The Body & Culture Wk 3
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Housekeeping
-Recording of session 2 available
-survey forms
Intro
Intro
On a dark, rain-swept September night in 2008, Cape Air pilot David Willey took off from Martha’s Vineyard Airport in Vineyard Haven, MA, to pick up passengers in Boston. For Willey, a former navy pilot with international flight experience, the short evening flight in the twin engine Cessna was the definition of routine. Yet shortly after Mr. Willey took-off, Jesse Sonneborn who lived two miles from Martha’s Vineyard Airport and was enjoying a night at home, heard a tremendous crash, and rushed outside to discover the remains of David Willey’s plane, which had cratered into the ground. Airline Investigators concluded that the cause of the crash was a phenomenon known as “spatial disorientation.” Spatial disorientation occurs when the pilot is unable to discern any features of ground, usually as the result of poor visibility caused by rain, cloud cover, or darkness, and as a result is no longer able to differentiate between up and down. It is not hard to imagine how the inability to tell the difference between the sky and the ground could have fatal consequences for pilots, as it did for David Willey.
We live in a world where the moral principles that govern our society are in constant and dramatic evolution. Activities and behaviors that were regarded as debased and wicked 50 years ago (and in some cases, were illegal), are now openly embraced in our culture as not merely acceptable, but as morally virtuous. In the midst of this frenetic values revolution, there seems to be at least one constant cultural perspective: orthodox Christian belief is outmoded and often immoral. If you hold to a view that has traditionally been the doctrinal commitment of the church on God as creator, marriage, sexuality, gender, abortion, complementarianism, or biblical authority to name a few, than you are likely to receive the pejorative labels of dogmatist, sectarian, bigot, misogynist, extremist, and many far more indecorously stated. In such a hostile environment, it is easy for even the committed Christian to become gradually ashamed to hold and defend beliefs that society treats as reprehensible. The danger is that we become subtly convinced by the moral arguments society is making (and make no mistake, these are arguments about the very foundation of morality), and in so doing begin to think that our faith requires us to believe in that which is not most loving, most right, most just, and most true. Ultimately such doubts the fruits of that first Satanic lie in Genesis three, challenging both the authority and the virtue of the commands of God. Such doubts may immediately have violently disorienting consequences in the life of the believer, who may well question what is good and what is evil, which way is up, and which is down. As in flight, the wrong answer will have fatal consequences.
Question: has what we have talked about so far been helpful in
Reminder: Why are we talking about this stuff?
Hope to the hopeless (1 Peter 3:15)
Because prolonged exposure to the sun usually results in sunburn (you must learn to protect yourself from harmful things you are regularly exposed to). Flying in the dark results in spatial disorientation, etc.
In calling a lie (something that paints a picture of reality that is fundamentally untrue and leaves destruction in its path) out for what it is, our goal is not condemn, but to help others and ourselves
It is to ensure we listen and love well, and that we are renewing our minds and not conforming them.
—>Today we are going to look at how a wrong view of the body and the person impacts our cultures view on life.
MENTION FOR THOSE WHO MAY HAVE UNDERGONE AN ABORTION
Abortion: The human non-person
Abortion: The human non-person
in 1973 the Supreme Court ruled that the US Constitution of the United States protects a pregnant woman’s liberty to choose to have an abortion
Since that time more than 60 million abortions have occured in the United States
Between a half million to a million abortions occurs in America each year
Last week California mandated that all public universities and colleges provide free abortion pills to their students.
The overarching question is how have we come to this point of endorsing wholesale murder of innocent children?
>All argue that in no small part, the serpent’s lie about the nature of the human person and the human body plays a central role
The person—body split…again
With gender, the person/body split represented what?
The separation between someone’s material body and their personhood
A very similar argument emerges in the abortion discussion (Cartesian Dualism “I think therefore I am”- Descartes).
—>The central argument of the Supreme Court in the Roe vs. Wade decision is not disputing that life begins at conception.
> Medical science at this point is pretty thoroughly behind the idea that biological life begins at conception
—>Instead, the central argument of Roe vs. Wade is that personhood does not begin when biological life begins.
“We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, in this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.” -From the SCOTUS Roe vs. Wade decision
The issue of whether their was life in the womb was never the question—did that life constitute a person, a person with rights and protections under the Constitution—and the court’s answer was no!
—>But what the court did was exchange the what would prove to be the easy question (when does life begin) for the much harder one (what constitutes a person)?
>In so doing they created a whole new category, a whole new classification of beings: human non-persons. And the affect has been devestating.
>You can’t miss the irony—the court’s gross intrusion into the realm of theology, philosophy, and medicine.
Question: What is the fundamental problem in separating the physical, bodily life, from the immaterial person?
The first problem is that it is a lie!
2. Who gets to determine who qualifies as a person, and what is the measure of a person?
A powerful contradiction=personhood theory and reductionist naturalism
Naturalism (Nietzche and Darwin return)
Reductionism
The failure of reductionism (language—see Grandma Sharon)
The problem: A naturalistic and reductionist view can hardly expect to find an immaterial person—that is an impossibility
Instead then, we define personhood not as something distinct from biology, but as developmental benchmark in biology
Consciousness and cognition
>Where does that lead?
It logically leads to an immoral and murderous society
“James Watson, co-discoverer of the DNA double helix, advocates waiting three days after a baby is born before deciding whether it should be allowed to live. The rationale is that some genetic defects are not detectable until after birth. His colleague Francis Crick agrees: “no newborn infant should be declared human until it has passed certain tests regarding its genetic endowment and if it fails these tests, it forfeits the right to life.” Peter Singer says even “ a three year old is a gray case.” After all, how much cognitive functioning does a toddler have.” -Nancy Pearcey
-Who is Peter Singer? His is a professor of bioethics at Princeton
-How is this different then the Nazi view of life?
-In fact, it was their reductionist view of the person that led to their “blood and soil” philosophy of man.
2. It robs all worth and dignity from the human person.
-if cognitive function is the measure of personhood, then does the greater your IQ equate to the more of a person you are?
-as Scott Klusendorf says, such a view “relegates the proposition that all men are created equal to the ash heap of history.”
-In the context of advocating the use of a newborn baby for the purpose of medical experimentation rather than animals, Peter Singer states:
The life of a newborn baby is of less value to it than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee is to the nonhuman animal.” -Peter Singer
-that is not a quote form Mein Kampf, but from a Princeton bioethicist!
To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.
O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.
Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.
For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.
Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!
O men of blood, depart from me!
They speak against you with malicious intent;
your enemies take your name in vain.
Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with complete hatred;
I count them my enemies.
Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!
And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting!
For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
9:13-
2. My Body My Choice!
Tab 1 & 2 in the book
“Because the people have forsaken me and have profaned this place by making offerings in it to other gods whom neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah have known; and because they have filled this place with the blood of innocents, 5 and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or decree, nor did it come into my mind”
“20 And you took your sons and your daughters, whom you had borne to me, and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured. Were your whorings so small a matter 21 that you slaughtered my children and delivered them up as an offering by fire to them?” -
Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them. And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to him, saying, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”
About the body— “your body is not your own, you were bought with a price.” -not the sound of subjugation but of glorification!
About the body— “your body is not your own, you were bought with a price.” -not the sound of subjugation but of glorification!
Reality: Women are hurting from the lie of abortion (tab 3)