Evidence for God in Morality Archives

August 28, 2021August 27, 2021

Alcohol and Women of Childbearing Age

The World Health Organization (WHO) released a global alcohol action plan. The statement that has grabbed the most attention is this: “appropriate attention should be given to … prevention of drinking among pregnant women of childbearing age.” Unfortunately, the media seem to have ignored the rest of the WHO report. The storm of reaction is because of the statement about alcohol and women of childbearing age. Freelance writer Danielle Campoamor gave the immediate response of much of the media when she said on NBC, “the action plan overlooks men, as usual.”

The data on alcohol use is horrible among men and women. WHO has given data for years which the media has totally ignored. In 2016, 2.3 million men died due to alcohol consumption. Alcohol use worldwide caused the loss of 106.5 million DALYs, disability-adjusted life years. There are 283 million people aged 15 years and older living with alcohol use disorders. That is 5.1% of the global adult population.

So why pick on alcohol and women of childbearing age? The answer to that question should be obvious. The effect of a drinking mother on her unborn child causes problems for the child–not the mother. Fetal alcoholism syndrome is something doctors confront regularly. Feminists correctly point out that men who drink substantially and father children also increase the risk of birth defects.

Alcohol is the most destructive drug that has ever existed. The mentality that attempts to justify drinking for any segment of the world’s population is the same as those who promote abortion—the selfish desires of individuals in our culture trump everything else. Babies continue to bear the consequences of selfish adult desires for pleasure. We now see this happening with marijuana, but we are yet to see the long-term health problems of marijuana.

We see people like Peter Singer, moral philosopher and professor at Princeton University, suggesting that we should euthanize people with mental or physical impairments to save money and inconvenience to society. Now is a time for Christians to stand up for life, morality, and the positive results of following the teachings of Christ. We must speak out against alcohol and other drug use, abortion and infanticide, and euthanasia of the mentally ill, elderly, or those with congenital disabilities. Protecting those people is the one hope for humanity to continue to exist with equal opportunity for all.

Reference: World Health Organization “Global alcohol action plan 2022-2030 to strengthen implementation of the Global Strategy to Reduce the Harmful Use of Alcohol,” released June 15, 2021

August 26, 2021August 25, 2021

Singing is Good for Your Health

A Finnish study has found that singing is good for your health. In addition, it showed better verbal fluency in elderly singers compared to non-singers. The study says that these findings make sense because singing requires regulation of attention, versatile information processing, linguistic output, learning, and memorization.

Several New Testament passages talk about singing, including Ephesians 5:19, Colossians 3:16, Romans 15:9, and 1 Corinthians 14:15. The New Testament presents singing as part of worship, and everyone should participate in worship. Merely being entertained by someone who is blessed with great musical talent is not participating in worship.

In our day of four-part harmony, it is easy for everyone to learn to sing in their comfort range. In the Old Testament, the Psalms were songs. Music for worship in Jesus’ day mainly consisted of chants that everyone could join.

A person can be tone-deaf and still participate in singing in Christian worship. Although many religions use singing as a part of their worship activities, group participation is unique to the worship system of Christians.

Singing is not what takes place in the meetings of atheists. When I was an atheist, the only songs I remember were songs that carried a pornographic or comedic message. Music was not something we all participated in, but it was a vehicle of entertainment.

“Making melody in your heart” (Ephesians 5:19) is a proven way to improve your mental health. Furthermore, like everything God tells us to do, it has a purpose and benefits our well-being. Therefore, singing is good for your health, both physical and spiritual health.

Reference: Readers Digest. September 2021, page 58.

August 22, 2021August 21, 2021

What Happens When We Die?

Life has a way of forcing all of us to consider what happens when we die. In the past two months, two of my closest friends, my brother. and my son died. When death strikes that close to you, a logical set of questions arise. Where are they now? Will I ever see them again? Do they know what is going on here on Earth? Are they in heaven or hell?

“Every person has a soul that will live forever, either in God’s presence or absence.” According to recent polling, 79% of all Americans agree with that statement. If you don’t believe that humans have a soul, you need to look at the evidence. Dr. Timothy Gordon has written a book titled “A Traveler’s Guide to the Afterlife” that makes a thorough study of what the Bible says about eight subject areas:

1) The death and the mortality of humans.
2) The immortality of the soul
3) The intermediate state of the dead
4) The second coming of Christ
5) The resurrection of the body
6) The day of judgment and rewards
7) Hell and eternal destruction
8) Heaven and eternal life

Tim Gordon is a retired Navy Commander with a doctorate in Christian apologetics. He knows Hebrew and Greek and is very familiar with millennial views. He serves as an adjunct instructor for the Biblical Studies Center in Boise, Idaho.

