all-out attack on the concept of polygamy, which he said “has been condemned throughout history because of the harms consistently associated with its practice”. “There is no such thing as so-called ‘good polygamy’,” he added.

Now, I agree with Bauman in his defence of the importance of monogamous marriage to society. But I find it difficult to see the logic of defending monogamous marriage as the historic norm in the west when the laws of Canada have already departed from the principle that it is heterosexual, monogamous marriage that is essential to social stability. Put bluntly, if heterosexuality is no longer legally, morally or socially relevant to marriage, why should monogamy continue to be so important?” [emphasis mine]

Furthermore, schools will be expected to promote and endorse same sex marriage as just as legitimate as heterosexual marriage. As Frank Turek has pointed out, in his book Correct, not Politically Correct: How Same Sex Marriage Hurts Everyone, “The law is a great teacher — many people think that whatever is legal is moral and, therefore, should be accepted. We only need to look at two of the most divisive issues in the history of our country — slavery and abortion — to see the power of the law to influence attitudes and behavior.” As Frank Turek discusses here, there is a correlation between legalisation of same-sex-marriage and the number of children born outside of wedlock. He writes,

“We can see the connection between same-sex marriage and illegitimacy in Scandinavian countries. Norway, for example, has had de-facto same-sex marriage since the early nineties. In Nordland, the most liberal county of Norway, where they fly “gay” rainbow flags over their churches, out-of-wedlock births have soared—more than 80 percent of women giving birth for the first time, and nearly 70 percent of all children, are born out of wedlock! Across all of Norway, illegitimacy rose from 39 percent to 50 percent in the first decade of same-sex marriage.

Anthropologist Stanley Kurtz writes, “When we look at Nordland and Nord-Troendelag — the Vermont and Massachusetts of Norway — we are peering as far as we can into the future of marriage in a world where gay marriage is almost totally accepted. What we see is a place where marriage itself has almost totally disappeared.” He asserts that “Scandinavian gay marriage has driven home the message that marriage itself is outdated, and that virtually any family form, including out-of-wedlock parenthood, is acceptable.””

Already, Stonewall’s “Education for All” education pack for teachers promotes the reading of pro-homosexual story books in class and acting out as plays, and even contains explicit recommendations that students should be taught to be resilient to the views and values of their parents.

Men and women are not interchangeable. I believe that each plays an important role in the upbringing and raising of a child. In his book, Frank Turek quotes David Blankenhorn’s The Future of Marriage, in which he writes, “Across history and cultures . . . marriage’s single most fundamental idea is that every child needs a mother and a father. Changing marriage to accommodate same-sex couples would nullify this principle in culture and in law.” Another important point is that same-sex parents are liable to confuse their child’s sexual/gender identity. As Dr. Michael Brown notes here, it is already official school policy in San Francisco that a boy who identifies as transgender can turn up to school wearing a girl’s dress and utilise the girls’ bathroom and locker room.

Religious liberty is also, it would seem, a target. Take, for example, the relatively recent case of Mr & Mrs Bull. They were fined £3,600 for declining to rent a double room to a gay couple, despite the fact that it had been against their long-term policy statement to allow unmarried couples to share a room.

An organisation called “Scotland for Marriage” recently emerged in an effort to combat the proposed redefinition of marriage in Scotland. You can visit their website to sign the petition or participate in the Scottish consultation (Scots only in both cases). There is also a petition that has been set up on ipetitions, which you can access here (again, Scots only).

Recommended further reading

Comparing the Lifestyles of Homosexual Couples to Married Couples (Dr. Timothy J. Dailey) – Looks at various relevant studies and concludes that (a) heterosexual marriages last longer as compared to homosexual ones; (b) partners involved in heterosexual relationships are more likely to remain faithful than partners involved in homosexual ones; (c) where gay marriage or civil partnership is legal, the overwhelming majority of homosexuals do not register their union; (d) individuals involved homosexual relationships are at a much higher risk of contracting disease or other health problems than are heterosexual relationships; (e) Intimate partner violence is more frequent in homosexual relationships than in heterosexual ones.

Correct Not Politically Correct: How Same Sex Hurts Everyone (Dr. Frank Turek) — Persuasively argues that same-sex-marriage is not conducive to the best interests of society. This is also the book which recently cost Dr. Frank Turek his employment with Cisco and Bank of America!

Marriage on Trial: The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage and Parenting (Glenn T. Stanton and Dr. Bill Maier) — Convincingly defends the traditional view of marriage and parenting.

What is Marriage? (Sherif Girgis, Robert P. George & Ryan T. Anderson) — A paper in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy (43 pages in length) which builds a powerful secular case against same-sex-marriage based not on religious tradition or ‘holy writ’, but on publically accessible argumentation.

Christianity Today: Same Sex Marriage: A compilation of lots of interesting articles on this subject.

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Kortney Blythe Gordon: Short Life, Timeless Impact

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The measure of a life is not its length but its impact.  Kortney Blythe Gordon made a timeless impact in her 28 years here on earth.  In fact, she did more in 28 years than most people even think about in 80.  Kortney was a fearless Christian and abortion abolitionist who saved souls and thousands of babies from abortion and their mothers from regret.  She and her unborn child, Sophy, died when their car was struck by another car on October 8.

