Praying For My President

I have a Facebook account and, after the November 4, 2008 election, I joined a group there named: 1,000,000 Christians Praying For President Obama. Though I vehemently disagree with Mr. Obama' politics I have been, and will continue to keep, doing just that. But as I sit here watching the historically significant and orderly transition of power that is unparalleled by any other nation in human history, I want to point out that in doing so I am not praying for Mr. Obama to be successful.

Let me explain.

I will pray for the racial reconciliation we all need to embrace and for Mr. Obama's unique ability to foster it. I will pray for wisdom, courage, grace and humility for Mr. Obama in what will no doubt be some gut-wrenchingly difficult decisions he will have to make -- some as soon as today. I will pray for his personal safety, his family's safety, and for the safety of those over which he is charged with acting as Commander-in-Chief. I will pray that he is true to the faith he professes in Jesus Christ and that his term as President will be marked by a powerful, vital expression of that faith. I will pray that he will honor the moral principles that descend from the truth of that faith. In that light, I pray that he will support and defend this nation and the Constitution that forged and has sustained it, by encouraging adherence to the Biblical principles that are its foundation and the basis for all that we have been endowed with by our Creator.

In that sense, I do pray for Mr. Obama's success, but not in another sense.

Mr. Obama seems to lean toward nationalization of private institutions like health care and banks. He has showed a tendency to seek socialist answers to economic problems. He has fought hard (discussed here) -- harder than any other politician I know of -- to deny the rights and dignity of human life to the most innocent and helpless among us. He has even proudly voted to deny life to infants who survive the deliberate attempt to abort them in the womb. None of these can be defended by a Biblical view of the world and so I must pray that in each of these areas, Mr. Obama's presidency will be an utter failure.

I am not optimistic about Mr. Obama's motivations or aims regarding these latter issues. From what I have seen, and from what he has said, I fear that he will pursue, and probably be successful in attaining, the worst of each of these. So for that I have one more prayer ...

I pray that I am wrong.

Not Seeing, Still Believing

{This is the third in a series of posts centering on doubt for the month of January, 2009}

Michael Novak's newest book, No One Sees God: The Dark Night Of Atheists and Believers, came out recently. I have not read the book yet, but have read a few reviews of it and, to be honest, it was those reviews that prompted me to focus on the issue of doubt this month. Here is an excerpt from one of those reviews:

Novak brilliantly recasts the tired debate pitting faith against reason. Both the atheist and the believer experience the same “dark night” in which God’s presence seems absent, he argues, and the conflict between faith and doubt stems not from objective differences, but from divergent attitudes toward the unknown. ... He shows that, far from being irrational, the spiritual perspective actually provides the most satisfying answers to the eternal questions of meaning. Faith is a challenge at times, but it nonetheless offers the only fully coherent response to the human experience.

Novak is a brilliant man, and a devoted Catholic philosopher. I have read his work before and, as you can see from the overall thrust of his book above, I am inclined to agree with most everything he writes. Everything, that is, except the most quoted lead-in to almost every reviewer's comments on this book. Though I believe I share his conclusions, I have to disagree with one of his main premises quoted here:

"Neither the atheist nor the believer sees God. Both must live in darkness. Both must try to figure out from many clues, gleaned from here and there, who they really are in this vast cosmos, in this tiny arc of the universe, on this spinning blue-green ball, possibly insignificant among the galaxies, asteroids, cold dead planets, and even deader moons."

Why does Novak think this "dark night" is inevitable? He seems to have bought the naturalistic notion that faith -- on both sides of the issue of accepting the existence of God -- is nothing but blind, wishful thinking. He seems to think that the theist can't know or prove its truth and therefore believes in spite of this lack of proof.

I don't buy it.

True, we can't "see" God. No argument there. God is a spirit -- a non-physical entity -- so it is no surprise that, unless He decides to miraculously allow it, we won't be "seeing" Him anytime soon. But it doesn't follow from that that we live in sheer darkness regarding His existence.

Specifically, I do not share his view that what we look up at are nothing but "insignificant galaxies, asteroids, cold dead planets, and even deader moons." The design argument for God's existence rests on the fact that these objects we see in the night sky are anything but insignificant. Without them we would not be here. Given the laws of nature that govern our world and the vast, black cosmos it moves within, life could not possibly have come to be, or continue to survive, without them. Even atheistic scientists recognize this fact and have labeled it the Anthropic Principle in recognition of the fact that the cosmos seems to have had mankind in mind because it all seems too well-suited for our human existence to be accidental.

