Does God Care About Who You Vote For?

In an unusually bold and forthright manner (and isn't that a nice change from the timid, parsing, indecisive character which marks most modern conversation?), David Klinghoffer answers the questions of National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez. Klinghoffer, by the way, is a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute and an outspoken advocate of intelligent design. Klinghoffer is the author of several books including The Lord Will Gather Me In: My Journey to Jewish Orthodoxy, Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History, Shattered Tablets: Why America Ignores the Ten Commandments at Its Peril, and the book he specifically speaks to Lopez about, How Would God Vote?: Why the Bible Commands You to Be a Conservative.

...Kathryn Jean Lopez: So does God get a vote? And how did you get out of him what it would be? Is there Gallup in Heaven? Perhaps a Catholic might next poll the Communion of Saints on the presidential election?

David Klinghoffer: God gets a vote if citizen Kathryn Lopez gives him one. And I know that in November, you will. It’s like the old pre-women’s suffrage rationale for letting only men vole. The idea was, a husband would vote on behalf of the entire family. If I’m an enlightened husband, I consult my wife and take her views seriously, thereby voting for both of us. In this analogy, my wife is God. When we vote, we have the choice of either consulting God - as it were - or not. No, I don’t have in mind using an Ouija board. (V-O-T-E-F-O-R-M-C-C-A-I-N.) Instead, Christians and Jews used to agree that the Bible conveys a picture of reality, of how the world works, from which practical guidance can be drawn on private and public matters. That would naturally include the 20 hot-button issues that I deal with in my book, from poverty, taxes and health care to climate change, drug legalization and Islamic terror. It turns out that, when read sensitively and holistically, the Bible advocates views that are deeply conservative. Not on every issue but on most.

Lopez: Are you actually arguing that the Bible argues for the election of John McCain over Barack Obama? That voting for Obama is to vote against God?

Klinghoffer: It would probably violate federal tax laws if I told you the Bible endorses a particular candidate. I work at a think tank, after all, a 501(c)(3) organization. But even if I didn’t, I wrote this book not to inflate anyone’s election chances but to give readers and voters the tools to read the Bible as a guide to thinking about a range of issues. If on that basis, you concluded that a Biblical worldview was at odds with Obama on most issues, or on certain key litmus test issues, yet you went ahead and voted for him anyway, that would be a vote against giving God a voice in our public affairs. It would be a vote to silence God’s influence in that area, as far as it’s in your power to do so. In a real sense it would be a vote against God.

Lopez: So is God a Republican? Did the country vote against God when they elected Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton? And what about JFK?

Klinghoffer: God doesn’t have a party. He has wisdom. A party can reflect that wisdom to a greater or lesser extent. In recent decades, the Republican party has been open to granting some degree of influence to Biblical wisdom, at a time when God’s role in public life has been under attack from secularists. The conflict is more severe than ever. In elections of the past, the clash of worldviews wasn’t as blatant. You could say that of Kennedy versus Nixon. In the years since Roe v. Wade, though, we’ve seen the rise of an ideological grouping that is formed pretty clearly around an opposition to giving God a voice in public affairs. The tragedy of McCain is that while his biography gives evidence of spiritual sensitivity, he’s too allergic to public religious expression to make that clear to voters who long for a leader who “gets” it. Many in Republican leadership seem deaf to this...

Here's the whole article.

Intelligent Design? An Argument from the Womb.

The May LifeSharer letter from Vital Signs Ministries is now available online right here. In it, there's an enlightening calendar of a person's first ten weeks of life, a very exciting example of the creative power of God.

Beyond Expelled: Nancy Pearcey Goes to Niceville

Northwest Florida Daily News staff reporter Rachel Kyler writes an informative, balanced story here about Nancy Pearcey's recent lecture, "Beyond Expelled." Pearcey delivered the address to nearly 800 people at Okaloosa-Walton College at Niceville, Florida (no, that's the town's real name).

