My new book is now available. If you’re local, stop by the church to pick up a copy. If not, you can purchase a softcover, hard cover, or electronic edition at many online retailers such as Amazon, Crossbooks, and Barnes & Noble.
The content of this book was first presented in its present form at The Oxford Round Table, Religion and Science Shaping the Modern World, in 2010 at Harris Manchester College, Oxford University, Oxford England.
Science, or its handmaiden “separation of church and state”, is absolutely incapable of establishing or sustaining the liberties spelled out in the Declaration of Independence and protected by the Constitution. Therefore, I present a replacement model for governing Church and State. I call this model the Proportional Accommodation and Appreciation (PAA) model.
This model is constitutionally, morally, and intellectually preferable because it is consistent with most religions, historically demonstrable in the U.S., inherent in the First Amendment, and equally encourages the free expression and participation of religious and non-religious citizens in every facet of society without government mandate or coercion, which engenders a public square characterized by a robust scientific enterprise and unfettered religious expression.
This is in contradistinction to the present Separation model, which expands science beyond its legitimate domanial authority, thereby conflating science and naturalism, which creates a Scientific Liberal Culture (SLC). By restricting public debate, education, and policies to scientific arguments, the Separation model actually suppresses religious expression and participation, diminishes human dignity and rights, and inescapably and unjustifiably elevates science to supreme arbiter of the public domain.
The United States was founded upon the astonishing declaration, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Then the Constitution was drafted in order to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
Dr. Anthony Levatino says, “The toughest part of a D&E [dilation and evacuation] abortion is extracting the baby’s head,” Levatino said. “If you have a really bad day, like I often did, a little face may come out and stare back at you.”1
He goes on to say, “On June 23, 1984, my son was trying to cross the street, and my daughter, who was always the little mother, was running after him to tell him not to do that, and she was struck and killed by a car. If you haven’t gone through that kind of tragedy, you don’t have a clue. You may think you can imagine it, but trust me: You have no idea what it’s like to lose a child, in any way.”
He then asks, “What do you do after a tragedy? You mourn for a while and you try to get back into your routine. I don’t know how long after her death I had to do my first D&E abortion. I remember reaching in and literally ripping out an arm or a leg and looking at it in the clamp and I got sick. When you start an abortion you can’t stop. If you leave anything behind, you [can] bet your patient is going to come back infected, bleeding or worse….I soldiered on and I finished that abortion.”
Only this time, Levatino said, something had changed. “For the first time in my life I really looked at that pile of goo at the side of the table, and all of a sudden I didn’t see her wonderful right to choose, and I didn’t see the $600 wad of cash that I made in 15 minutes, and I couldn’t think about what a great doctor I was because I took care of her problem. All I could see was somebody’s son or daughter.”
The Hippocratic oath, taken by those about to enter the practice of medicien, swears, “I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone. I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion.”
The problem of shallow preaching in the pulpit is not the problem. The problem is in the study. The pulpit is a mere reflection of either the depth or lack thereof of what happens in the pastor’s study; for if a man is shallow in his study, he will most assuredly be shallow in his preaching because no man can preach deeper than he has studied. Conversely, if a man studies deeply, it will necessarily be obvious in his preaching for he cannot desire to know and walk deeply with God and desire any less for his flock.
“And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”’ (Matthew 28:18-20) (underline and embolding added)
Most often, this passage is referenced in order to emphasize missions and evangelism, and those are indeed vital components; however, the teaching task is often, albeit unwittingly, reduced to a secondary or tertiary status. Additionally, the essentialness of the breadth and depth of the teaching component is often obscured by our words and practice. Read the rest of this entry »
Christian German news agency Idea reported, “A German hospital removed twelve crosses, supposedly due to objections from Muslim patients.
Workers in the Bad Soden hospital near Frankfurt took off the crosses from the wall in front of the patients and put them in trash bags, which led to criticism by patients.
Director Helmuth Hahn-Klimroth had his employees do the job with the required prudence. Crosses aren’t considered common furnishings in a general hospital, according to the director.
The crosses come from the surgical department of a hospital which was Roman Catholic till 1974.”1
The secularists of America laud such Muslim objections until the Muslims begin to point their objections toward the secularist, which they most certainly will do!
- http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2010/02/frankfurt-hospital-removes-crosses.html, accessed 2/25/10 [↩]
Steven Hawking is acclaimed as the greatest scientific mind since Albert Einstein, which I have no reason to doubt; however, his erudition does nothing to bring peace to his soul, but rather launches him into pessimism and looking in all the wrong places for meaning and security.
Hawking was questioned on CNN about why he wanted to take a zero gravity flight. “Many people have asked me why I am taking this flight. I am doing it for many reasons,” he said before the flight. “First of all, I believe that life on Earth is at an ever increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, or other dangers. I think the human race has no future if it doesn’t go into space. I therefore want to encourage public interest in space.”[1]
Interviewed by The Telegraph in the UK he said, “I don’t think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I’m an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.”[2]
Hawking told the BBC “that life could be wiped out by a nuclear disaster or an asteroid hitting the planet.” Then the Cambridge academic added, “Once we spread out into space and establish colonies, our future should be safe.” He says humans have to go to another star.[3]
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life.” (John 6:47)
[1]Http://web.archive.org/web/20070504171857/http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/04/26/hawking.flight.ap/index.html; accessed 3/14/10
[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1359562/Colonies-in-space-may-be-only-hope-says-Hawking.html Telegraph; 10/16/01 accessed 3/14/10
[3] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6158855.stm, Accessed 3/14/10
Since leaving on sabbatical last May, my blogs have been rather sparse. However, this is not due to a lack of interest or lack of material. My absence has been due to expending all of my writing energy on finishing three books.
The first one is at the publisher now. I expect it to be in print before the end of June, and I will let you know when the book is available. It is entitled The Death of Man as Man
: The Rise and Decline of Liberty.
The second book is complete, and I am just waiting on one more endorsement. It is entitled Reflections of a Disenchanted Calvinist: The Disquieting Realities of Calvinism. I hope for this one to be in print by July or August.
The third one is complete, but lacks a few more proofings. It is entitled Somewhere Between Fundamentalism and Fluff.
Once I send the second book to the publisher, I should have more time to blog.
As many of you know, I participated in the Oxford Round Table at Harris Manchester College in Oxford in July. I presented a paper entitled “A Proposal for a Proportional Accommodation and Appreciation Model For Governing the Relationship of Church and State.” I am presently working to make that paper into a book.
However, because of the October 2010 proclamation of “Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender history month in the city of Norman” and the current desire of the Human Rights Commission to change the wording of some governing documents of Norman to include “sexual orientation and gender identity” as protected classes, as well as the intentions of others that are seeking to capitalize on what they see as a “gay sympathetic” Chief of Police, Mayor, and City Council, I wanted to blog an excerpt of the moral argument that I gave in the paper.
Once published, the book will give constitutional, intellectual, historical and moral arguments defending the right, need, and appropriateness of bringing our religious convictions into the public square. There will also be footnote references to the book in this blog. But in order to help us understand and articulate that appropriateness in light of the current local political situation, I am posting the moral argument. Prayerfully, the book will be out soon. Following is a section of the moral argument.
Thus, the question is, “Is it moral and rational to exclude religious opinions from our republic or democratic public marketplace of ideas just because those opinions involve an aspect of faith—a faith assumption?” For the following reasons, my answer is NO. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m back from the United Kingdom, and here is a summary of what I presented at the Oxford Round Table.
A Proposal for a Proportional Accommodation and Appreciation Model
I will be gone a few months while on sabbatical and will resume blogging in September.