The outpouring of support from the Christian and pro-life communities has been overwhelming.  God’s grace is evident in the lives of those who loved her.  That’s why, despite their grief, her father Larry (a close friend and member of the CrossExamined team), husband Ben, and Uncle Don sat down with me only four days after the tragedy to tell story after story of how Kortney impacted everyone with her unique ability to blend uncompromising truth with inviting grace.  (She was so good at what she did that she even became a mentor to her Uncle who originally got her into pro-life ministry!)  You can listen to their inspiring reflections about Kortney, and what she would want us to do now, on the October 15 CrossExamined radio program podcasted here.

Here is Kortney in 2009 speaking truth to power (Michelle Obama attended this event).

One question that we are all thinking: Why would God allow something like this to happen to someone sold out for Him?

Here are few thoughts.

1.  We know that we live in a fallen world where evil exists and no one is guaranteed 80 healthy years (in fact, contrary to what you hear on most “Christian” TV, Christians are called to suffer like our Savior).

2.  We know that God rights all things in the end, and that this is made possible by His own perfect sacrifice on the cross.

3.  While we don’t know the specific reason why this event occurred, we know why we don’t know– we are are finite and God is infinite. We see a small part of the picture from our limited time-bound perspective, but God sees it all. God knows how this tragedy will be used to bring about good at some point in time and certainly in eternity.  In fact, how you and I respond to this tragedy may be some of the good He will accomplish.

To learn more about Kortney and her organization go to http://www.studentsforlife.org/.

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180: The Best Pro-Life Question Ever

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Ray Comfort has done a masterful job with this video. With one question, he will help change minds and save the lives of many. Yes, I know it is 33 minutes long, but it is well worth your time.

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Could God’s Moral Commands Be Improved?

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When we don’t study the historical and literary context of a passage, we often draw the wrong conclusions.  Such is the case with some atheists who complain about the apparent immorality of God’s commands in the Old Testament.  Dr. William Lane Craig answers several questions about this (and his debate with atheist Sam Harris) on his website (ReasonableFaith.org).  His succinct response is worth repeating here:

Question:

I recently watched your debate with Sam Harris, and had a few questions for you.

First, If morals are determined by God’s edict, then it seems to suggest that they are non negotiable. I say this because a being who is defined as all good would not give us a faulty moral stance and expect us to follow it. So, how do we improve our morals if it is an obvious improvement to not follow the bible? I make claim to the old testament where frivolous crimes carry the punishment of death by stoning. Wouldn’t it be more moral to not stone homosexuals to death, and instead allow them to contribute to society?

Second, In the question and answer section, you make the claim that the bible is a good moral foundation because you can think of no alternative from an atheistic perspective. Is that not a fallacy of an appeal to ignorance?

Lastly, tying the two together, Would you not agree that it is morally reprehensible to refuse to adopt a more moral world view? It seems that the biblical Christian moral foundation can be improved by ignoring bible passages (such as stoning to death for homosexuality), and atheists are just as capable of obtaining such a moral foundation (which incidentally is an improvement on the bible).

William
United States

Dr. Craig responds: I think there are some fundamental misunderstandings lying behind your questions, William, which vitiate their force. Nevertheless, I believe that questions of this sort perplex many. So let’s take them in order.

1. On a Divine Command theory of ethics such as I defended in the debate, God’s commands to us are non-negotiable in the sense that we have a moral obligation to obey God’s commands. To disobey His commands is to fail to discharge our moral duties.

It does not follow from this that moral improvement is impossible. For God’s commands can be contingent upon the realities of the human condition relative to the times and places of the recipients of those commands. Real people in the circumstances in which they exist may not be capable of receiving or carrying out God’s moral ideal for them and so are given commands which may be much less than ideal but nonetheless suited for the reality of their situation.

This is not just a hypothetical possibility. This is what the Bible teaches about God’s commands. One of the clearest examples of this is Jesus’ teaching concerning the Mosaic law on divorce. “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been that way ” (Matt. 19.8) Here Jesus says that the law of Moses did not represent God’s ideal for marriage established at creation but was historically conditioned due to the moral callousness of the persons to whom it was given.

One of the positive features of Paul Copan’s book Is God a Moral Monster?, to which I referred in the debate, is his emphasis that Old Testament laws were historically conditioned to a particular people at a particular time and a particular place and were never intended to be timeless ethical principles that would govern all peoples at all times under all circumstances. God gave ancient Israel laws that were suited to their historical circumstances, even if they didn’t express His moral ideal.

Moreover, another important factor you overlook, William, is the distinction between moral law and civil law. Ancient Israel under Moses was a theocracy: God was the head of the government. We don’t live in a theocracy, so many acts which are deeply immoral (like adultery) are not illegal. No such distinction existed in ancient Israel. So adultery was a capital crime. (You’re mistaken, by the way, in thinking that homosexuality as such was a capital crime; what was criminal was sexual activity outside of marriage, whether heterosexual or homosexual.) In our sexually promiscuous society such an assessment of adultery’s immorality seems just inconceivable. But I take that to be a measure of how far short we fall of God’s moral ideal for marriage and how seriously He takes chastity and marital fidelity. Even though adultery is not illegal in a non-theocratic society, it remains a sin that that is deeply immoral in God’s sight. Since we live in a non-theocratic society, we should not try to make everything that is immoral also illegal.