The presentation dealt with the philosophical foundations of Darwinism, its effects on and implications for American culture, and the new challenges raised to traditional Darwinian theories by Intelligent Design. Good stuff. And there's an interesting video excerpt of Pearcey's lecture as a bonus. It's all right here.

Ben Stein's "Expelled" is a "Tremendous, Compelling Film"

We had an "Expelled" party last Saturday night, a lively conversation shouted over the noise of an equally lively Old Chicago restaurant. And the talk was of Ben Stein's riveting new movie which we had just attended. John and Barb, Matt, Claire and I, Jake, Daniel, Glory and Abraham all believed the film to be an important salvo in not merely the Intelligent Design controversy but in the larger culture war of which it is a part.

And we all recommend "Expelled" to you.

Stein has performed an extraordinary and exemplary service in "Expelled" and I hope many young Americans understand and embrace the message of the film; namely, the incalculable value of intellectual freedom. Sure, the film investigates the arrogance and the closed-mindedness of the Darwinian powers that be and it deftly reveals the wild injustices they've committed against freethinkers.

But the overarching ideal Expelled presents is intellectual freedom. Stein's use of the continuing motif of the Berlin Wall as a metaphor for the tyrant's irrational paranoia set against the yearning of the human spirit for truth was brilliant. As was the whole methodology of the movie. For instance, his use of humorous snippets from old films served not only as entertaining comedic relief but very effective illustrations of his message. His fairness in giving both sides of the ID controversy their time was also superb, particularly so because the best arguments as to why moviegoers' should distrust unadulterated Darwinism frequently came from the Darwinists themselves!

And then the sheer audacity of Ben Stein to connect the dots (not very far separated at that) between the doctrines of Darwin to such movements as human eugenics, Planned Parenthood-style racism, and ultimately the "Final Solution" was daring indeed. But daring only to those who fear political correctness more than they love truth.

Ben Stein, I emphasize again, has made a tremendous, compelling film -- a film that is 1) a highly effective argument for the legitimacy of at least the discussion of Intelligent Design; 2) a powerful, well-crafted defense of intellectual freedom; and 3) a soaring tribute to the sanctity of human life.

Embryo: A Defense of Human Life Reviewed

Peter Lawler, author, Professor of Government at Georgia's Berry College, and a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, has written for City Journal a penetrating review of Embryo: A Defense of Human Life, by Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen (Doubleday). It is a fine piece, one that does admirably what a book review should do; namely, give an accurate evaluation of the book's theme and quality while also giving insight into the values and opinions of the reviewer.

Lawler likes the book a lot. He writes, "This stunningly able and very important book, I predict, will grow in influence." But he goes further to show just why he likes it: the philosophical penetration into Aristotle and Kant, the sound scientific foundations, the logical reasoning, the measured argument, and the courageous convictions of the authors to apply their conclusions to social policy.

In their bold new book...philosophers Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen defend the proposition that the embryo—the organism that comes into being as the result of fertilization, the union of sperm with oocyte—is in fact a human being. And that means that an embryo has “absolute rights.” An embryo should never be used as a means to pursue someone else’s ends, however laudable or life-saving, they say. Certainly, embryos shouldn’t be killed to assist frustrated parents attempting in vitro fertilization (IVF), or even to further pathbreaking medical research.

The authors stop well short of recommending all of the potential changes in law that would necessarily follow from their argument. All they ask is that scientific research that involves the killing of embryos be outlawed—or, at the very least, that it be denied public funding, and that future IVF procedures be practiced in such a way that they do not produce surplus embryos that are ultimately discarded. The authors oppose what they see as brutality motivated in part by good intentions—brutality they hope to correct with moral reasoning based in scientific knowledge. Open-minded readers should find their case powerful.

There are disagreements between Lawler and the authors of Embryo but they are stated cleanly and without ego. That too is always nice to find in a book review. Again, Dr. Lawler's engaging and very helpful review was published by City Journal and can be read in its entirety right here.

