News
Saturday Selections – August 31, 2019
Real men are courageous
Driving your car fast might get you an adrenaline rush, but it doesn't make you brave. Real courage involves doing the thing you fear because you know it is important, and right, and someone has got to do it so it might as well be you. David Murray lays out God's call for men to be courageous.
Environmentalists have gotten it wrong again and again
This article shares some of the predictions made over the last 50 years, compared to how things turned out. I will note the article title speaks of "Greenies" getting it wrong every time and it would be nice if the rhetoric was tamped down just a bit. They'd have to be truly remarkable to be wrong a perfect 100% of the time.
Why human rights and chimpanzee rights can't co-exist
There is a push for animal rights that will turn human rights on their head. It comes down to this: the world, both Christian and gentile alike, view the topic of rights and equality through a largely Christian perspective. We believe all men are created equal and that only makes sense if there is some sense in which we are all the same. Christians know that we are all made in God's image. And the world has no alternative explanation to offer so they make due by avoiding the topic altogether: "We are all equal and let's just not talk about why, okay!"
It is from God too, that our rights come - for example, we have the right to life, because He forbids murder.
But those pushing for chimpanzee rights want to grant rights on a gradient: they aren't arguing for chimpanzees to have all the same rights as humans, but, because they are an awful lot like us, they think they should get some of our rights. Some? Based on them sharing some of our abilities?
If we fail to recognize the difference between Image-bearers and animals, and start handing out rights based on abilities, where will that take us? We actually don't have to look very far to see. While individuals already born are treated in a generally equitable fashion – no matter how able they are or are not – the same is not true for the unborn. Their murders are justified on the very basis of them not having abilities that you and I have. They don't have a heartbeat yet? They can be killed. They can't breathe on their own yet? Let's kill them.
But what of the boy dependent 0n dialysis? If we're granting rights based on abilities, how is this disabled boy going to fare?
Thus the push for animal rights is, on the one hand, incompatible with human rights, and, on the other, simply a continuation of the same lie behind abortion and euthanasia too - that the value of our lives lies in how able we are.
The counter to that? Only God's own Truth: that we are precious because we are Image-bearers of the One True God.
IVF and its millions of frozen embryos
IVF is an issue the Church should be talking about, but isn't. The result? Christians, unaware of the implications, and at the encouragement of their doctors, may well create children they then freeze...
How to stop praying the same old things
"It doesn’t take long before rote prayers fragment your attention span and freeze your heart."
Jordan Peterson: the deepfake artists must be stopped
It is now possible to copy someone's image and voice so flawlessly that when it comes to digital video, we really can't trust our eyes and ears. The video below is of Obama making a speech he never made, and the article linked just above is Jordan Peterson detailing his experience with his own digital copies. He warns this technology has the potential to be enormously disruptive.