Neither does C. S. Lewis share Novak's assessment. In the first book of his "Space Trilogy," Out of the Silent Planet, Lewis's hero, Ransom, is kidnapped and taken to Mars. As he hurtles through space, Ransom comes to experience a "progressive lightening and exultation of heart" which he soon recognizes as his own awakening:

A nightmare, long engendered in the modern mind by the mythology that follows in the wake of science, was falling off him. He had read of 'Space': at the back of his thinking for years had lurked the dismal fancy of the black, cold vacuity, the utter deadness, which was supposed to separate the worlds. He had not known how much it affected him till now -- now that the very name 'Space' seemed a blasphemous libel for this empryean ocean of radiance in which they swam. He could not call it 'dead'; he felt life pouring into him from it every moment. How indeed should it be otherwise, since out of this ocean the worlds and all their life had come? He had thought it barren; he saw now that it was the womb of worlds, whose blazing and innumerable offspring looked down nightly even upon the earth with som many eyes ... No: Space was the wrong name.

For an even more ancient account of this realization, go read Psalm 19.

I would submit that those who doubt because they cannot "see" are simply looking with the wrong "eyes." And by that, I do not mean to imply that they should rely on "the eyes of their heart" -- that gloriously misused notion of relying on subjective feelings -- to discern their way to truth. In this case, an understanding of the beauty, majesty and design that defines the creation first comes through "eyes" of the intellect -- then seeps into us as a properly informed view of the nature of the Creator God. Seen that way, there is no missing Him.

The human tendency to want to believe in something is fulfilled when we come to the realization that our observations about the universe we live in are perfectly consistent with the nature of the God described in the Bible. No, we still can't "see" Him with our physical eyes but, like footprints in the sand, we can see evidence of his presence and be perfectly justified in believing that He is, and always has been, a God Who Is There.

The Irrationality Of Calling Religious Folks Irrational

{This is the second in a series of posts centering on doubt for the month of January, 2009}

"It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense, and can't see things as they are."

G.K. Chesterton's character, Father Brown

A favorite charge leveled at religious believers by those who denounce their belief system is that they are ignorant, gullible, irrational and, on Richard Dawkins' view, "deluded." As comedian Bill Maher puts it, "You can't be a rational person six days of the week and put on a suit and make rational decisions and go to work and, on one day of the week, go to a building and think you're drinking the blood of a 2,000-year-old space god." To go along with the discussion of doubt, I dug up a recent Wall Street Journal article that touches on this topic. Titled, "What Americans Really Believe," the piece reports on ...

a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University [in September, which] shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology. It also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians.

Hmmm. It is interesting to me that folks like Maher and Dawkins want to base their knowledge of the world solely on rationalism which they equate with scientific (as opposed to scientific, philosophical and theological) arguments. In that light, they are content to lob insulting assertions about the intellectual vacuousness of religious folks. But the research offered here by the WSJ is based on research studies done by ... scientists. So, instead of just lobbing insults, I propose that we look at the actual data.

The Gallup Organization recently polled Americans about questions like: Do dreams foretell the future? Did ancient advanced civilizations such as Atlantis exist? Can places be haunted? Is it possible to communicate with the dead? Will creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster someday be discovered by science?

• 31% of people who never worship expressed strong belief in these things.
• Only 8% of people who attend a house of worship more than once a week did.

And here's a favorite of mine: "While increased church attendance and membership in a conservative denomination has a powerful negative effect on paranormal beliefs, higher education doesn't. Two years ago two professors published another study in Skeptical Inquirer showing that ...":

• Less than one-quarter of college freshmen surveyed expressed a general belief in such superstitions as ghosts, psychic healing, haunted houses, demonic possession, clairvoyance and witches
• The figure jumped to 31% of college seniors and 34% of graduate students.

In summary then, religious and more educated people are less likely to hold to what Maher and Dawkins might call "irrational" beliefs. This data is in direct opposition to the claims they make. In fact, Maher himself ...

