Post Abortion

Pro-lifers slammed the international Journal of Medical Ethics for publishing late last month an article favoring “after-birth abortion”—previously known as infanticide—when children or adults are a burden to their families or when government pays for their care.

The core of the argument isn’t new at universities like Princeton, where ethicist Peter Singer has long approved killing 1-year-olds with physical or mental disabilities (see “Blue-state philosopher,” Nov. 27, 2004). But authors Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva push the argument further by defending the killing of any humans incapable of “attributing any value to their own existence.?…?Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life.”

The authors used the term “after-birth abortion” rather than “infanticide” to emphasize that countries with legal abortion operate illogically when they forbid the killing of born creatures insufficiently self-conscious to fear death. Hurt is subjective, not objective: “For a harm to occur, it is necessary that someone is in the condition of experiencing that harm.”

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The Atheist’s Burden of Proof

 

The Atheist’s Burden of Proof

by BK on July 27, 2011

I was in a discussion today with an atheist, and the subject turned to the idea of burden of proof. It is a common claim that Christians own a burden of proof to prove that God exists, but that atheists do not own any burden at all. Here’s my response, that outlines the reason I disagree with this:

Many (and probably most) atheists will say they have nothing to prove at all, because atheism (a-theism) is merely being without a belief in the existence of any gods. Therefore, the only *positive* explicit assertion they are making is about their belief, and not about the actual existence of any god. That is, they aren’t necessarily saying “God does not exist” (although some do), but rather “I don’t believe there are any gods because I have not seen sufficient evidence to lead me to believe any exist.”
This position of not having a burden of proof is fine until one considers that holding any position whatsoever – even one of skepticism – implies a lot of things about reality, knowledge, possibly ethics, etc. That is, everyone (including the atheist) has certain assumptions (let’s call them “basic beliefs”) that they are leaning on in order to make any sort of claim, including the claim “I don’t believe in God.” Stated differently – nobody is neutral. We all have a network of basic beliefs we rely upon.
So, the challenge for the atheist comes when they are presented with the question “Do you believe *the God of the Bible* exists?” Notice the question isn’t simply “do you believe in any gods?” Instead, the question is about a specific type of God – the Christian God of the Bible.
Now, if the God of the Bible was like any other god, they could get away with saying “no” and leave it at that – no burden of proof. However, the God of the Bible isn’t like any other God. He claims that everyone knows he exists. He claims that he created the world. He claims that his existence is necessary for knowledge, ethics, aesthetics, etc. In short, he makes a bold claim about everyone’s ability to reason, weigh evidence, draw conclusions, etc. He claims that none of those actions that we all do on a daily basis would be possible unless he existed as described in the Bible.
So that opens up an interesting challenge to the atheist. They aren’t explicitly denying the existence of God when they say “I don’t believe he exists”, but they most definitely are *implicitly* denying his existence. Why is this? Well, it is because they are doing all these things that the God of the Bible claims ownership to, while at the same time they are saying “I don’t believe he exists.” They are relying upon all these basic beliefs that the God of the Bible claims *only* make sense if he exists.
To say they don’t believe he exists is to say that it is *possible* to do these things (reason, weigh evidence, etc.) without him existing. But God says it is not possible to do them without him existing. Therefore (by implication) they are saying “This kind of God *does not* exist”.
It isn’t an explicitly positive claim that God does not exist, but is rather an implicitly positive claim. Either way, it is a positive claim, and therefore they own a burden of proof.

God desires all men to be saved...all men or all men?

     When it comes to reading the Word of God it is quite easy to read a verse and forget that there is a surrounding context. What I mean is this; we are prone to looking at verses in the bible in isolation, and because of this, we can easily misinterpret what the word of God is actually saying. For example: in the book of Revelation chapter 3 we see Christ speaking to the Church of Laodicea. In verse 20 we read “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” This verse is used by many Christians when they are evangelizing to unbelievers. It goes something like this “if you open up the door to your heart and let Jesus in, He will surely come in and you will be saved”.  There is a problem when saying something like this (or something similar) or using this verse to witness to an unbeliever and it is mainly this: In this chapter and specifically this verse, Christ is speaking to the Church, not un-professing unbelievers. I hope this example shows why understanding the context is important. Having the understanding of context will help us in our further study of particular verses, and our main text of focus will be in 1 Timothy 2:4 “who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”  Before we begin let’s look at this verse with a surrounding context.