Category: Apologetics

The most sexist Pro-Choice Argument

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Yet another person on Facebook recently told me that:

“It’s not for me or any other man or woman to place their beliefs upon a woman who should have the right to choose whether we agree or not. We will all stand before our maker if the story plays out as told.”

In response to these comments, I asked my friend whether or not he would say the same thing if he knew a mother planning on having her toddler drowned. If not, why not? As I’ve come to expect, I received no answer.

Instead I was told that my question was “wholly immaterial and inappropriate to this discussion”. I asked why this was this the case? Why was it inappropriate? Why was it immaterial? Once again, I received no answer.

I think it’s pretty clear that my friend would intervene in the situation with the toddler. The question is, why? After all, by interfering, he’d be “plac[ing] [his] beliefs upon the woman”, something which he’s apparently not meant to do. So, why interfere in one situation and not the other? What is the distinguishing factor? Why does one child demand her protection but another not merit it?

The implication here is that, unless I am directly impacted by a particular issue, I cannot comment upon its morality. That’s about as nonsensical as saying that unless you’re a plantation owner, you don’t get to comment on slavery. I have neither been the victim of sexual assault nor committed sexual assault. Despite this, I do not doubt for a moment that sexual assault is wrong and should be prevented.

The main reason I wanted to briefly blog about this conversation is because there is a deeper problem with what my friend said. He was saying that, because I am a man, I’m not even allowed to express my opinion on the morality of abortion. How is this anything other than textbook sexism? What was the basis for his dismissal of my argument? Was it the argument itself? Did he find a logical fallacy or a false premise? No, it was dismissed based on the gender of the person offering the argument. That’s a variant of the Ad Hominem Fallacy and remarkably sexist to boot!

Frank Turek’s Blind Spot

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I enjoy a lot of Frank Turek’s apologetics and listen to his weekly podcast, but he really does have a few blind spots. I recently came across this video which shows that the canon of Scripture is one such blind spot…

What he says here concerning the discernment of the canon isn’t entirely false, but he offers a very insufficient description of what took place. It was the Catholic Church who determined the canon in the early centuries of the Church. In fact, it’s a bit embarrassing that it’s the questioner who is the first person to bring up these councils!

His statement about the Protestant Bible lining up with the Jewish Old Testament is too simplistic, so much so that it’s misleading. The Protestant Old Testament matches the canon of the Jews today… but not of all the Jews in the First Century! After all, there were a number of different Jewish sects in the First Century, such as the Sadducees, Pharisees and Essenes. Each of these groups had a different canon of Scripture…

Now, the Protestant canon matches the canon settled by the rabbis in the Second Century, following the establishment of the Church and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. However, this begs the question: why should Christians accept the opinion of this particular Jewish group? After all, these are the successors to those who rejected that Jesus was the Messiah! If they didn’t recognize the Word incarnate, why would they necessarily correctly recognise the written Word of God? Not only that, wouldn’t they have motivation to exclude books from the canon which very clearly prophesy the suffering of Jesus?

The really egregious error in this video is Frank’s assertion that Roman Catholics added books to the Bible at the Council of Trent. That claim is patently false and honestly I’d expect more from an apologist of Frank’s calibre. Catholics did not add books to the Bible at the Reformation, the Protestants removed them. This is just one of the worst arguments used against the Deuterocanon. Incidentally, Luther even tried to remove books from the New Testament, such as the Epistle of James because he couldn’t reconcile it with his novel theology of Sola Fide…

The Catholic Bible aligns itself to the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament which is the translation most often quoted by the New Testament authors themselves. The Catholic Canon was declared by the early councils of the Church, as well as later ones such as The Council of Florence (AD 1431). You don’t have to wait for the Council of Trent (AD 1545). For further proof of this, just ask a Coptic or Eastern Orthodox Christian if they have the Deuterocanonical books in their Bible. These Churches separated from the Catholic Church long before the Reformation, yet still have these Deuterocanonical books…conclusive proof that what Frank said here is incorrect.

Where do you draw the line?

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When speaking to pro-choice advocates who assert that unborn aren’t worthy of protection, I often ask:

(a) Is there a cut-off point during a pregnancy after which abortion should not be allowed?

(b) Are there any reasons reasons why someone might want an abortion which are insufficient? For example, if the mother wanted a son and was pregnant with a girl.

I like asking these questions because it helps lay out very clearly the limits of that person’s support for abortion, as well as that person’s reasoning for being pro-choice. For example, if someone says that they would be against Third Trimester abortions, then it allows us to probe for the reason why abortion in this case is wrong and not before. We can then see if there is any meaningful difference between the two cases.

Jesus would never call other people wrong

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I just had a very strange interaction on Facebook… A friend of mine posted the following video of the Protestant evangelist Todd Friel:

One of his friends, a man called Simon, responded with the following curious assertions:

His response struck me as a strange for several reasons, but first and foremost because it demonstrated very clearly that Simon was rather unfamiliar with the New Testament! I responded by pointing out that Jesus would absolutely call other people wrong. In fact, at times He could be quite mean, even to the point of calling people names:

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites… You fools and blind men… For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Even so you too outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness… you brood of vipers” 

Matthew 23:15, 17, 27-28, 33

He was even known on occasion to flip tables!

And making a whip of cords, he drove them all, with the sheep and oxen, out of the temple; and he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables – John 2:15

John 2:15

Naturally, there are many other Scripture passages which I could have quoted, not least Jesus’ exclusive claims about Himself:

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

John 14:6

With wearying predictability, rather than adjusting his statement, Simon immediately accused me of “judging” him. Some folks really love to jump to play the victim card even at the mildest of challenges. I wonder if he would have said exactly the same thing if I had pointed out an error in his arithmetic…

Amusingly, he then tried to quote Romans 2 to me:

You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment?

Romans 2:1-3

At this point I suggested to him that, while I’d be happy to discuss that passage with him, it probably isn’t a good idea to quote the Bible at a Christian right on the heels of making a demonstrably false statement about Jesus. He then said that he didn’t want to discuss his beliefs with me any more, so I closed by saying that hopefully I had at least disabused you of the notion that “Jesus would never call other people wrong”. I concluded with a passage which denies this explicitly:

“[Jesus said] ‘You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God'”

Matthew 22:29

…and, for good measure, I also included a passage where Jesus teaches His followers about judgement:

“Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly”

John 7:24

Needless to say, he wrote with the following:

…and then thirty seconds later deleted the thread.

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