... is a fervent advocate of pseudoscience ... Mr. Maher told David Letterman -- a quintuple bypass survivor -- to stop taking the pills that his doctor had prescribed for him. He proudly stated that he didn't accept Western medicine. On his HBO show in 2005, Mr. Maher said: "I don't believe in vaccination. . . . Another theory that I think is flawed, that we go by is the Louis Pasteur [germ] theory." He has told CNN's Larry King that he won't take aspirin because he believes it is lethal and that he doesn't even believe the Salk vaccine eradicated polio.

I also find it interesting that some of the most influential people in our culture are the Hollywood elites who personally and professionally (through their artistic work) mock religious people for their archaic anti-rationalism. These are the anointed few who, regardless of their education or background, are regularly called on to: lecture us about our duty to all kinds of justice issues; testify before Congress about scientific and cultural issues because they may have made a movie about them; and find increasingly inventive ways to wedge their agenda into media meant to influence us to think the way they do. At the same time, one of their most popular belief systems (I hesitate to use the term religion) is Scientology, the brain-child of science fiction writer, L. Ron Hubbard.

Hubbard proposes that emotional duress in an individual's life is caused by an accumulation of unpleasant memories and traumatic incidents, some of which predated the life of the human. In Scientology, he further stated that spirits (or "thetans") have existed for tens of trillions of years (several orders of magnitude greater than the scientifically accepted estimate of the age of the universe). During that time, Hubbard says that thetans have been exposed to a vast number of traumatic incidents and have made a great many decisions that influence their present state. According to Hubbard, thetans were conditioned by extraterrestrial dictatorships such as Helatrobus in an attempt to brainwash and control the population ... Among these advanced teachings is the story of Xenu (sometimes Xemu), introduced as an alien ruler of the "Galactic Confederacy." According to this story, 75 million years ago Xenu brought billions of people to Earth in spacecraft resembling Douglas DC-8 airliners, stacked them around volcanoes and detonated hydrogen bombs in the volcanoes. The thetans then clustered together, stuck to the bodies of the living, and continue to do this today.

This is just a short summary of the beliefs of Scientology, a "religion" brought to us by and for the enlightened elite who make a game of mocking traditional faith. Without going into any more detail, I find it amazing that those who believe nonsense like this could look down their collective noses at anyone who holds to Christianity.

I bring all this up for a very important reason: Nobody believes in nothing.

It seems that we humans have some kind of innate propensity to believe in something outside ourselves that serves to validate and give meaning to our existence. If not the commonly recognized religions that have been around since humankind came on the scene, we will gravitate to something bizarre or even dangerous. It is hard to justify this human characteristic outside of some kind of theistic/deistic reality. I don't see any way to explain it within a naturalistic worldview.

I suppose one could appeal to some kind of Darwinist explanation that serves to promote the will to survive, but I don't see how. A belief in abstract concepts like: other-than-physical reality; life after death; the need to rectify our moral failings; or even the need to "better ourselves," do not square with a purely deterministic, mechanical world.

Instead, it seems more "rational" to comprehend and seek a better form of reality that draws us its way because there actually is one. I can't fully explain this human characteristic otherwise. I don't think this view is irrational at all, especially if it also serves to explain the metaphysical aspects of rationality we all seem to understand innately. Or, to quote one who put it better than I ever could:

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

~ C. S. Lewis

Dealing With Doubt

Some recent discussions I've heard and been involved in have gotten me thinking about the issue of doubt. This is not an easy topic to talk about -- especially for those who have been racked by guilt for doubting or, in the extreme, rejected their faith as a result. I want to approach this issue over a couple of posts because I don't just want to talk about why people doubt. That seems obvious to me. Instead, I want to tackle this from the perspective of our approach to the apologetic project and the need to keep a conscious, deliberate sensitivity to it perpetually in our minds.

I don't think anyone would claim they have never had doubts about their faith. The first time I remember experiencing doubt was as a twelve year-old on a visit to the Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. On a trip meant to fortify my Roman Catholic upbringing, I had just the opposite reaction my well-meaning mother had hoped I would have. I remember being overwhelmed by the gaudiness and extravagance of the wealth I saw on display in the various museums. I wondered (and actually asked my mom) "why they couldn't sell all that stuff and feed some poor people?" I remember standing in an inordinately long line that stretched outside the main entrance to St. Peter's Cathedral. After waiting and waiting, I was stunned and perplexed when I saw reached the destination for which we had all been waiting in line -- a statue of Mary. Each of the faithful in front of me were kissing their fingers and touching the feet of the statue as they moved in front of it. When I reached the front of the line I recoiled when I saw that the tops of the statue's feet were worn smooth from the thousands (millions?) who had gone before me. I drew my hand back toward my chest, hoping my mother wouldn't notice. I'm not sure I really understood why, but it was the first time I remember doubting my faith ... and it is a moment I will never forget.