2. I’m confident that I made no such claim as you ascribe to me. In the first place, the claim seems to blur the distinction I was underlining all night of the difference between moral epistemology and moral ontology. The question of the foundation of moral values and duties is a question of moral ontology. So the Bible is just irrelevant to that question. The Bible would become relevant only if we were asking the epistemological question as to the content of our moral duties. On that question I do think that the Bible is a useful guide, so long as one uses it correctly (for example, not taking commands issued under a theocratic state out of their historical context and interpreting them as timeless ethical principles). Second, I most certainly do not adopt the Bible as a guide to moral behavior just because I can think of no alternative from an atheistic perspective. I have given evidence for thinking that Jesus of Nazareth is God’s Son and the personal revelation of God, so that one ought to believe what he taught, including his ethical teachings. Finally, third, I can think of lots of atheistic alternatives (like Sam Harris’s view); I just don’t think they’re tenable.

3. I’d agree that if a person is informed about the moral adequacy of competing views and chooses a less moral view over the view he knows to be superior, then that person has acted immorally. But the proper comparison here will not be between Christianity and atheism. For as I argued in the debate, the atheistic alternative is incapable of furnishing a sound foundation for objective moral values and duties. That’s why, in response to Sam Harris’ remark, “if there is a less moral framework than the one Dr. Craig is proposing, I haven’t heard of it,” I exclaimed, “The less moral framework is atheism! Atheism has no grounds for objective moral values or duties.” Until you answer the Value Problem, the “is/ought” problem, and the “is implies can” problem, William, you have no grounds for thinking atheism to be capable of securing such a foundation. Now that puts you in a difficult moral situation. For in the absence of answers to those objections, you are by your own lights rejecting a more moral worldview and therefore acting in a morally reprehensible way.

So if there is a comparison to be drawn here, it will be between competing forms of theism. Is Christianity, for example, a moral improvement over Mosaic Judaism? Yes; I have already affirmed that the moral system in ancient Israel was inferior to the revelation of God’s more perfect moral will by Jesus.

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The Atheist Inquisition

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Two High Court judges in the UK have ruled that a Christian couple can no longer provide a home to foster kids under the age of ten.  Why?  Because the couple does not agree with homosexual practice!

The judges declared that they were “secular.”  This ruling is a kind of atheist inquisition.  Contrary to popular opinion, all laws legislate morality, and there is no neutrality on moral issues, nor is there a neutral worldview.   This ruling legislates the view that any view that contradicts homosexual practice will not be tolerated– conservative religious and moral beliefs must give way to homosexuality.  Keep in mind that the Christian couple– Eunice and Owen Johns– were not even addressing homosexuality with their young foster kids.  According to the court, simply holding natural law, traditional religious views disqualifies them from being foster parents.  That’s not “tolerance,” that’s totalitarianism.

In fact, during the case, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, an official watchdog, suggested that the couple could attend a ‘re-education’ programme, according to Mrs. Johns. ‘Why do we need to be re-educated? Because we believe that homosexuality is not right?’ she said.

The people who say they are fighting for “tolerance” have proven once again that they are the most intolerant people out there.  Unless Christians and others start standing up, the atheist inquisition will continue.

Melanie Phillips does a good job highlighting the numerous problems with this absurd ruling here.  Worth the read.

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Slavery and Abortion: The Justifications are the Same

Today is the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, one the most famous cases in Supreme Court history.   As we reflect on 52 million dead since the decision– and are reminded of the horrific reality of abortion by the discovery of the abortuary in Philadelphia (click here if you can stomach reading the grand jury report)–  note that Roe has a number of parallels with another famous case, Dred Scott v. Sandford.  

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

7 to 2

Slavery is legal

Blacks are not persons

Blacks are the property of their owners (masters)

Abolitionists should not impose morality on the slave owner

Roe v. Wade (1973)

7 to 2

Abortion is legal

Unborn are not persons

Unborn are the property of their owners (mothers)

Pro-lifers should not impose morality on the mother

The truth of the abortion matter is that everyone is seeking to impose morality. While pro-life lifers want to impose continued pregnancy on the mother, pro-abortion people are imposing death on the baby whenever an abortion is chosen. Yes, a woman has a right to control her own body, but not if she kills an innocent human being unnecessarily in the process. And we know scientifically that there is a 100% genetic human being in a woman’s womb.

Unlike slavery, which took a war to end, it’s time we peacefully ended this abortion tragedy in America.  The right to life is the right to all other rights– if you don’t have life you don’t have anything.

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The Euthyphro Dilemma

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Excerpt from “Jesus Is Involved In Politics! Why aren’t You? Why Isn’t Your Church?” Rational Free Press 2010 (c) Neil MammenAvailable on Amazon and at www.JesusIsInvolvedInPolitics.com Socrates (to Euthyphro): “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?”

Plato, The Euthyphro Dilemma

Christian morality is based on pleasing or satisfying the whimsical capricious God of the Bible, with only secondary importance for “doing unto others as you would yourself” and “loving your neighbor.”

Council for Secular Humanism1

Pointy Headed Boss (to Dilbert): “You are not allowed to have internal phone lists on your wall. There are excellent reasons for this policy, and I hope to someday know what they are.”