There has been very little teaching on what happens when we die, and this book is biblically accurate. There is a 77 page listing of scriptures dealing with the afterlife, and the scriptures are written out–not just listed. In addition, there are crossword puzzles, word search puzzles, and extensive documentation of what people have said about this subject.

This book fills a huge gap in the preaching and teaching about life after death over the years. We highly recommend it to Christians, and especially to preachers and teachers.

This book is available on Amazon for $9.99 in paperback and $3.99 for the Kindle edition (ISBN 9781082882593).

August 16, 2021August 12, 2021

Dangerous Chemicals Cause Human Suffering

The problem of human suffering has been at the center of debates over the existence of God for hundreds of years. However, in recent years, increasing evidence has come to light that, to a large extent, dangerous chemicals cause human suffering.

In April 2021, a federal appeals court ordered the EPA to ban chlorpyrifos from food. Mounting evidence indicates that it and other organophosphate pesticides are related to a host of human ills, especially in children.

The federal agency regulating nuclear waste recently proposed putting “very low level” nuclear waste into unlicensed landfills. We know that nuclear radiation increases the risk of cancer, birth defects, immune disorders, and a host of other health issues.

The state of Washington decided to get rid of toxic firefighting foam by shipping it to an out-of-state incinerator. Burning the foam releases poly-fluoroalkyl substances, which can stay in the human body for decades and are related to cancer.

The federal government plans to reopen the Homestead Detention Center in Homestead, Florida, to detain migrant children. That center is near a military superfund site saturated with contaminants linked to cancer, kidney failure, blood disorders, and developmental damage. Dangerous chemicals cause human suffering.

The list goes on and on of decisions that can ultimately bring pain and suffering to humans. We can’t blame God for what we do to ourselves by selfishness, bad judgment, greed, and abuse of God’s gifts.

References: Earthjustice Quarterly Magazine for Summer 2021 and “Pesticides are Killing Our Soils” in Scientific American August 2021.

August 15, 2021August 12, 2021

Tolstoy and Stupefacients

One of the most famous authors on the world literary scene was Leo Tolstoy. He is probably best known for War and Peace but is well respected for his other novels. In 1890 Tolstoy wrote an essay titled, “Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves?” For Tolstoy, “stupefacients” were anything that interfered with the rigorous application of a person’s conscience, and he believed they caused most human problems. Tolstoy’s list of stupefacients included wine, beer, spirits, narcotics, and tobacco.

The Bible agrees with Tolstoy. Numerous Old Testament passages tell of trouble coming from the use of alcohol. (For example, see Genesis 9:20-24, Leviticus 10:9, Deuteronomy 29:6, and Judges 13:4-7.) The condemnation of alcohol use in passages like Proverbs 20:1 and 23:21 make it clear this is not God’s will for us to stupefy ourselves with alcohol. There is no product of humanity that has caused more misery, ill health, disruption, and violence than alcohol.

So here we are in 2021, legalizing another stupefacient. We already see the ill effects of the use of marijuana, and yet 70% of all Americans support the legalization of recreational pot. Nearly 80% of people in the 18-29 age category support it. Celebrities like Willie Nelson, Cheech and Chong, Woody Harrelson, and Bill Maher have promoted marijuana as a way to find peace in a confusing world.

People made similar claims about alcohol when prohibition was the law. The promoters of alcohol won, and the result of the legalization of alcohol brought in tax dollars. At the same time, it has cost far more in alcohol-related accidents, broken homes, and broken lives. The legalization of marijuana is also riding on the claim of increased tax dollars.

Tolstoy was a Russian writing in the late 19th century, and he was unsuccessful in turning Russia away from the use of stupefacients. The Russian Republic was destroyed and replaced with Communism with dictators like Lenin and Stalin. The question is, “Will America survive our 21st-century involvement with stupefacients?”

Data for this came from an article by John M. Crisp titled “We’ll Survive Legal Weed.”

August 14, 2021August 12, 2021

Experimenting on Human Subjects

One of the challenges of medical science is how to test a new drug or procedure on humans. If people are nothing more than animals, science can justify experimenting on human subjects for the common good. For example, German and Japanese scientists conducted experiments on World War II prisoners against their will. After the war, international courts prosecuted German doctors and scientists for war crimes related to human experimentation. Japanese researchers did not face trial because the U.S. agreed not to prosecute in exchange for access to their data.