My dedication to Catholicism was never the same again. Five years later, when I was self-assured and rebellious enough to say it out loud, I rejected my Catholic upbringing altogether. Being a teenager, my self-righteous cockiness at proclaiming my independence left a lot to be desired, but that's another story.

We have all heard stories like this and worse. Those who have lost loved ones or witnessed the pain and suffering in the world that they cannot justify in their minds, have turned away in horror and anguish from a God who would allow such a thing. There are those who have been harmed or humiliated by the hypocrisy or arrogant self-righteousness they have witnessed in the church. There are those who have been demoralized by scientific arguments they think pull the rug out from under their view of God the Creator.

There is a common thread to all stories like these. Each instance of doubt stems from the lack of a complete picture of the faith against which we rebel.

Yes, I still believe my reaction at the Vatican was justified though I could never have expressed it at the time. It took years of study and reflection before I realized that my revulsion at the foot of a statue gave me no reason to doubt Christianity itself. What I was really reacting against was not God or my faith, but the manifestation of its idolatrous human corruption. Likewise, it seems that many who claim to have been serious about their Christian faith and then moved away to agnosticism or atheism, will attribute their doubt to emotional or experiential factors that they could not overcome or accept. Yet they have failed to pursue a sufficiently, intellectually rigorous examination of all the implications that converge in understanding the character of God. Conversely, many who reject their faith due to intellectual doubt, have done so not for the purely rational reasons they insist demand their unbelief, but for emotional or experiential deficiencies their intellect cannot explain away.

Each of these causes for doubt are powerful and difficult to overcome. But, I submit, that is so because those who cling to them have not been sufficiently exposed to the whole truth -- the the Big Picture. Of course, a doubter will respond that the same could be said about me -- that I have not sought to comprehend a complete understanding of their unbelief. Maybe they are right. But I think my view is further supported by a phenomenon I will address in my next post, and that is that it seems we cannot help ourselves from believing in something. And that something must offer a holistic explanation for our experiences and our emotions. The question is, what will that something be?

Earlier this week I heard a discussion of a similar topic in which I was reminded that Jesus' disciples were confronted with this same question. In John 6, after some particularly difficult teaching which many could not accept, several of Jesus' followers gave up and walked away. On observing this, Jesus asked the Twelve, "You do not want to leave too, do you?"

Peter's reply should be thought provoking to those who doubt. He said, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life."

It's a great question. Where will you go? What other view of reality makes more sense of everything we observe about the way the world we live in actually is? I think the process of evaluation is ongoing and never-ending. What I hope to address over the next couple of posts is how our knowing this should serve to affect our apologetic project.

More to follow ...

[A disclaimer: The experience I share here is in no way meant as a denunciation of the Catholic faith. My differences with Catholicism are with theologically specific issues of justification and authority. But I do not want anyone to think I am so presumptuous as to doubt the salvation or sincerity of my Catholic friends. I do no such thing. If anything, my studies over the years have served to make me more appreciative of the Catholic Church's view of tradition and its relentless defense of human life and dignity. In short, I believe we are all on the same team and sincerely hope my comments here do not imply otherwise.]

Planning For 2009

Though it may be an exercise in futility, I am going to try to be more organized and methodical about posting in 2009. Here are the four goals I have for the coming year:

I will attempt to offer semi-timely responses to the big events of the year. I say "semi-timely" because my commitment here will be to prioritize a thoughtful interpretation over just getting something out there quickly.

I will be more disciplined about addressing the claims of the (so-called) New Atheists. I say this for two reasons. First and foremost, the topics swirling around the New Atheist beehive are extremely important and relevant, especially to those who I am most passionate about reaching -- the high school and college students who are most vulnerable to their implications. Second, some have expressed a real interest and appreciation for discussing these issues.

I will do my best to make my posts shorter and spread longer treatments of the issues over several posts instead of putting up posts that are too long-winded or hard to follow.