Later – Pointy Headed Boss (to Catbert, Evil Director of Human Resource): “They’re getting suspicious about the Random Policy Generator.”

Dilbert Cartoon

 

Why The Law Was Given:Is God Capricious? Is God Good?

Did God arbitrarily make up the laws?

My Hindu friend who always argues with me about religion, had a smirk on his face. Now, you must realize that he was only Hindu by name and by culture, not by conviction. He was a functional agnostic. The fact that we were eating at a vegetarian restaurant was because he’d grown up vegetarian and never developed a taste for meat. “Why is god good?” he asked with that smirk. “Is he good because whatever he does is good? If he said killing infidels was good would that make it good?”

When we try to argue that God’s moral values are applicable to everyone and should be used as a basis for legislation, we have to first prove that God is not capricious. What my Hindu friend had been reading was the atheist claim that God arbitrarily decides what is good and what is bad. That, they say, makes Him capricious and His laws unworthy. Let me provide you with a definition of the word capricious.

Capricious adj.: determined by chance or impulse or whim rather than by necessity or reason; “authoritarian rulers are frequently capricious.”2

The quote at the beginning of this chapter from the Council for Secular Humanism claims God is capricious and whimsical; He randomly decides what is good and what is evil for no good reason. This was Socrates’ question to his student Euthyphro.

Bertrand Russell the avidly avowed atheist formulated the problem this way in his book, Why I Am Not A Christian:

If you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, you are then in this situation: Is that difference due to God’s fiat [decree/command] or is it not? If it is due to God’s fiat, then for God Himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good.

If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, you must then say that right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of God’s fiat, because God’s fiats are good and not good independently of the mere fact that he made them. If you are going to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their essence logically anterior to[prior to/separate from] God.3

In other words, Russell said that if good is good because God randomly decided what was good, then good is not really good. It is arbitrary. But if good is good because of something separate from God, then God is not sovereign because He’s a slave to this goodness and thus goodness is greater than God. Is Russell right? Of course he is not, and I’ll show you how to refute him completely in the next few pages.

Is whatever we do for God good?

Remember the Gestapo Captain and the liberal Rabbi in the Walter Martin story we described in an earlier chapter. The liberal Rabbi who believes there is no objective right or wrong is asked by the Gestapo Captain, “I’m going to kill you, is there any reason why I shouldn’t?”

The liberal Rabbi can’t say, “Because it’s wrong or because it’s inhumane or because it’s bad.”4

In many ways, the Gestapo Captain was a relativistic thinker just like the liberal Rabbi. The Captain thought that whatever he did for the Nazi party or the German people was automatically good and that morality was something that the Nazis, not the Jews, got to define. In the same way if we were to say blindly that whatever we do for God is automatically good, it could lead to relativistic thinking and the claim of capriciousness. So let’s see how we can refute this claim.

Why God is not capricious

First, we must understand that it’s important that the laws that we are given be non-capricious real laws with real consequences. If God were to give us laws that had no real consequences and merely order us to obey them because it was His whim, then He would indeed be capricious. And those laws would be illogical, unnecessary, random and arbitrary.5 Sadly many Christians don’t seem to realize this. I personally didn’t either until I had to respond to an atheist about it. (This is one of the reasons for my zeal for apologetics).

Take the first point: All the laws that God gave us must be real laws with real and negative consequences to humans (I will prove this with examples later). But that means when we sin, we are effectively committing a double crime – that is, doing two bad things. We are hurting ourselves and others, and we are rebelling against the Almighty G
od who created us. The latter being the more serious crime, but understandably not one that we wish to legislate.

Second, we have to understand that the secular atheistic humanists have phrased the problem based on their limited understanding of God. It’s not that God is capricious or that He is beholden to a higher value. What will refute them and Russell is simply this:

God is good.

And that is our second point.

Huh? You ask.

Let me explain. It’s not that God has arbitrarily determined what good is. Nor it is that He is beholden to a higher value than Himself. It’s just that His very nature is one of goodness. God is good. God is by nature good. Goodness is who He is. God could no more decide tomorrow that torturing babies for fun was good than he could ever stop being God. Yes, God is enslaved but He is enslaved by His own nature. He is enslaved to God. He is enslaved to Himself. It’s that vicious cycle similar to God having to be the center of His own praises. God could no more stop being good than He could stop being God.6 Good is good, and God is good. Their sources are the same.

“Ah but,” my atheist friends complain, “you’ve not defined good, you’ve just said that God is good, so your definition of good is God and your definition of God is good. That’s circular reasoning, and you can’t prove it.”

But as we have already shown it is actually circular reasoning if you try to create a definition of good without a supreme moral giver. You need a standard and you need a standard giver.

Since my atheist friends cannot come to a definition of good without a standard, they are in a similar dilemma. At least our theory has explanatory power and is self-consistent.7 Do note, however, that I do not use this methodology to prove the existence of God. There are enough other ways to do this (all outside the scope of this book, see “Who is Agent X? Proving that Science and Logic show it is more reasonable to think God exists,” Neil Mammen, Rational Free Press, 2009).

Since the source of the definition of good is self evident, and the character of God is good, then it follows that God and the source of good can be the same. So there is no capriciousness in God.

