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A forum for discussing matters of moment, from a curmudgeonly perspective. (The ideas posted here do not necessarily represent those of any organization with which I am a part). Rude and insulting remarks will not be published, but civil disagreement is welcome.
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- Happy
- Academic Conference Politeness
- Real Men or Followers of Jesus?
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- Mountainous Apologetics
- He Heard Them Say (About Himself), "He's Dead."
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- My Vision for a Christian College
- "Issues, Etc." Executed!
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- Possibility Junkies: Or Stop and Think
- Ponder This for a Week
- The Sabbath Rediscovered
- Obama to Give Speech on Race
- Obama Denounces his Pastor: What Does it Mean?
- Abortion and Mental Illness
- MISOLOGY IN THE PULPIT: A CHALLENGE TO PREACHERS
- Easter Essay
- Erasure: It's Just a Click Away, Click Away...
- "Expelled"
- The Seven Habits of Highly Testy Philosophers
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- Who is his pastor?
- Antique Inscriptions (ca. 1880-1985)
- Audio and Video of "Jesus and Buddha" Now Available
- A Short Theology of Listening
- A Charge to Remember
- Statism Strikes Again: California Homeschoolers be...
- Frank Schaeffer: Another Obama Casualty
- Someone who is not suffering from fetus fatigue
- Distorting Jesus
- Recovering from Fetus Fatigue
- Bibliography of Note
- A Poem Whose Title is Longer Than It Is
- Shut up and Perform
- A Sunday in the Life of Reading
- Rick Santorum on the Obama Abortion Machine
- Book Notes: The Case for Civility
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About Me
- Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D.
- Nothing on this blog represents the position of Denver Seminary. I am a Christian, philosopher, teacher, writer, and preacher, who is Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary. My most recent of my twelve books is Philosophy in Seven Sentences. My magnum opus is Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith (InterVarsity Press, 2011). I have published ten others, including Truth Decay and On Jesus. I direct the Christian Apologetics and Ethics MA program at Denver Seminary.
13 comments:
I would be quite interested in hearing an Obama supporter's rebuttal to this article. This is very troubling on so many levels that I don't think any further needs to be said. The article (if true) speaks for itself. And he claims to be a Christian?
Makes you wonder if he would consider an ACLU lawyer to conservative to nominate to the Supreme Court.
I, too, am curious to see how Sen. Obama will explain his position on this particular piece of legislation, as I am sure he will be called to do if he is the Democratic Party's nominee.
One things that gives me pause is that the person who attacks Sen. Obama is Rick Santorum,, a hypocrite who was repudiated by voters in one of the largest defeats of an incumbent in history.
That alone makes me want to suspend judgment on Mr. Santorum's accusations until Sen. Obama has had a chance to explain his vote.
Red herring again, Sir Fab. You do this all the time. X attacks Y. You like Y so, you attack X.
There is no reason to doubt Santorum because he was voted out of office!
Doug:
As you know, birth control often causes abortion. Perhaps as many (or more) abortions than so-called "abortion." (The number, as you know, is impossible to quantify. But if it occurs between 4-15% of the time for woman taking birth control, per year, and 40 million woman are on the pill, the numbers are easily over 1 million per year.)
Why draw a line?
For the record, I teach philosophy at an "evangelical" school and I support birth control and abortion.
Dr. Groothuis:
When an accusation is levelled, it helps to know the history of the person who made the accusation, and to have a sense of his honesty and credibility.
I did not say that what Rick Santorum is not true (It is true that Sen. Obama voted against the bill, but I don't know why). I said that knowing Rick Santorum's record of distorting facts, I would like to hear Obama's explanation of why he did what he did before I jump to conclusions. You should, too.
SirFab,
It is not as if Rick Santorum was merely spouting anger and leveling unfounded accusations against Senator Obama. Rather, he listed verifiable facts. Those facts, which are now documented pieces of history, imply that there is no explanation Obama can give that will change his homogeneous record. Santorum's character is in this case irrelevant.
Sarah, I disagree.
Credibility has a lot to do with everything. And facts can be taken out of context.
I agree that even someone I hold in very low esteem like Rick Santorum can from time to time come up with a nugget of truth, but his record of duplicity, distortion and sanctimony cannot be ignored. All I am saying is that when a person like Rick Santorum attacks, I want to hear the other side of the story before I reach a conclusion.