I will try to provide a theme for the month and, as best I can, stick to it. Here is my plan for the first half of the year:

• January: Doubt


• February: Darwinism (This month is the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth)


• March: Defending Life


• April: Technology and Humanity


• May: Technology and Humanity


• June: The Real Jesus

That's the plan. We'll see how it goes. If you have ideas or issues that you would like to discuss, please let me know. You can contact me at: bob@truehorizon.org.

In the meantime I wish all a Happy New Year and look forward to bantering with you and seeking the Truth together in 2009.

Christmas In Your Heart

Christmas is more than a historical holiday, the concept of Immanuel – God With Us – more than just a description of the fulfilled hopes of a Jewish nation.

Christmas encapsulates our entire faith in one short story. Christmas is a picture of the manifestation of Christ within us. It happens every day. Like the lowly surroundings of a manger in a stable, unimpressive in the eyes of the world, Christ comes to us where we exhibit the essence of humility and powerlessness, where we are poor in spirit. It is there that we possess the kingdom of heaven. It is then and there that the Messiah arrives.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Like the wonderstruck shepherds, terrified by the glory of God that enveloped them, our contact with Christ upends the world we know, transforms us and changes our fear to joy. We are irreversibly changed.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Like the wise and affluent magi, we find him when we seek him, only to learn that our earthly wealth, influence and perceptions crumble at his feet. He leaves us no choice but to worship him.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

The birth of Jesus was not a one time event. It happens every day, in every heart that yearns to receive him. Every day we make the choice to re-welcome the Christ child.

Every morning we awake to a new beginning. We meet the day with a clean slate; free to determine our attitudes and responses to the world around us; free to forgive and love one another. Every morning we are blessed by the virgin birth of our souls, newly refreshed by the Grace of God.

. . . to be made new in the attitude of your minds, and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness . . .

Our culture celebrates Christmas only once a year. Don’t fall for it. Every day is Christmas in your heart. Jesus is the Christ in Christmas. But he is more than that. He is the Christ in you.

Peace With The Bedlamites

The irony in the linguistic morphing of Bethlehem into Bedlam goes beyond the modern parallel between a British insane asylum and the month of December in an American shopping mall. We have not just got a problem with our perspective -- we have a problem with our theology.

In the songs we sing, the cards we send, and the seasonal movies we watch, we have come to see Christmas as a season of joy, of giving, of love, and of family. Nothing is wrong with any of these, of course. But we are fooling ourselves if we think that these are the heart of Christmas. Each descends from a more central fact about Christmas that is closely related to another of our favorite Christmas phrases but misunderstood just the same. Linus made it famous in the Charlie Brown Christmas. You can watch it here for old times' sake if you wish, but here is what Linus is quoting:

In the same region there were some shepherds staying out in the fields and keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them; and they were terribly frightened. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is [Messiah] the Lord. "This will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger." And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased."

The phrase I'm talking about is right there at the end: "Peace On Earth." Do you see it? I hope not -- because it's not there.

Though it's the title of many a Christmas card and the advertising on many a holiday shopping bag, you might notice that is also not what the text actually says. It's not even what Linus says. You may also notice that the entire passage is not about our joy, or our giving, or our love, or our families -- it is focused on God himself.

It is not unusual (in fact, it is human nature) to turn things that are supposed to be about God into things about us. It is also not unusual for us to twist the meaning of things just a tad when we do so. And that's where the "Peace on Earth" thing comes in. It makes us feel good to say that Christmas is our hope for "peace on earth" but first we have to recognize that, once again, the peace is not a promise for us in our worldly relations -- God knows that hasn't proved true over the 2000 years since Jesus' birth -- instead, Biblical translators point out that ...

"The meaning seems to be, not that divine peace can be bestowed only where human good will is already present, but that at the birth of the Savior God’s peace rests on those whom he has chosen in accord with his good pleasure."

Do you see the difference?

It is not that world peace broke out on that cold winter morning in Bethlehem; it is that God came down in human covering to offer the only possible way of reconciliation between His perfect moral goodness and the bedlam that has broken out since we staged our human rebellion against Him.

We've been at war. The peace we're offered is between us and God.

The joy comes in realizing that to be true. The giving and love come in mimicking the selflessness we witnessed in the gift He gave that cost us nothing. Our families are the means by which we replicate and disseminate that love "for all the people." The difference is subtle but imperative; each of these things is impossible to celebrate fully, or practice appropriately, unless we first make peace with our Creator and Messiah.