But is it circular reasoning? It isn’t, if I can show that God has to be good to be God. It’s not circular reasoning then because being good inherently is a necessary condition for any god to be the God.

A bad god won’t last long

Let’s look at this. God could not be anything but good. In other words, there could not exist a god, who was bad, or a god who was irrational, or a god who was not loving. Why? Because it would not work. An irrational god would self-destruct and could not last for all eternity. An evil god would never survive. A deficient god who was in any way not self sufficient, or in any way destructive, or in anyway not ‘just,’ or not loving could not last for infinity as his own shortcomings would destroy him.

How can I prove this? Quite simply: Bad cannot exist except as a privation of good, bad is a corruption of good. What I mean by that is that there is nothing such as “bad,” bad only exists if good is corrupted.8 If good ceases to exist, bad will cease to exist as well. A good example is a shadow (note, I don’t mean darkness9). A shadow cannot exist without light. If a shadow were to destroy all light, it would destroy itself. All that would be left is darkness, which is not a shadow, it’s nothing.

That means infinite bad cannot exist, as it will cease to exist as soon as it becomes infinite. Since by necessity God is infinite10, He can never be infinitely or perfectly bad, as He will self-destruct (of course, the concept of God self-destructing doesn’t make sense, and that’s why we see that a bad god is impossible).

People can argue about it any way they want, but if they adhere to logic they’ll end up coming to the same conclusion.

I would theorize that even Satan realized that if he were able to survive without God (remember Satan was merely a created being),11 he would inevitably destroy himself as he became fully evil. A deficient evil being like Satan could not become or maintain himself as a universal eternal being. This is further exacerbated by the fact that evil has no definition if good does not exist; yet good, while not being fully appreciated, would still exist without evil. In all evil situations some good must exist. Even in Hitler’s Germany, those who were Nazi’s did good things. They loved their children. They cared for their elderly parents, (though who knows how long that would have lasted with their euthanasia programs?) It is impossible to imagine how the Nazis could have continued to exist if every Nazi was absolutely evil.12

So, as we can see, good can exist without evil. However, evil will destroy itself without good. Thus to exist, God must be good. Good must be a core characteristic of God. It’s not separate. Bertrand Russell has been refuted.

Note too that “Good” as we see, is a transcendent value. Good existed long before a universe existed. Similarly 1+1= 2 long before any universe was created and it will still be true after all universes have died a heat death. There are no possible universes where 1+1 is not equal to 2. Mathematics is a transcendent art. So are truth, justice, logic, rationality, love, reason and well, set theory among others.13 They are all part of the very intrinsic nature of God. They are transcendent and eternal.

 Addendum

Do note, this blog is not attempting to prove any of the following: 1. That God is indeed actually good. I’ll leave that argument to others. It only concludes that IF He exists he must be good.2. That God exists (for that evidence please refer to the book “Who is Agent X? Proving Science and Logic show it’s more rational to think God exists.” available at www.NoBlindFaith.com)

End notes:

  1. www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=columns&page=news
  2. www.thefreedictionary.com/capricious3. Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian (New York: Touchstone, Simon & Schuster, 1957), 12. As quoted by Gregory Koukl in Euthyphro’s Dilemma on the Stand to Reason website.www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5236
  3. Yes, yes, I know you are thinking that he could say, “I have information that I can us
    e to buy my life…” but let’s assume like most of the Jews who were sadly killed, he doesn’t have anything that the Gestapo Captain needed, that the Captain couldn’t have taken anyway.
  4. Someone could argue that the command by God in the Garden of Eden, “Don’t eat of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,” was capricious. But that would be presumptuous. Whenever we are dealing with an intelligent agent like God, presuming you know all the parameters as a human is illogical. We can’t argue from the lack of evidence. In addition as mentioned in an earlier footnote, if God did not give Adam the ability and opportunity to reject Him or disobey Him, He would not have truly given Adam freewill.
  5. Remember as we’ve said in a previous footnote, one of the things that we need to be clear about is that God cannot do anything. He cannot stop being God, He cannot sin, He cannot cease to exist, and He cannot be irrational or illogical. He cannot learn. He cannot make a round two- dimensional square. He cannot make 1+1 = 3. All of those actually are derived from “He cannot stop being God.” For a full logical response to “Can God create a stone so big that he cannot move it” see www.JesusIsInvolvedInPolitics.com and do a search for “Stone so big.”
  6. William Lane Craig, one of this century’s best debaters and philosophers, has used this argument quite successfully in many debates against atheists. I.e. if objective moral values exist, then God exists. Objective moral values do exist, thus God exists. See www.williamlanecraig.com. I always describe Dr. Craig this way: He’s the guy who, after he’s done debating an atheist, you actually feel sorry for the atheist. In his winsome manner, Craig destroys every single one of their arguments. Most atheists don’t know what hit them.
  7. One could try to argue that bad is a corruption of an amoral thing as well. For instance, a knife is amoral, for one can use it to kill instead of cut an apple. But the very existence of that knife is “good.” It is good that the knife exists because it is useful and has purpose. Non-existence would be the only truly amoral thing, but non-existence is not an option if anything at all exists.
  8. Darkness would be nothing or amorality in this example, i.e. neutrality- neither good nor evil.
  9. 1This can be proved in one paragraph; science agrees that whatever caused the Universe to begin at the point of the Big Bang was outside of time and space. This can only be an infinite being, since you cannot create time if you are in time. For more on this go to www.NoBlindFaith.com and search for “proving God exists without using the Bible.”
  10. I have a trick question that I use now and then. I ask, “Who is the opposite of Satan?” The answer is not God. Satan is a created being not a creator. He is not omnipresent in time and space and all dimensions. He is not omnipotent or omniscient. The closest opposite to Satan may be one of the archangels. If you ask, “Who is the opposite of God?” The answer is “No one” No one can be the equal and opposite of the Almighty Eternal Creator.This also means that Satan must be of such a mind that either he knowing that he can never destroy God wishes to be a thorn in God’s side till he Satan is destroyed or thinking that he can destroy God is willing to destroy himself to do so.
  11. This is similar to the concept of Total Depravity. We humans are totally depraved, but we are not absolutely depraved. This means that while we have a depraved sin nature, not everything we do is sinful or destructive.
  12. Note that physical, atomic, and chemical laws are not necessarily transcendent because they did not causally (that’s cause-ally not casually) exist before the universe was created and one could feasibly reason than a universe could be created with different laws.
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Parasitic Evil and Independent Good

