Thinking Through a Common Pro-Abortion Argument on the Dividing Line

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:05

and Welcome to the dividing line a little late start there, but we had to you know bow down and kiss

00:34

Bill Gates ring again It happens and even happens to max just not nearly as often as that the windows, but anyway

00:41

Here we are. We'll just go till six minutes after Four o 'clock in the

00:48

Mountain West and that'll make everything Work a couple days ago. I think it was

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Monday I think possibly I Listened to a debate

01:02

While I was writing between dr. Peter Kreeft and dr.

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David Boone and Who teaches up in Boulder a philosopher there? And it was on the subject of abortion.

01:15

We haven't discussed abortion in in quite some time and so having about Two and a half three weeks earlier than that.

01:29

I Was I don't know why I was in the Northwest Valley But I was listening to Catholic answers live, which

01:39

I didn't listen to her once in a while Not not regularly, but if it happens to be on it's you know always

01:45

Always good to redeem the time and for me that involves studying what other people are saying anyway

01:54

I was listening to Catholic answers live and They were talking about abortion and it was you know, one of those days were generally generally

02:02

There wasn't much that I was hearing that I disagreed with even though You know you you do have a fundamental chasm between at least self -consciously reformed

02:16

Protestants and Roman Catholics in regards to The predominance of natural law argumentation and things like that and and that's if you've read any event tell you you know what

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I'm talking about anyway But most of you know, mostly I was in in in agreement and was somewhat interested in especially the

02:36

Roman Catholics that were calling up who were pro -choice which

02:43

I'm sort of like why are you a Catholic again? What's what's the oh? All right who messed this up There we go.

02:51

Okay. All right. There we go We will not block the lava lamp. It's just it's just it was it was blocking the lava lamp.

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That's that's Inappropriate, especially when it's lava ing Someone in someone in channel or on Twitter or something was actually doing something about counting

03:07

How many times it lot lava lava eat love was doing lava stuff. What are you doing?

03:14

It got bumped I Didn't bump it. I think you're oh now now you're zooming it

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It's very distracting here. I was talking about natural law a few seconds ago, and now I can't talk about natural law

03:29

Yeah, well doesn't mean you have to come in here with zoom things Anyways, what was

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I talking about Moses was in the bulrushes and Oh, yeah. So anyways,

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I was pretty interested in listening to this stuff And I I don't know why

03:47

I remember I was on 75th Avenue southbound when this fella calls in and Presents this argument that evidently is a a has become a popular argument of late amongst the the pro -aborts and I Was interested in the response that was offered and then lo and behold in listening to this debate.

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It's pretty much the entirety of the presentation of The philosopher who is defending abortion

04:23

David Boonin So as I listened to it,

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I thought you know what what I'm gonna do and I decided to do it today is

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I'm going to play this presentation What I'm gonna challenge you to do is

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To Examine, you know, obviously

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I'm gonna interact what he's saying But it's a 22 minute long presentation.

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I can't speed it up because I'm playing the video and so it's gonna take up a good portion of our time, but I I want you to listen and And basically put yourself in the position that that I would be in if I was in Peter Kreef's position

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Now, I obviously I listened to Kreef's interaction and I would agree again Primarily with most of what

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Kreef said not everything. We certainly don't see eye -to -eye even on on some of these issues

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But I was disappointed to be honest with you in In Kreef's presentation mainly because it was just I Don't know

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I'm gonna get in trouble for saying this but I rarely find a lot of Roman Catholic presenters to be overly passionate it was just sort of like You know, he's looking down reading and just in to do and maybe that's just him

05:55

I don't know. I've I really enjoyed the under boarded Socrates. That was a great book. I read back in the 80s, but Like Have some passion man, you know pick up the pace get a little more said here

06:11

But I guess that's a philosopher thing. Anyway, I Want you to put yourself in the position that I would be in if I were in this debate

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You hear this presentation and you are immediately as soon as it is done going to have to interact with it

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And as I have encouraged over and over and over again You must think presupposition

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You must think presupposition ly you must listen to what is being said and get below Just the surface level of what you're hearing and see how it all hangs together

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Now, of course, this is also I think an excellent example an excellent example of the foolishness of human philosophy

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The ability of of the philosopher to To make incredibly absurd statements and yet do so the smile in the face and a

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PhD in the pocket it really is but That's another issue.