Though I don't know that I've ever seen it used as a Christmas card, I can't imagine a better representation of what we Bedlamites have made Christmas into than the fresco on the Sistine Chapel that Michelangelo titled, "The Creation of Adam." In the most gracious act in human history, the Creator himself reached down to touch us in human form, while we appear only vaguely interested. Look at the way God is stretching His arm down to man -- and at the way the first Bedlamite halfheartedly reaches back.

May we all celebrate this Christmas with the intention of divorcing ourselves from the accuracy of Michelangelo's artful depiction of our state. May we all replace "Peace on Earth" with "Peace with God" and recognize the power in the subtle difference.

{I want to give credit to Greg Koukl who, on his 12/7/2008 STR podcast, articulated the core meaning of the Luke 2 passage cited above as I've addressed it here}

Creating Bedlam

I'm not sure why they started calling it "Black Friday" but the day after Thanksgiving has lived up to its name this year. On November 28th, a Walmart employee died when crazed shoppers burst through the doors of the Long Island store he worked in and trampled him to death in an attempt to be the first to nab the sale priced items for which they had waited in line for hours.

Within hours of that incident, two shoppers were shot dead -- not in a robbery attempt or a high speed chase with police -- but arguing during a scramble for a sale in a Toys-R-Us store in Palm Desert, California.

Happy Holidays! Welcome to the season formerly known as Christmas. How did we get here? Has our society lost its mind? It seems that with regard to the celebration of Christmas the answer is clearly, "yes." As a point of interest ...

In 1247 the sheriff of London, a man named Simon FitzMary founded a priory for the sisters and brethren of the order of the Star of Bethlehem just outside the city walls. It was used, as one of its special purposes, for the housing and entertainment of the bishop and canons of St Mary of Bethlehem, its mother church, and thereby became known as the Priory of St. Mary of Bethlehem.

By 1330, records show that the priory had become a hospital and that by 1403 some of its patients began to remain there permanently. When King Henry VIII later dissolved the Catholic monasteries in Britain, the priory was given to the city of London and, in 1547, officially sanctioned as an insane asylum which soon became infamous for the brutal ill-treatment meted out to the insane and the clamor, commotion, and pandemonium that could be heard emanating from within it. Because the local residents spoke in a dialect that didn't quite live up to the King's English, their cockney pronunciation of Bethlehem came out as "bedlam."

So, in a way that only human beings could contrive, the word we now use to describe lunacy and chaos actually has its source in the name of the city of Jesus' birth: Bethlehem.

Today's news stories simply reflect the sad link we have created for ourselves in turning the birth of Christ into a consumerist marketing frenzy. The lunatics are not only running the asylum, we created it.

A little more on that next time ...

Really Late Term Abortion

I hesitate to address this story but as I sit here watching the latest "breaking news" about the apparent finding of the remains of the missing Florida girl, Caylee Anthony, it occurs to me that intense moral outrage being expressed by members of the press (and many others) toward Caylee's mother, Casey, is not just a little hypocritical. Let me explain.

One CNN commentator (Jane? a woman I have never seen before but her name is irrelevant) reports that this case betrays an attitude that is "sadly repeated to a lesser degree all over this country every day." Her reasoning?

Casey Anthony didn't want her little girl.

I was unaware of the fact that Caylee's mom tried to give her daughter to a friend at some time in the recent past. It seems that Caylee was cramping her partying lifestyle. Apparently, the case ended up before a judge who insisted that Casey keep her daughter and own up to her responsibility to care for her. Casey wasn't happy about it. So now we have a motive for the murder of Caylee.

To be fair, Casey Anthony has not been convicted of anything. She is innocent until proven guilty. I want to emphasize that my comments here have nothing to do with her guilt of innocence. All I want to do is point out the warped thinking that was exposed in the obvious implications of the CNN commentator who reported the story. To paraphrase her comments, she finds it objectionable that a judge forced Casey Anthony to keep a daughter she didn't want. She should have been allowed to get rid of her if she wanted to. In this commentator's mind, the judge's decision runs parallel to those who, by attempting to deny the "right" to abortion, would force women to keep children they don't want either.

I don't want to give the impression that this CNN commentator sympathizes with, or somehow condones this horrific crime. She doesn't. And she says so over and over again. But the implication of the comments she offered in the monologue she used to open her show was an obvious comparison of Casey Anthony's morally horrific decision and the same kind of decision that is made all over this country every day -- the decision to abort and those who would oppose it.

