Painting Fakes

I've been following (and participating in) a very interesting discussion at Simone's blog about whether people can accept the statement that the earth was created in six days. Personally I find a six day creation hard to accept scientifically and unnecessary theologically. But it made me think about how we can paint ourselves into a corner defending a position that never needed defending in the first place. The US in particular has a huge ongoing controvery about the six day creation, and this has led to the elaboration of "creation science" and its love-child, the Intelligent Design movement. I'm hardly competent to assess the science, but it's always seemed to me that the primary argument of creation scientists is a theological one. Years ago I heard Ken Ham speak, and his basic message was that if you don't believe in the literal truth of Genesis then the whole authority of Scripture collapses and you may as well give up on Christianity. Oddly e...

Here's a distressing further thought on my post on abortion . I mentioned there that to sort this out ethically you would first determine whether an embryo is human, and if it is, in what circumstances it is OK to kill a human being. You will be aware that in the US (and no doubt here as well) doctors who run abortion clinics regularly receive death threats from people saying they are pro-life, and that on rare occasions they are even victims of murder or attempted murder. My first reaction is that the people who make such threats are probably quite disturbed and the threats or acts of violence are a sign of their mental illness. This may well be the case. However, the really disturbing thing is that their behaviour can be easily fitted in to my framework. As pro-lifers, they assess that the embryo and the doctor are equally human. Why not respect the doctor's life, then? Well, the most obvious answer is that the person making the threats is a believer in capital punishme...

While I'm writing about controversial issues, I may as well jump in with both feet (in my mouth, probably) and talk about sexual abuse in the church. The Catholics are in the spotlight at the moment so us protestants can take a breather, but we shouldn't be too compacent. Remember it was only a couple of years ago that the Anglican Church here in Queensland was under scrutiny and our former Archbishop had to resign his plum job as Governor-General after defending an abusive priest on national television with the idea that the underage girl initiated the relationship. However, the story at the time that made me most angry was the one about the school counsellor at a prestigious Anglican school, who over a number of decades had used his position to abuse vulnerable young boys. Finally one of them went to the police, they started to investigate, and the man committed suicide. That was bad enough, but what really made me feel sick was that after his suicide, and knowing full we...

A recent Facebook discussion with some rellies has made me think some more about abortion, so at the risk of alienating half my friends and readers whatever I say, here's what I thought. Thanks to Andrew, Shiloh, Steve and Mike for the inspiration, but I won't blame you for the content. I don't know the answers, I'm just thinking about the questions. There are two basic ethical issues in the abortion debate. The first is this - is an embryo (foetus, whatever) human? Or to put it another way, at what point does an embryo become human? I really don't know the answer to this, but a lot of the answers I hear don't make sense to me. You can go to the far end of the debate, as per official Catholic doctrine, and say that any attempt to prevent pregnancy is immoral, although "for your hardness of heart" you can practice the rhythm method if you must. For them clearly, and for most other "right to life" groups, an embryo is at the very least human ...