[Stepping away from the cultural commentary and scientific or political headlines. This is a philosophy lesson, drawn heavily from 4th century metaphysics. I hope you enjoy this blast from the past, repackaged and reapplied for today]

Evil seems to be real, yet in what sense can we say it “exists”?

Some, of course, say evil has neither existence nor reality. That position is logically possible, and some (otherwise) smart people have advocated it before. But it’s counterintuitive, morally bankrupt, and repugnant to our moral senses when faced with its full implications. One has every freedom to deny the existence or reality of evil. And, by implication, he or she is thereby refusing the privilege [responsibility?] of naming as”evil” the Holocaust, female-genital mutilation, or chatel slavery. But such brave souls should know that they are likely stifling in themselves the very epistemic senses that lead everyone around them to shutter at such hubris. Suppressing knowledge, even if its the amorphous categories of moral knowledge, is hardly laudible and likely misleading. And even though its possible for most people in the world to unite in error, if they unite in disagreeing with you, you might want to check your figures again lest their many minds caught a detail your single mind didn’t.

It is fairly safe then, at least by the limited evidence found in the general consensus of most of the world’s population, that evil is in some sense an existing reality. We are left then to explain how such apparent existence occurs.

One of the classic, and I think, strongest answers to this question is the “privation definition.”

The essence of the privation definition is that every evil exists parasitically, corrupting its host. The host can be thought of as some kind of goodness. That goodness can occur with agents–such as human beings, in which case it is moral goodness and evil would be some kind of compromise or corruption of that moral goodness. Agents can be “good” insofar as that are and do whatever they are SUPPOSED to be or do. If people are supposed to exercise justice, the good moral agent exercises justice.

Or the host goodness can occur as a non-agent like a weather pattern, a tree, or a tiger. Goodness, in that case, is a kind of “ontological goodness” not unlike that described in Genesis 1-2 where God looks on his creation and calls it “good”–even before he made human agents and before any angels or demons are named among creation. This “ontological goodness” refers to the positive existence of things (ie: they add something to the universe). Insofar as they are and add what they should, they are “good.” In the case of ontological goodness, evil would happen when an otherwise “good” natural phenomenon goes wrong, such as a deadly tornado, a tree-fungus, or a tiger attack.

That groundwork having been laid, we can get to the heart of my concern here. Evil is parasitic precisely because goodness is independent.

Put another way, there seem to be independent goods but no independent evils. That is, there are good things that have no need of a more basic evil thing among its causes. A loving man and loving wife can, theoretically, be perfectly committed to each other in love and responsibility and give birth to a cherished little baby. There is no need for “evil” to enter the scenario. But, every evil has some more basic good that it requires in its causal set, such as a good material cause or a good efficient cause. If that baby is born blind, that would be a natural evil–which could not exist if there were no good baby to corrupt (a material cause). You might call this unequal relation a conditional relation (symbolized in logic with the horseshoe). In contrast, we may look at the Taoist or yin-yang view of morality. By the Taoist view, evil and good are more comparable to a biconditional relation, wherein the two parties relate equally and exactly too to each other. For a Yin-yang view to work, good must be just as dependent on evil as evil is to good. But from the baby example, and the examples below we see that it clearly is not.

If a man murders an innocent person, it would have to be voluntary to qualify–legally–as murder. But volition is a good thing (ie: we can roughly translate it as “freedom”). But volition does NOT require murder. Hence, the evil of murder requires a good efficient cause in the form of volition though volition does not require any such evil.

If there were no sexuality (good) there would be no rape (bad), whereas, there is no need for rape to have sexuality. Hence rape requires a good formal cause (ie: healthy sexuality) which does not itself require the evil of rape.

There is no arrogance (bad) without valuing one’s self (good), but valuing one’s self does not require arrogance. Arrogance thus requires a good abstract material cause of valuing one’s self which does not, in turn, require manifestation as arrogance.

There is no football injury (a bad thing) without the sport of football (a good thing), but the sport of football does not require an injury. Hence, football injuries require a good concrete material cause in the sport of footbal though football does not itself require any injuries.