Anyway, I respect the fact that you, Dr. Groothuis, Kyl, and others have a different view than mine on the issue of abortion, and if that is sufficient to rule out a candidate regardless of what he has to say on other issues, that is your prerogative. I just think it is the wrong thing to do.
Tom:
Not all birth control causes abortion. The pill may and the IUD may. So, I take those means to be illegitimate. Other means, wisely used, are not. Contraception is not inherently wrong. But not all birth control is contraception.
How can you justify abortion on demand if you are a Christian? Life begins at conception (biology) and all humans are made in God's image (Gen. 1) and have the human right to life. Thus, abortion is (in all but extreme cases) wrong.
SirFab,
I understand your claim, and the best that I can give you is to *partially* agree in saying that credibility can certainly help or hurt how an argument, or in this case, a list of verifiable facts, is received.
Regardless of who is speaking, however, a statement can still correspond nicely to reality and thus be quite true. If we doubt the speaker (or writer), our responsibility is to check the correspondence factor and thus verify if it holds up or not. Character is ultimately unconnected to the truth value of a position, argument, or list of facts, and in most cases simply appeals to our knee-jerk bias. The issue is whether what is said is in fact true.
Furthermore, Santorum is far from the only person to make these observations of Obama’s record.
Doug:
I appreciate your honesty. Most people just skirt the issue about the fact that the pill or an IUD often cause abortions.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that the pill and IUD's cause roughly the same amount of abortions per year--why do you only pick on those who support abortion on demand rather than those who support the pill or the IUD?
I disagree with your claims. I don't think that science proves that life begins at conception (nor do most scientists) and I don't think that imago Dei has anything to do with that argument. First, I would restrict the term to life; second I don't take Genesis 1 very seriously. I don't believe that the earth was actually created in 6 or 7 days, nor do I believe the earth is roughly 6,000 years old.
How do I justify early abortion (the pill, IUD, morning after pill) or late abortion (on demand)?
Simple: I don't think life begins at conception and I don't see any clear scriptural proof against abortion. I'm not convinced by the prooftexting I've seen; in fact, I took it to some Bible professors at PTS: 1 a Harvard OT grad and 1 a Duke NT grad and they thought the typical proof-texts were "ridiculous" and had nothing to do with abortion. If you can point me to Bible scholars with similar credentials, I'd certainly be happy to hear their arguments.
I guess this is a point where us philosophers are dependent--we've just chosen to follow different interpreters.
Sarah:
Why not wait and see what Sen. Obama says about why he decided it was more important to vote against the bill than for it? He is not yet the nominee, and the election is eight months away.
I am in no rush to jump at conclusions, as I am sure he will be called to explain himself on these accusations (and on many others which his political adversaries will dig up or fabricate).
Here is the interview of Barack Obama when he was running for the U.S. Senate in 2004 by Jeff Berkowitz a Chicago discussion show host. Berkowitz covered the interview about abortion on his blog Public Affairs:
Jeff Berkowitz: Switching over to abortion, you have said that you would vote in support of, if you were a [U. S.] Senator the federal law that came up that passed [the U. S. Senate] 98 to 0 and that was known as the Live Birth Infant Protection Act.
Barack Obama: That is exactly right. Because there was a different bill than the one that was introduced by [then] Senator Patrick O’Malley here in Illinois and we actually offered amendments that would have provided assurance that Row. v. Wade [U. S. Supreme Court, 1973] was still respected even as we dealt with what I think actually were some very anecdotal evidence that there might have been some problems although there has never been any hard evidence that there were. Unfortunately, Mr. O’Malley wanted to make a broader point because he does not believe that a woman should exercise a right to choose in any circumstances.
Berkowitz: But, if that happened in Illinois, if there were some abortions- so called abortions that went wrong- a live fetus was born. Would you seek to have legislation that protected those fetuses?
Obama: I would if there wasn’t already legislation. Unfortunately [sic?], there is existing legislation-
Berkowitz: On the state level?
Obama: On the state level that says if there is a fetus that is determined viable and there has to be a second doctor who assists in determining that that fetus is viable- they are required by current Illinois Law to provide that fetus with assistance to make sure that they can live outside the womb. The law already exists. That’s not what Senator O’Malley’s law was about. What Senator O’Malley’s law was about was identifying all fetuses as human beings as a way of going after the right of women to choose to have an abortion pre- viability and that’s the reason that I, like a number of other senators, including Republican senators, voted either present or against it.
for a more in-depth consideration:
http://tinyurl.com/26kxgb
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