Open and Closed Minds
Why are Conservatives the only ones who are supposed to have an “open mind” on an issue like abortion? Sen. Richard Durbin, a liberal Democrat, claimed that Judge Alito has a “mind that sadly is closed in some instances.” Since Alito seems to have ruled on the Conservative side of the abortion issue in past court decisions, Sen. Durbin is concerned that he won’t have an “open mind” on the abortion issue if he sits on the Supreme Court. Are we to assume that the senator believes that a pro-abortion judicial appointee would or even should have an open mind on the anti-abortion, pro-life side? Once the Supreme Court rules on issues that liberals like, they become “settled law.”
When a Fetus Should not be a Person
I never cared for HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) lanes. They are patently unjust and discriminatory. What if a person has a job that does lend itself to sharing a ride with someone else? A vehicle can have a driver and a ten year-old child sitting in the passenger seat, and the vehicle qualifies for the HOV lane. A single person, childless couples, and empty nesters have limited opportunities to take advantage of the HOV lane as compared to families with children. A woman tried to claim that she had a right to be in the HOV lane because she was pregnant. She argued that a “fetus” constituted an HOV qualification. How does a police officer know who’s pregnant and who isn’t without stopping cars to check? What if there’s nothing to see? Should the officer take the woman’s word? Then this discriminates against men and infertile and menopausal women. Having said all of this, HOV lanes should be abolished. When we purchase gasoline, we all pay the same rate in taxes; therefore, we should all have the same access to the same roads.
Will Private Schools Remain Private?
A private Christian school in Loganville, Georgia, expelled a student for immoral sexual behavior outside the school. The school has a specific moral code that spells out behaviors that are considered immoral and inappropriate. The family is now suing the school for $1 million dollars in damages because of invasion of privacy and breach of contract. One of the reasons Christian schools get started is because of the inability of government schools to deal with moral issues like homosexuality and immorality in general. No one is compelled to go to a private school. No one is forcing families to make the decision to choose a private school. If you don’t like what a school is doing, then take your child and your money and go somewhere else, but don’t complain about something that you know was written in the student manual when you enrolled your child. Homosexual activists will set-up Christian schools and churches and then turn around and sue them. This happened to an Orthodox Presbyterian Church in San Francisco a number of years ago that “included frequent vandalism of both his church and his home, violent and profane protests outside his church during worship services, church services being interrupted, repeated threats against his life and the lives of his children, and even the fire bombing of his home.”[1]
Science without a Standard
Modern-day scientists do not want philosophy, metaphysics, or religion in the laboratory. The scientific community must now deal with South Korean stem cell pioneer Hwang Woo Suk who apparently faked his research on cloning. He “fooled the editors of Science, which is regarded as one of the world’s premier journals,” Rita Rubin of USA Today wrote. An investigation “shows just how badly the editors were fooled.” How did this happen in a magazine that requires peer review? Intelligent Design advocates are continually told that their articles need to be peer reviewed before they can be published. Of course, the magazine gatekeepers have a presuppositional bias against ID, so many authors never get published in these so-called “premier journals” because of worldview prejudice. But because these same journals are predisposed to accept anything related to cloning, peer review isn’t necessary, and if it does take place, it’s more of a rubber stamp formality than real scrutiny. The secular scientific community has another problem. Where do these fooled scientists go to determine if Hwang did anything wrong? They can’t go to their science class since morality is not science. The scientific method cannot be applied to ethics since there is no empirical way to determine whether something is right or wrong. Science works on “trust.” “The whole idea is that there’s so much trust involved, and there has to be. If we completely lose trust in our authors, then we might as well hang it up,” says Catherine DeAngelis, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association.[2] So then, how does the closed system of science, based on materialistic naturalism, account for the idea of trust? Please show me trust in a test tube or recover it from a fossil dig. Is there a testable mathematical formula that I can use to determine trust and honesty? The title of the USA Today article is “Science takes a hard look inward.” What does this mean? What is “inward”? The soul? The conscience? These don’t exist in the world of science.
Endnotes:
[1] Debby Bacon, a review of Charles and Donna McIlhenny’s When the Wicked Seize the City: A Grim Look at the Future and a Grim Warning to the Church (Huntington House, 1993) in The Blue Banner (March–April 1994), 3: http://www.fpcr.org/pdf/BlueBanner3-3-4.pdf
[2] Quoted in Rita Rubin, “Science takes hard look inward,” USA Today( (January 11, 2006), 4D.