Out of the prosecution of German researchers came what is called “The Nuremberg Code.” It involves ten statements describing the ethical standards for experimenting on human subjects in research. In simple terms, the ten statements are:

Participants must give consent without stress or force.
The research must be able to show benefits for the good of society.
Findings should justify the experiment.
Research should avoid mental suffering and physical harm.
No one should be killed or injured.
Risks should not outweigh the benefits.
The research should protect participants from injury or death.
The researcher must be qualified to do the research.
Participants should be able to stop participating at any time.
The researcher must be prepared to stop the study at any time.

A classic example of how far things can go in today’s world, even in the United States, is the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Male Negro.” That study continued from 1932 to 1972. The United States Public Health Service recruited 600 African American men with syphilis offering them free meals and burial stipends for the right to their bodies after they died. Unfortunately, no medical treatment was made available to those men, and they were subjected to painful spinal taps. You can imagine what they went through with 40 years of untreated syphilis raging in their bodies.

Looking at what happened in this terrible event brings to mind the struggles in America today. In the past, society considered blacks to be less human than whites. For that reason, causing them pain and premature death to benefit the scientific establishment was deemed to be acceptable. The “black lives matter” movement of today is rooted in this kind of history.

More to the point is that science ignored the teachings of the Bible. The Bible tells us that humans are created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27), and the body is the temple of God’s Spirit, and defiling the temple invites God’s wrath (1 Corinthians 3:16-17). That means not caring for every person is a rebellion against God. Experimenting on human subjects in the Tuskegee experiment can only be justified if you view blacks as less than human. It also requires embracing the notion that survival of the fittest means it is acceptable to sacrifice the less fit to benefit the fit. Many people today do not accept the Christian view that all humans are special because we are created in the image of God. We can see the result of that in the chaos tearing at the fabric of society.

For more on the history of the Tuskegee study see “Who Dares to Speak Up” in the July/August 2021 issue of American Scientist, pages 238 -242.

August 12, 2021August 12, 2021

The Transgender Craze

The transgender craze is a dangerous movement sweeping much of the western world. It shows up especially in a sudden spike among teenage girls identifying as transgender. According to journalist and author Abagail Shrier, there are top girl’s schools where up to 30% of the girls in the 7th grade identify themselves as “trans.” This transgender craze is social contagion in action. Consider the following facts:

1) America in 2007 had one pediatric gender clinic. Today there are hundreds.
2) Testosterone is readily available to adolescents from Planned Parenthood and Kaiser without a therapist’s note.
3) In Washington state, a 13-year-old can begin “gender affirming therapy” without her parents’ consent.
4) In Oregon, a 15-year-old can undergo an elective double mastectomy without her parents’ permission.
5) Gender dysphoria (the feeling of severe discomfort in a person’s biological gender) is rare, afflicting .01% of the population, most of whom are male.
6) 70% of gender dysphoria victims naturally outgrow their affliction when left alone.
7) Doctors use puberty blockers to shut down part of the pituitary gland stopping the release of hormones that lead to sexual maturity. Lupron, used initially to chemically castrate sex offenders, is the most commonly used drug. However, the FDA has never approved it for halting healthy puberty.
8) Puberty blockers negatively affect bone density as well as sexual maturation and should not be used for more than two years.
9) The number of girls seeking treatment at the United Kingdom’s National Gender Clinic has increased by 4,400% in the past decade.
10) The Equality Act before the U.S. Congress would make it illegal to distinguish between biological men and women, creating problems for schools, sports, employers, prisons, churches and non-profits, and the security of women.

The media tries to hide the above facts considering this a conservative political issue rather than a medical one. Referring to Genesis 1:27, Jesus said, “Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female.” That is a biological fact. The transgender craze sweeping our culture today is causing massive pain and future disaster for many young men and women.

Data from Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by Abigail Shrier, and “Gender Ideology Run Amok” in the June/July issue of Imprimis magazine from Hillsdale College.

August 8, 2021August 7, 2021

Charity and Faith in God

The Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy conducts research on donations to charity in the United States. Their recently released figures show that charitable giving in the United States declined between 2000 and 2018. This data is before COVID, so the reduction in giving is not due to the pandemic. Instead, there is evidence for a connection between charity and faith in God. The statistics show that as faith in God declines, so does charitable giving.