Expelled Takes On "Fundamental Egoism" of Secular Scientists

Dave Berg, one of Jay Leno's producers, takes a look at Ben Stein's controversial new flick, Expelled as does highly-acclaimed science philosopher, William Dembski. First, an excerpt from Berg...

...The film’s endeavor is to respond to one simple question: “Were we designed, or are we simply the end result of an ancient mud puddle struck by lightning?”

Big science doesn’t like that question because they can’t answer it. Underneath their antagonism toward explanations that suggest an intelligent cause, lies a fundamental egoism. Science wants to deny any evidence of a supreme being precisely because it wants to be a supreme being. Moreover, representatives of big science in the film are unsettlingly snippy, suggesting that they feel threatened by rival opinions, rather than assured of their own.

To make this point, the film introduces teachers and scientists who are shunned, denied tenure, and fired for questioning dogmatic Darwinism. The film’s producers spent two years traveling the world, talking with more than 150 educators and scientists who say they have been persecuted for questioning Darwin’s theory of natural selection....

The rest of Berg's review is here at National Review Online.

And Dembski, research professor of philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, weighs in on Expelled in this engaging Baptist Press article. It's a very interesting piece and it ends with this provocative paragraph:

...Expelled's impact will be felt immediately. But its long-term impact will be even greater. The film opens with documentary footage of the Berlin Wall going up and closes with it coming down. The day Darwinism and Intelligent Design can be fairly discussed without fear of reprisal represents the removal of a barrier even greater than the Berlin Wall. When future intellectual historians describe the key events that led to the fall of "Darwin's Wall," Ben Stein's Expelled will top the list.

Let's All Get Expelled!

It was last September when I first asked, When Will You Get Expelled?

Do you remember the post? If not check it out again and then get follow this link to the newest trailer for the movie which, by the way, Dan Tate informs me is coming out April 18th.

Let's all go together, shall we?

Dinesh D'Souza Takes on the Atheists

Dinesh D'Souza, author of numerous best-selling books and one of the most prolific and prominent conservative writers and speakers around, has recently taken to debating atheists, the general results of which he talks about in this very interesting Town Hall column.

Of special interest is D'Souza's opinion about why atheists are so angry.

One reason I think is that they are God-haters. Atheists often like to portray themselves as "unbelievers" but this is not strictly accurate. If they were mere unbelievers they would simply live their lives as if God did not exist. I don't believe in unicorns, but then I haven't written any books called The End of Unicorns, Unicorns are Not Great, or The Unicorn Delusion. Clearly the atheists go beyond disbelief; they are on the warpath against God. And you can hear their bitterness not only in their book titles but also in their mean-spirited invective.

But there's more, including a link to a video of his latest debate, one matching him with the evolutionist and philosopher Daniel Dennett. Check it out.

Created in the Image of God But Living in the Brave New World

Over on Mercator.net you can (and you should!) read the full text of the superlative commencement speech delivered by Dr. Leon Kass to St. John's College, in Annapolis, Maryland last spring. Dr. Kass, physician, philosopher, professor and the former chairman of the President Bush's Council for Bioethics, presents a learned, stirring moral exhortation that all Americans would do well to heed.

Drawing from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, William Shakespeare's The Tempest, and the dramatic new developments in genetic engineering, Dr. Kass effectively bears down on the central question of what it means to be created in the image of God. It is a terrific, compelling speech, one you might want to copy off and pass around to those you care about.

...The greatest moral challenges headed our way do not in fact come from hate-filled fanatics threatening death and destruction. They come rather from well meaning scientists and technologists offering life, pleasure, and enhancement. They are the by-products of modernity’s noble and humanitarian quest to conquer nature for the relief of man’s estate. They are, in a word, the challenges of bioethics, challenges to our humanity arising from burgeoning new technological powers to intervene in the bodies and minds of human beings...