Why is it that Casey Anthony's selfish murder of her own offspring is reprehensible but the same decision, made for the exact same reasons, by a woman who does so while the child is in-utero, is defended as a private choice about which none of us (especially a man who can't even become pregnant) should have anything to say.

Casey Anthony has not been convicted of anything. But the sad fact is that it seems that Casey Anthony chose to administer her own version of a really late term abortion. It is a sad fact that Scott Peterson, another infamous person whose crime was a national news story, was convicted of two murders when he killed his wife and unborn child in California in 2002. In each case, the child in question could have met the same fate, for the same reasons, at the hand of an abortionist and you would never have heard of either one of them.

Somehow that just doesn't make sense.

Naturalism's Legacy

Last month Jesse Kilgore (pictured at right) walked into the woods near his New York home and killed himself. The 22-year old was attending college after a stint in the military and, according to his father, was prompted to read Richard Dawkins', The God Delusion by one of his professors. I have addressed Dawkins' book here before (and intend to do so again) but I bring this sad story up for three reasons directly related to the purpose of TrueHorizon and my invovlvement in the apologetics.

First, Jesse's dad has reportedly blamed his son's death on Dawkins, his book, and the college professor who challenged Jesse to read it. While I could never hope to understand the shock and trauma with which Jesse's dad is dealing, it seems unfair to blame the author of a book for any actions taken by someone who reads his work. So, while I can't blame Richard Dawkins for this tragedy, the story brings a relevant reality to light. College professors have an inordinate amount of influence over our children after they leave our homes. These people weild authority based on their position and their opinions carry the weight of academia behind every pronouncement they make. In this case, some reports claim that the professor in question regularly taunted Jesse or anyone else who shared his religious views. His challenge to Jesse to read The God Delusion was just a part of his personal atheistic evangelizing program.

While the fact that a professor can act like this is disgusting, the truth is that this kind of scene is far too common. Our kids need to be prepared to deal with it. It is directly attributable to The 75% Problem that CrossExamined.org is attempting to address.

Second, the fact that Jesse Kilgore was taken aback and his faith was shattered by Dawkins' book is sad -- but it was also completely avoidable. Listen to his relative's description of the impact the book had on Jesse:

"He mentioned the book he had been reading 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins and how it along with the science classes he had take[n] had eroded his faith. Jesse was always great about defending his beliefs, but somehow, the professors and the book had presented him information that he found to be irrefutable. He had not talked … about it because he was afraid of how you might react. ... and that he knew most of your defenses of Christianity because he himself used them often. Maybe he had used them against his professors and had the ideas shot down.

Listen, the arguments Dawkins uses in The God Delusion are weak and, in some cases, completely juvenile. As a scientist Dawkins speaks with an air of superiority based on his credentials but even a cursory analysis of his scientific claims renders them impotent. Ironically however, Dawkins book contains very little science! Instead it is loaded with presuppositions posing as arguments and philosophical assertions that disintegrate under scrutiny. Even if we grant that Dawkins is a brilliant scientist, his lack of credentials as a philosopher are blatantly obvious in the disjointed and unconvincing "arguments" he thinks he makes. It saddens me deeply that no one was able to point these deficiencies out to Jesse Kilgore.

Finally, this story exposes the complete emptiness of naturalism. Jesse's father was of the opinion that his son was well-grounded in Christian thought, but one of Jesse's relatives paints a different picture:

"He was pretty much an atheist, with no belief in the existence of God (in any form) or an afterlife or even in the concept of right or wrong," the relative wrote. "I remember him telling me that he thought that murder wasn't wrong per se, but he would never do it because of the social consequences - that was all there was - just social consequences."

Here we see where atheism leads. Though atheists can be good, moral people, they have no way to explain the foundation of that goodness or morality. Whether they realize it or not, to act morally is to borrow from the theism they claim to reject. Sadly, not all of them are content with that fact and eventually come to realize that their worldview is vacuous in its ability to explain things like right and wrong, good and evil, pointless and meaningful. In a materialistic world where atoms banging into one another is the full explanation of reality, there cannot be things such as these. At some point the atheist either chooses to live with this dichotomy and ignore it, or is faced with the reality that his worldview renders his life meangingless.

Sadly, the consequences of the second choice can be eternally significant.