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So I want to want you to listen to this Examine what's being said and then we'll go through it together

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So this is from tab four years ago up at the University of Minnesota, I believe and that yeah from April 30th 2010 here is

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David Boonen's presentation Start by taking just a quick survey so I'm gonna make a statement and then

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I'm gonna ask for a show of hands to Indicate if you're inclined to agree with the statement inclined to disagree or you really kind of on the fence

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Okay, so here's the statement The typical human fetus or unborn child if you prefer has the same right to life as a typical adult human being

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So, let me just repeat that. Well, hold on. I didn't say which was coming first agree or disagree. So hold on Okay, so the claim is but I'm glad to see there's so much enthusiasm here

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So the claim is the typical at least the typical human fetus has the same right to life as the typical adult human being

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Okay now raise your hand if you're inclined to agree Okay Okay, raise your hand if you're inclined to disagree

08:27

Okay, there's a typical Minnesota Okay, raise your hand if you really find yourself kind of on the fence here

08:35

Okay, thanks Now if you follow the public debate about abortion at all

08:41

I think two things are going to be clear about the claim that I just referred to The first thing is if you follow the public debate,

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I'm not talking about the academic debate But the public debate on abortion the public debate on the moral permissibility of abortion

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Turns almost exclusively if not exclusively on the status of that claim

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Okay, people who are opposed to abortion say yes The fetus does have a right to life people who support abortion say no, it doesn't have a right to life

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Obviously disagree about whether it has a right to life But both sides seem to agree with the following claim

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If the fetus has a right to life then abortion is morally impermissible and if it doesn't then it probably isn't okay

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So that's the first thing that I think is pretty clear about that claim in the public debate about abortion. That's the issue

09:27

Okay, the second thing that I think is pretty clear is that debate seems interminable, right?

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So one side says yes, it does the other side says no it doesn't and so forth It doesn't look like anytime soon.

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Everybody's going to agree either. Yes, it does or no, it doesn't So it would be nice if there was some sort of argument that could point towards some

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Conclusion about the moral permissibility of abortion that didn't require First having everyone agree about whether the fetus has a right to life or doesn't have a right to life

09:56

Okay, and in fact, I think there is such an argument So for the purposes at least of my opening statement, maybe for all of my statements,

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I'm not quite sure yet this evening I'm just going to assume at least for the sake of the argument that the human fetus

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Has the same right to life that you and I have. Okay, that's going to be my assumption

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Okay and I want to raise a question and the question is If the human fetus has the same right to life that you have the same right to life that I have

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What if anything follows about the moral permissibility of abortion? Okay.

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Now that might well sound like the kind of question that only a philosopher could ask, right? Okay, the answer sounds pretty obvious.

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Duh Okay, obviously the fetus is alive Obviously abortion ends the fetus's life.

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If the fetus has a right to life, then abortion is morally impermissible Okay, but what I want to suggest with all due respect for the view that abortion is not a complex issue

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What I want to suggest is actually it is a complex issue Okay And it's a complex issue for the following reason if you really want to think carefully

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About what's implied by the claim that a human fetus has a right to life You first have to answer a more fundamental question.

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Okay, and the more fundamental question is this what is a right to life? What's involved in having a right to life?

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If you have a right to life, what precisely is it that you have a right to?

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Okay. Now in the popular debate on abortion virtually no one on either side of the argument answers this question

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They don't stop to ask the question Okay, that's because again virtually everyone on both sides the debate seems to agree if it's got a right to life abortions wrong if it doesn't

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Then it's not let's just focus on whether it has a right to life. Okay, but again, I want to suggest that that's moving too quickly

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Okay, so here's what I'd like to do for the purposes of my opening statement because again, I think if you think dispassionately

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Carefully and clearly about this more general philosophical question. What is it to have a right to life?

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I think what you'll find is it actually has somewhat surprising implications for resolving the abortion debate and in particular

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It has the potential to demonstrate that abortion at least in typical circumstances is morally permissible

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Without having to insist that the fetus is not a person without having to insist that the fetus doesn't have a right to life

12:20

So before I move on to my argument, let me just be explicit for purposes of my opening statement I'm not going to be denying any of Professor Kreeft's three premises rather What I'm going to be suggesting is even if all three premises are true

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The conclusion that abortion is morally impermissible does not follow. Okay. So here's the plan of action first I'm going to make a claim about what's involved in having a right to life

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Then I'm going to give you an argument in defense of that claim the argument Attempts to justify the claim by appealing to assumptions that virtually everyone regardless of what they think about abortion accepts

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Once I've explained and justified the claim I'm then going to explain how the claim can be used to try to resolve the abortion

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Controversy and then if I've got some of my 22 minutes or whatever it is left I'd like to at least anticipate one objection that I think almost everybody will occur to right away and try to say at least a

13:11

Little bit to diffuse the objection. Okay, so let me start with the claim. Here's the claim The right to life is not the same thing as the right to be kept alive by another person

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Okay, this is going to be the fundamental foundation of my argument. So let me just repeat the right to life is

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Not the same thing as the right to be kept alive by another person The right to life does not equal the right to be kept alive

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The right to life is not the same thing as the right to be kept alive The right to life does not include the right to be kept alive.