...Human nature itself lies on the operating table, ready for alteration, for eugenic and psychic "enhancement," for wholesale redesign. In leading laboratories new creators are confidently amassing their powers and quietly honing their skills, while on the street their evangelists are zealously prophesying a post-human future. For anyone who cares about preserving our humanity, the time has come to pay attention.

Some transforming powers are already here. The Pill. In vitro fertilisation. Bottled embryos. Surrogate wombs. Cloning. Genetic screening. Genetic manipulation. Organ harvesting. Mechanical spare parts. Chimeras. Brain implants. Ritalin for the young, Viagra for the old, Prozac for everyone. And, to leave this vale of tears, a little extra morphine accompanied by Muzak...

...Defensible step by defensible step, we are getting used to our own transformation. To conquer infertility or to improve the genetic make-up of our children, we are becoming comfortable with turning procreation into manufacture, looking upon our children less as gifts to be treasured, more as products to be perfected. To conquer disease, we are becoming comfortable treating human embryos as a natural resource or allowing commerce in human tissues and organs, looking upon embodied life not as a mystery to be respected but as a mere instrument of our will.

To augment our achievements, we are becoming comfortable with drug-enhanced athletic or academic performance, accepting the divorce of deed from doer and achievement from human effort. To acquire endless lives with ageless bodies for ourselves, we are becoming comfortable ignoring the risks to our souls and the need to give way to the next generation. To the extent that we come to accept as normal what is in fact perverse, we shall have lost the ability to see how we have been diminished. Dehumanised thought paves the way for a dehumanised world.

Dehumanised thinking is encouraged not only by technological transformations of our humanity but also and more fundamentally by scientific efforts to explain it away. An increasingly unified approach to human biology -- evolutionist, materialist, determinist, mechanistic, and objectified -- combining powerful ideas from genetics, developmental biology, neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology, is deliberately attempting a revolution in human self-understanding.

Evolutionary theory denies our special standing among the animals: since all animals are finally in the same business -- individual survival, for the sake of perpetuating their genes -- we are said to be simply a more complicated model for getting the job done. Materialist explanations of vital, even psychic, events leave no room for soul, life’s animating principle.

Deterministic and mechanistic accounts of brain function banish speech about human freedom and purposiveness. A fully objectified and exterior account of our behaviour diminishes the significance of our felt inwardness. Feeling, passion, awareness, imagination, desire, love, and thought are, scientifically speaking, equally and merely "brain events".

Never mind "created in the image of God": what elevated humanistic view of human life or human goodness is defensible against the belief, trumpeted by biology’s most public and prophetic voices, that man is just a collection of molecules, an accident on the stage of evolution, a freakish speck of mind in a mindless universe, fundamentally no different from other living -- or even non-living -- things?

What chance have our treasured ideas of freedom and dignity against the reductive notion of "the selfish gene," the belief that DNA is the essence of life, or the teaching that all human behaviour and our rich inner life are rendered intelligible only in terms of neurochemistry or their contributions to species survival and reproductive success?

Will we be able to respond to the practical dangers of the Brave New World and the theoretical challenges of the Bold New Biology? Everything depends on whether we can, first of all, recognise the dangers they pose and then discover the errors of their ways...

The Most Frightening Prospect of a Democrat Victory? The NEA Gets What It Wants!

Today's "must-read" from Town Hall has to be Phyllis Schlafly's confrontational column about the extreme dangers to our nation's economy and general culture posed by the National Education Association. Here is just a part of her essay and, believe me, just a part is scary enough!

...The NEA demands a tax-supported, single-payer, health care plan for all residents, a word artfully chosen to include illegal immigrants. The NEA supports immigration "reform" that "includes (note: this is a change from last year's verb "may include") a path to permanent residency, citizenship, or asylum" for illegal immigrants...

The NEA supports a beefed-up federal hate crimes law with heavier penalties. The NEA wants federal legislation to confer special rights on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity and expression.