Pretty much every evil I think of operates like this. So the philosophical “privation” definition of evil is fairly defensible when we consider good and evil, not simply as contrasts, but rather with consideration for their causal dependence.

Evil thus proves to be a parasite. Both evil and goodness exist and are real, but evil is always dependent whereas goodness can be independent.

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Gay Rights: Don’t Ask, Don’t Think

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The following column created quite a long discussion when it was posed on Townhall.com last week.  I’m sure it will here too (though I won’t be part of the discussion for at least a week).  Please let me know if you are benefiting from the comment portion of this blog.  We are considering shutting the comments portion down for a number of reasons, not the least of which being the time commitment and the fact that most comments seem more about defending positions at all costs rather than a gracious exchange of ideas in pursuit of the truth.  I appreciate your honest comments about comments.  Thanks!   Here now, the column:  “Gay Rights:  Don’t Ask, Don’t Think”

The central argument in favor of same-sex marriage or overturning “Don’t ask don’t tell” contains a fatal flaw.  In fact, this is the flaw at the heart of the entire gay rights movement. 

Joint Chief Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen dutifully proclaimed the flaw as truth the other day when speaking in favor of ending the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy. He said, “I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.”

Lie about who they are?

Sorry Admiral, but as a former ROTC instructor and legal officer in the United States Navy, I helped deny entrance to potential recruits and prosecuted existing service people for all sorts of behaviors that were incompatible with unit cohesion and military readiness.  As you know, the Uniformed Code of Military Justice prohibits numerous behaviors that are not criminal offenses in civilian life (including adultery, fraternization and gambling with a subordinate), yet I never once saw anyone excused for their behavior by claiming that’s who they are.

The military is essential to our survival as a nation.  It’s not a social experiment and serving in it is not a right.  People have to qualify and then make sacrifices. Military people must subordinate many of their individual rights to advance the national interest. Recruits must agree to give up some of the freedoms that civilians enjoy, including certain sexual freedoms and even the freedom of speech!  (That’s one reason it’s called “service.”) So even if homosexual behavior is permitted in society, that doesn’t necessarily mean it should be permitted in the military.

Having served, I believe that the military needs as few sexual distractions as possible, be they from men and women serving together in combat or open homosexuality.  The job is too difficult and critical to be complicating matters sexually.

More could be said, but I want to zero in on the fatal flaw in most gay-rights causes, and the one the Admiral repeated.  It is the failure to distinguish between desires and behavior. Having certain sexual desires—whether you were “born” with them or acquired them sometime in life—does not mean that you are being discriminated against if the law doesn’t allow the behavior you desire.

Take marriage as an example. Despite complaints by homosexual activists, every person in America already has equal marriage rights. We’re all playing by the same rules—we all have the same right to marry any non-related adult of the opposite sex. Those rules do not deny anyone “equal protection of the laws” because the qualifications to enter a marriage apply equally to everyone—every adult person has the same right to marry.

“But what about homosexuals?” you ask.  The question would better be stated, “What about people with homosexual desires?” Put that way, you can see the flaw. If sexual desires alone are the criteria by which we change our marriage (or military) laws to give people “equal rights,” then why not change them to include polygamy? After all, most men seem born with a desire for many women.  How about those who desire their relatives? By the gay rights logic, such people don’t have “equal rights” because our marriage laws have no provision for incest. And bisexuals don’t have “equal rights” because existing marriage laws don’t allow them to marry a man and a woman.

If desires alone guarantee someone special rights, why are there no special rights for pedophiles and gay bashers?  The answer is obvious—because desires, even if you were “born” with them, do not justify behavior, do not make anyone a special class, and should have no impact on our laws. (See Born Gay or a Gay Basher: No Excuse.)

Laws encourage good behavior or prevent bad behavior. Desires are irrelevant.  We enact all kinds of laws in the country and military that conflict with people’s desires.  In fact, that’s why we need them!  We wouldn’t need any laws if people always desired to do good, which is why James Madison wrote, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

In other words, there should be no legal class of “gay” or “straight,” just a legal class called “person.” And it doesn’t matter whether persons desire sex with the same or opposite sex, or whether they desire sex with children, parents, or farm animals.  What matters is whether the behavior desired is something the country or military should prohibit, permit or promote. Those are the only three choices we have when it comes to making law.

The standard comparisons to race and interracial marriage don’t work either. Sexual behavior is always a choice, race never is. You’ll find many former homosexuals, but you’ll never find a former African American.  And your race has no effect on your military readiness, but your sexual behavior often can. Likewise, race is irrelevant to marriage while gender is essential to it. Interracial couples can procreate and nurture the next generation (the overriding societal purpose of marriage), but homosexual couples cannot.

The truth is that our marriage and military laws do not discriminate against persons for “who they are”—they discriminate against the behaviors in which they engage. But so what? That’s what most laws do. For example, the Thirteenth Amendment discriminates against the behavior of some businessmen who might like to improve their profits through slavery, but it does not discriminate against those businessmen as persons.  And the First Amendment’s freedom-of-religion protections discriminate against the behavior of some Muslims who want to impose Islamic law on the entire nation, but it does not discriminate against those Muslims as persons. Likewise, our marriage and military laws discriminate against the desired behaviors of homosexuals, polygamists, bigamists, and the incestuous, but they do not discriminate against them as persons.

