Love Truth Blog

“Mommy, can I smash it with a hammer?” asked the boy. Mom, sees the roach, and says, “Yes, please do.” In the back of her mind she’s also thinking it’s time to call the pest control folks. If the “it” was the boy’s little sister, Mom’s answer would be “No, not ever!” Mom would then have to grapple how to help a child see the value of human life. What is it? I think this is the operative question in the abortion discussion.  Planned Parenthood counselor may say abortion is a legal and safe way to terminate a pregnancy, but what is it that is being terminated? What is the “it” inside the womb? My contention is that the “it” inside the womb is a human life. It is a living person at one stage of human development. That is the “it” inside the womb. This is the basis for the Pro-life resistance to abortion on demand as a means of birth control. Hank Hanegraaff indicates that, “The living baby in the mother’s womb is a human being because he or she is the product of human paren...

Scientific explanations do not explain theism away, because they confirm the hypothesis that our Universe has been designed. Explanations for the motion of the planets, or mechanisms like photosynthesis do not 'explain God away.' the revelations of science raise further questions—questions that point to a theistic answer. Why do we live in a universe that is governed by laws and mechanisms? Why did the history of life on earth result in such bewildering diversity and beautiful complexity? Theism answers that the universe was created, and is ordered by a rational agent—God. ~ Graham Veale

Sometime after the New Year, I had a chance to check out Interstellar and I have to say it was some good sci-fi storytelling. I enjoyed the way the visual effects artist put into the film their concept of what theories from astrophysics, which were woven into the storyline (wormholes, black holes, time dilation, etc.). But, what I think captures the attention the way a family would be affected being immersed into the films grand narrative. Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is a former pilot for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), who lives out his retirement as a farmer growing corn. He struggles to make it as Earth undergoes an ecological meltdown, the land is unable to produce, and certain crops go extinct. Murphy (Mackenzie Foy/Jessica Chastain/Ellen Burstyn) is Cooper’s 10 year-old daughter. She is named after Murphy ’s Law, but not in the sense that “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong,” but in a positive sense that “whatever can happen, will happen.” ...

July 20, 2012 is one of those days when evil rears its ugly head and we are left speechless. The suspect, James Egan Homes, walked into the midnight premiere of the Dark Knight Rises at a theater in Aurora, Colorado, and begins a shooting spree. 12 killed 58 wounded. It is unspeakable to even describe. We can invent words to describe great injustices and tragedies, like “genocide,” but they never really come close to the intenseness of the experience. Aurora is not the first place. Great evils occurred elsewhere, such as Auschwitz, the Cambodian “Killing Fields,” Rwanda, Columbine, the 9/11 attacks in New York, just to name some. History is littered with these kinds of events. How do we come to grips with the kind of evil that happened in Aurora? The aftermath of such acts of evil leave us with questions. Did friends/acquaintances see any signs that he would do such a thing? Is the problem physical a brain malfunction? Was the person in the right state of...

Psalm 19 declares the reality of God can be seen in two ways. One way is through nature. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (v. 1) the psalmist sings. All of nature bears the fingerprints of God. The irreducible complexity of life from microscopic DNA to the macroscopic level of earth being finely tuned and suited for biological life having the right kind of sun to orbit, moon for regulating its seasons, and existing in the “Goldilocks’ Zone” of a spiral galaxy bear witness to Intelligent Designer. One can call this the book of nature and through science we read this book. There is also God’s special revelation found in the Scripture. The Lord has spoken through Moses and the prophets in the Old Testament, and through Jesus Christ and the apostles in the New Testament. People can observe God’s natural revelation and know that He exists; however, it is only through God’s special revelation that people can enter into a personal relationshi...

Last weekend I had a chance to check out X-Men: First Class , and this blockbuster did not disappoint. It was a good story with lots of great epic battle scenes. The whole younger versions of Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr / Magneto (Michael Fassbender) recruiting the first team of X-Men to battle against Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), a mutant set on world domination was wonderful. One of the themes explored in the movie is how the advent of the nuclear age increased the number of genetic mutations giving rise to a number of mutant people with extraordinary abilities, which would be the next stage in evolutionary development of life on earth. Darwinian Evolution is the story’s explanatory power for mutants and why it is unnecessary to consider their powers as a condition that needs to be “fixed.” In this instance, the story villain Magneto gets it, in so far as he understands the implications of evolutionary theory—the more fit species will survive with the less fit...

Every now and then I’ll come across a statement about faith and science, faith and politics, or faith and economics being mutually exclusive. So one can speak openly in public on science, politics, and economics; however, one must always keep faith or religious matters private. Some might even attempt to expunge from its science, political, and economic vocabulary anything that might be considered “religious.” This is something of a fact/value split, which places faith in an upper story of personal, private, beliefs, and science, politics, and economics in the lower story of public matters. Nancy Pearcy in her book Total Truth observes that this fact/value spirit ultimately “traps Christianity in the upper story of privatized values, and prevents it from having any effect on public culture.” She then encourages Christians to overcome this dichotomy and to recover their rightful place in the public square through developing a biblical worldview. It is a worldview that beings with the...

Intelligent design (ID) is the theory that many things in nature bear clear signature of design. However, there is an ongoing debate on whether or not ID can be counted as “real” science, and the opposition comes mainly from those who want to make Darwinian naturalism the only game in town. Part of ID deals with the evidence from science that supports design. Another part of the debated concerns the philosophy of science, which addresses questions like whether or not Darwinian evolution is the only theory on the origins of life, and whether or not a theory on design constitutes legitimate “science.” ID also brings up debates in the academy on whether or not it can be part of science curriculum, and whether or not scientists and science majors can question the Darwinian dogma without risking censure and/or tenure. To help Christians unravel these complex issues, William Dembski and Jonathan Witt have put together a great book entitled Intelligent Design Uncensored: An Easy-to-Understan...