The NEA passed at least a dozen resolutions supporting the "gay rights agenda" in public schools. These cover employment, curricula, textbooks, resource and instructional materials, school activities, role models, and language, with frequent use of terms such as sexual orientation, gender identification, and homophobia.

The NEA enthusiastically supports all the goals of radical feminism, including abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment, school-based health clinics, wage control so the government can arbitrarily raise the pay of women but not men, the feminist pork called the Women's Educational Equity Act, and letting feminists rewrite textbooks to conform to feminist ideology.

The NEA supports statehood for the District of Columbia. The NEA supports affirmative action. The NEA calls for repeal of right-to-work laws, which allow teachers in some states to decline joining the NEA.

The NEA supports United Nations treaties, especially the U.N. Convention on Women, the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the International Court of Justice. The NEA loves global education, which promotes world citizenship and taxing U.S. citizens to give away their wealth to other countries.

Another NEA favorite is environmental education, which teaches that human activity is generally harmful to the environment and population should be reduced.

Here are some things the NEA opposes: vouchers, tuition tax credits, parental choice programs, making English the official language of the U.S., the use of voter identification for elections, and the privatization of Social Security. High on the list of NEA policies that actually relate to education is opposition to the testing of teachers as a criterion for job retention, promotion, tenure, or salary...

Presidential Monkeyshines: Does a Nominee's Position on Evolution Really Matter?

You remember the question asked during the first Republican debate, "I'm curious. Is there anyone on this stage that does not believe in evolution?" The responses, particularly of the three who raised their hands, provided the MSM their headlines for the next day. But was it a relevant question? Does it really matter if our Chief Executive believes that men came from the slime of time or rather from a personal God who endowed him with certain unalienable rights?

Over at the blog Intelligent Design: The Future, Discovery Institute policy analyst Logan Gage gives a few striking answers to these questions in a 5-minute podcast entitled, "Politics, Evolution, and the American People." Gage maintains that American political figures can and should encourage a spirit of openness on evolution and other topics in the scientific community.

Very interesting stuff. So zip on over to this page and hit the little green button at the bottom left of the post to listen to the podcast.

How Present Scientific Knowledge Makes Darwinism Laughable

...According to Richard Milton, who wrote Shattering The Myths of Darwinism, the chances of forming protein and self-replicating DNA randomly are as likely as 'winning the state lottery by finding the winning ticket in the street, and then continuing to win the lottery every week for a thousand years by finding the winning ticket in the street each time' (in other terms, one chance in 10 to the 65th power).

The human body develops from an ovum the size of a dot, yet this speck of biological material contains vast encyclopedias of information — huge dictionaries defining every molecule and convoluted recipes to make every chemical moiety, or component. Conception sets in motion domino-like changes in this speck so that it becomes a human being — a multitrillion cell organism with 200 different kinds of cells that make five million different proteins...

(Geoffrey Simmons, What Darwin Didn't Know: A Doctor Dissects the Theory of Evolution)

Darwinist Bullies on Campus

There's a Darwin v. Design Conference scheduled to take place on the Southern Methodist University campus this weekend, an event where empirical data from biology, biochemistry, physics, mathematics and related fields will be presented and their relevance debated. Pretty typical kind of thing for a university setting, right?

Wrong.

For proponents of intelligent design rarely get the chance to let their positions be heard in the modern university. No, though a free exchange of ideas is proudly promised, certain schools of thought are routinely smothered no matter the relevance, the stability of evidence, and consistency of logic those heterodox opinions represent.

Even in this case, the forces of paranoia and obscurantism are threatening to disrupt or even cancel the debate altogether. And the thugs involved include certain professors and even some journalists who are trying every deceitful trick they can to stop the event.

Here's more on the controversy and the eerie, irrational fear being displayed by the Darwinists.

Sssh! Emperor Darwin Has No Clothes On!

...There is a lawyer's adage that says, "If the facts are on your side, argue the facts. If the law is on your side, argue the law. If neither are on your side, change the subject and go after the motives of your opponent." Bingo! Right out of the Darwinist playbook.