In the year 2000, 66% of United States households donated to charitable organizations. In 2018 that figure had dropped to 49.6%. However, the total amount of giving in 2018 was greater than in 2000. So even as fewer people were giving, those who were giving gave more. The study shows that the percentage of Americans giving to religious causes has declined along with the percentage of Americans attending worship services. A disturbing trend is that only a third of households headed by someone under the age of 40 gave anything to charity.

My parents were atheists, and I can remember their argument when my father’s employer put pressure on the workers to give to United Way. Of course, my father didn’t want to give anything, but for social reasons, my mother wanted her name on the list of donors that the employer published.

The numbers are somewhat surprising when you realize that campaigns to raise funds for various causes have become more and more aggressive in recent years. Nearly half of the large volume of mail we receive is solicitations from organizations wanting donations. We have also seen a significant increase in phone calls pressuring us to contribute to various causes.

As our society becomes more secular, it has become more materialistic. Rejecting the teaching of Jesus that it is more blessed to give than receive is reflected in the charity data. We also suggest that this trend explains why marriage is becoming less common and why there is an increase in frustration and lack of satisfaction in sexual relationships. Giving is not just a physical action. It is also a shaper of how we think and how we approach relationships.

There is a connection between charity and faith in God. The Christian system of desiring to give and finding joy in giving works. Rejecting God and the biblical way of life brings unfortunate results for all people.

Reference: Associated Press by Haleluya Hadero for July 28, 2021.

August 6, 2021August 5, 2021

America’s Christian Heritage

America’s Christian heritage is being forgotten. It is a brutal truth that if you visit a foreign country today, you will be expected to observe their holidays and respect their heritage. When you are in Japan, for example, you are expected to wear a particular robe and remove your shoes when you visit a temple or meet with a Japanese political figure.

When I visited a Native American leader in Arizona many years ago, I was expected to allow my hand to be cut and my blood mixed with his to bring oneness. So doesn’t it seem a bit strange that you can be arrested for publicly maintaining biblical standards in the United States today? Consider the following facts about the heritage of this nation:

1) The Declaration of Independence declares God as Creator and Supreme Judge, and the signers pledged their reliance on divine providence.
2) Of the 50 state constitutions, 45 of them refer to God.
3) In God We Trust, the national motto is printed on all money and engraved above the Speaker’s rostrum in the House Chamber.
4) The Supreme Court declared the U.S. a Christian nation in 1892 and reaffirmed it in 1931.
5) The words of Leviticus 25:10 are inscribed on the Liberty Bell.
6) References to God, the Bible, and Christianity abound on the Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, and Washington Monument.

If I visit Japan, I would not loudly condemn their culture and history because I don’t share their belief system. So why is it that in America today, remembering America’s Christian heritage and expressing the faith of our forefathers can result in being fined or put in prison?

Reference: Joey Peacher in Camp Manatawny Summer 2021 Newsletter.

August 2, 2021August 2, 2021

Mandatory Immodesty at the Tokyo Olympics

The Tokyo Olympic Games are in progress, and the dress code for the women’s beach volleyball reminds us of a recent incident with the Norwegian beach handball team. The Norwegian team was playing in the Euro 2021 tournament in July when they protested the required bikini bottoms in sanctioned matches. The team was fined $1700 for refusing to wear the mandated dress for competition. Instead, they wore thigh-length elastic shorts. The women on the Norwegian team were not comfortable with the mandatory immodesty, which the Norwegian Handball Federation president called “embarrassing.”

The mandatory immodesty requirement has nothing to do with the performance of the team or with handball per se. The male players are allowed to wear tank tops and shorts four inches above the knee. The decisions by the young ladies were not religiously based. Instead, it indicates that the world will adopt a particular dress code and discipline anyone who does not conform to it, whatever their reasons might be.

I can remember when girls in my high school were required to wear skirts that covered the knees, and the bottom hem had to be a certain distance from the floor. The stated reason for showing less leg was to promote modesty. It had virtually nothing to do with education. Unfortunately, it appears the world has now swung in the opposite direction requiring mandatory immodesty in girls’ clothing.

Christian women face a difficult situation in this subject area. In 1 Timothy 2:9, Paul encourages women to “adorn themselves in modest apparel … not with …costly array.” Unfortunately, that is becoming a significant challenge in our godless culture today.

Reference: NBC News