Now some may object to my comparison of homosexuality to polygamy, incest or pedophilia.  I agree that the behaviors are not the same, but the point here is that the logic used to justify homosexuality is the same.  “I was born with these desires” could also be used to justify polygamy, incest, pedophilia, and even gay bashing—“Don’t blame me. I just have the anti-gay gene!”

That’s the logic reduced to the absurd. And that’s why people who want to make a case for same-sex marriage or homosexual practice in the military should use different arguments.  Claiming you “are” your sexual desires, is a case of don’t ask don’t think.

If you’d like to think more about this admittedly complicated and sensitive issue, get the compact book from which this article is adapted: Correct, Not Politically Correct:  How Same-Sex Marriage Hurts Everyone.

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Abortion and Body Parts: A Personal Account

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Amy Hall of Stand to Reason wrote this post on the STR blog a few days ago.  It’s a chilling and personal account of what an abortion doctor– Lisa Harris– experienced as she performed second trimester abortions, and the moral questions that she could not avoid; namely, how can I kill an unborn baby in one room of the hospital and then work to save another of the same age in another room?  This account literally makes me queasy.

Here is most of Amy’s post (The entire post can be found here: Abortion and the Malleable Conscience):

An article posted on The Abortioneers [see the cached page here while you can], a pro-choice blog, is an interesting, inside look at the inner conflict often experienced by second trimester abortion providers, who use “large forceps with destructive teeth to remove the fetus, generally in parts.”

Since many abortion providers undergo “serious emotional reactions” after aborting a second trimester fetus and thereafter choose to limit their own services to the first trimester, the author of the article, Lisa Harris, is trying to promote more open discussion by providers about the “physiological symptoms, sleep disturbances (including disturbing dreams), effects on interpersonal relationships and moral anguish” that they experience.  Her hope is that when these reactions are squarely faced, a way of viewing them and dealing with them will be developed that will make it easier for abortion providers to continue with their work, creating a stronger pro-choice movement.

Harris describes her own experience when aborting an 18-week-old fetus while she was also 18 weeks pregnant:

As I reviewed her chart I realised that I was more interested than usual in seeing the fetal parts when I was done, since they would so closely resemble those of my own fetus. I went about doing the procedure as usual…. I used electrical suction to remove the amniotic fluid, picked up my forceps and began to remove the fetus in parts, as I always did. I felt lucky that this one was already in the breech position – it would make grasping small parts (legs and arms) a little easier. With my first pass of the forceps, I grasped an extremity and began to pull it down. I could see a small foot hanging from the teeth of my forceps. With a quick tug, I separated the leg. Precisely at that moment, I felt a kick – a fluttery “thump, thump” in my own uterus. It was one of the first times I felt fetal movement. There was a leg and foot in my forceps, and a “thump, thump” in my abdomen. Instantly, tears were streaming from my eyes – without me – meaning my conscious brain – even being aware of what was going on. I felt as if my response had come entirely from my body, bypassing my usual cognitive processing completely. A message seemed to travel from my hand and my uterus to my tear ducts. It was an overwhelming feeling – a brutally visceral response – heartfelt and unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics. It was one of the more raw moments in my life.

Harris acknowledges that while the moral status of a fetus is under debate, “it is disingenuous to argue that removing a fetus from a uterus is no different from removing a fibroid.” She also fully recognizes the strangely contradictory approaches doctors take toward fetuses of the exact same age:

As a third-year resident I spent many days in our hospital abortion clinic. The last patient I saw one day was 23 weeks pregnant. I performed an uncomplicated D&E procedure. Dutifully, I went through the task of reassembling the fetal parts in the metal tray. It is an odd ritual that abortion providers perform – required as a clinical safety measure to ensure that nothing is left behind in the uterus to cause a complication – but it also permits us in an odd way to pay respect to the fetus (feelings of awe are not uncommon when looking at miniature fingers and fingernails, heart, intestines, kidneys, adrenal glands), even as we simultaneously have complete disregard for it. Then I rushed upstairs to take overnight call on labour and delivery. The first patient that came in was prematurely delivering at 23–24 weeks. As her exact gestational age was in question, the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) team resuscitated the premature newborn and brought it to the NICU. Later, along with the distraught parents, I watched the neonate on the ventilator. I thought to myself how bizarre it was that I could have legally dismembered this fetus-now-newborn if it were inside its mother’s uterus – but that the same kind of violence against it now would be illegal, and unspeakable.

Harris distrusts her intuitive reaction to not only the abortions, but to the contradictions, and she goes on to remind us that though it struck her at the moment as bizarre, the reality was that the “difference between the [two fetuses] was, crucially, its location inside or outside of the woman’s body, and most importantly, her hopes and wishes for that fetus/baby.”

It is utterly amazing to me that a person could see some of these things so clearly, could be informed so strongly by her own moral intuition, could grasp the contradictions, and yet could have a response that seeks to find a way to overcome the “visual and visceral ways in which first and second trimester abortions are different,” rather than to reflect logically on what these things might mean and ask the question, How on earth could one person’s “hopes and wishes” magically transform “unspeakable violence” against another person into something acceptable that one ought to work hard to encourage?

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