Now, this business of going after your opponent's motives can be tricky. While your objective may be to expose your opponent's hidden agenda, there is a real risk that instead, you will expose your own worst fears...

This article by Joe Renick describes how extreme is the paranoia among Darwinians. Sure, they hate Creationism. And yes, they even get shivers when Intelligent Design is brought up. But to use subterfuge, slander and strong-arm coercion to stifle the very thought of academic freedom?

Man, these guys certainly don't play like they've got the winning hand.

What Hath Darwin Wrought?

Here's a thoughtful (and thought-provoking) column from Ken Connor dealing with not only the essence of Darwinian philosophy but also its effects. Check it out.

Fighting Intelligent Design

The Guardian (U.K.) plays an ingenious pro-evolution game in its online edition. Part one of the game is to publish a defense of Darwinian theory by James Randerson. Part two is to allow a brief counter-commentary defending intelligent design by Richard Buggs.

But then, part three, comes into play. After the Buggs piece, the Guardian publishes a long, long series of responses with almost all of them extremely antagonistic. Many are quite emotional, many mean-spirited and a couple are even longer than the Buggs column itself.

The end result of the game is that the reader is left with a distorted, derisive picture of intelligent design theory. In that neverending comment section, there's a lot of heat, a lot of illogical attacks, and a lot of hooting against minds darkened by religion...but very little rational, science-based argument.

And, of course, it is only in such an atmosphere that Darwinism can survive.

MSM Delights in Reporting "Progressive" Christianity

Most of the evangelicals who are wringing their hands over global warming are simply playing America's favorite game; namely, follow the leader -- with the leader, of course, being that conglomeration of media, politicians, and pseudo-academics that make up the liberal establishment. Don't bother about the ethical priorities established by the Bible (the gospel, authority of Scripture, sanctity of life, sexual morality, etc.) and don't bother to investigate the hard evidence, just jump aboard whatever bandwagon is being pulled by the television networks.

Here is an example of how the MSM crows whenever they see Christians de-emphasize the ethical priorities mentioned above in favor of causes that are more politically-correct. And take note how the spin of both the print and the video here underscores the "progressive" nature of these evangelicals; i.e. away from creationism, away from right-to-life issues, away from the policies of President Bush.

Thanks, Cyndy, for the heads-up about the story.

The Missing Link

Here's a quick reflection from the "Vital Signs" radio vault about Darwinian evolution's most elusive star.

The War Over Intelligent Design Is Anything But Over...And, Oh Yes, Don't Miss the Christmas Stuff Either!

Our friend, Dr. Ray Bohlin, has recently written a really good article on the desperate movement of the powers that be against Intelligent Design. It is at the Probe Ministries web site (always a good place to surf around in) and you'll find it right here. Excellent.

And, by the way, in your surfing the Probe site, don't miss their Christmas-oriented articles: The Christmas Story: Does It Still Matter? by Rusty Wright; The Theology of Christmas Carols by Robert A. Pyne; Is Christmas Necessary? by Jerry Solomon; The Star of Bethlehem by Dr. Ray Bohlin; Christmas Film Favorites by Todd Kappelman; How Could the Wise Men Have Found Baby Jesus in Nazareth? by Kerby Anderson; and, finally A Christmas Quiz by Dale Taliaferro.

As our friends over in Manchester, England would say -- they're champion!

Merry Christmas from the Moon

If you have yet to begin your celebration of the holy season of Christmas, let this stirring moment from December 24, 1968, help get your spirit soaring. On that inspiring night, the first manned mission to the Moon, Apollo 8, entered lunar orbit.

That evening, astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders made a live television broadcast in which they showed pictures of the Earth and Moon seen from their ship. As they broadcast live pictures of a lunar sunrise, Lovell said, "The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth."

Then, the brave men concluded their message to earth by taking turns reading from the book of Genesis. Here is the Quicktime movie and audio of those concluding remarks.