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It does not entail the right to be kept alive Okay The fact that someone has a right to life does not mean that they have the right to be kept alive by using another person's body.

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That's gonna be the fundamental claim. Now let me give you a little argument that's designed to support that claim.

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The argument, excuse me, is based on a hypothetical example.

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So here's the example. I'm dying. I've got some rare disease. There's only one thing that can save my life and that's a bone marrow transfusion.

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Doctors have to find somebody that's compatible match and over the next several months, that person is gonna have to undergo a series of quite painful and invasive bone marrow extractions so that my life can be saved.

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They go through all the medical records. It turns out there's only one person on the whole earth who's compatible and that person is you.

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Now most of you actually look like pretty friendly people. I've heard good things about Minnesota. So I'd like to think that if this actually happened, you would generously offer your bone marrow to me.

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But for purposes of my example, I'm gonna assume you're not quite that nice. So maybe you're from Iowa and said something like this.

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I don't know. And so you feel bad about my situation.

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You genuinely do. But you're not willing to make this significant sacrifice in order to keep me alive.

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Now here's my question. Morally speaking, would I have the right to forcibly extract bone marrow from you on and off over the period of the next several months if that's necessary for me to go on living?

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Morally speaking, would I have the right to take your bone marrow if you weren't willing to provide it to me? Okay, now raise your hand if you think the answer to that question is yes.

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Okay, we've got a pretty big crowd. I don't think I see any hands. Raise your hand if you're inclined to say no. Okay, let me just, whew, okay, good.

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Otherwise the argument doesn't go anywhere. I'll change the case just briefly and then

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I'll get to the point. Suppose I'm unconscious, I'm in a coma, I'm gonna die unless I get this bone marrow.

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Can my friends track you down and extract the bone marrow on my behalf? Raise your hand if you think that would be permissible. Okay, raise your hand if you think that would not be permissible.

15:53

Okay, so I think we're mostly all on the same page, great. Okay, what's the point of the example? Well, the example demonstrates,

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I think, that virtually everyone, look like actually everyone, but at least virtually everyone, regardless of their views about abortion, agrees with the claim

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I made about the right to life, namely that the right to life does not, in fact, include the right to be kept alive by using someone else's body.

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Why does it prove that? Fairly straightforward, but let me just be explicit. If the right to life did include the right to be kept alive by using someone else's body, then my right to life would include my right to use your bone marrow.

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But it looks like you all agree that I don't have the right to use your bone marrow, but I do have a right to life.

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I guess I was assuming you agree with that. Therefore, the right to life does not include the right to life support.

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Okay, now let's assume, at least for now, that I'm correct about that, and not just that I'm correct about that, but really, pretty much everybody, regardless of what they think about abortion, agrees with this claim.

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How can this help us to resolve the abortion debate? Well, let's go ahead and assume that the fetus is a person, the fetus has a right to life, it has the same right to life that you and I have.

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The fetus' right to life entitles it to exactly what my right to life entitles me to.

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But it turns out my right to life does not entitle me to stay alive by making use of someone else's body.

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So, the fact that I have a right to life doesn't mean I have the right to use someone else's body to go on living.

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So the fact that the fetus has a right to life, on the assumption that the fetus does have a right to life, doesn't mean that the fetus has a right to use someone else's body to go on living.

17:28

Okay, so that's sort of a negative argument, okay? That's designed to suggest that even if we agree that the fetus has a right to life, it doesn't really follow that abortion is impermissible because it doesn't follow that the fetus would have a right to be kept alive by using someone's body, in particular the pregnant woman's body.

17:46

Okay, but let me go ahead and try to turn it into something more of a constructive argument, okay? So not just an argument designed to show that there's a flaw in the common anti -abortion argument, but sort of a positive argument in favor of the conclusion that at least in typical cases, abortion is morally permissible.

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So I'm gonna change the story one more time. Let's suppose I'm in the coma, my friends get impatient, while you're asleep in the middle of the night, they break into your house or your apartment, they kidnap you, they drag you down to the hospital, and when you wake up the next day, lo and behold, bone marrow is already being extracted from your body, okay?

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You're hooked up to this weird device, bone marrow is getting sucked out, and then slowly some of it is getting put into my body, and you wake up and you say, what's going on?

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They sort of explain the situation, and they say, oh, but don't worry, this will just take nine months, okay? And when this is done, then

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Professor Boonin can be disconnected from you and he'll go on with a happy life, but if you disconnect yourself before then,

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Professor Boonin is going to die because he needs to make use of your body, okay? In the meantime, we've got him hooked up on some sort of movable cart, so if you need to leave the hospital, get to class, go to work or whatever, you can just sort of bring him along, but we are gonna be performing these painful invasive bone marrow extractions on and off over the next several months, okay?

19:02

If you have the right not to let me use your bone marrow in the first two cases, presumably have the right here, so you have the right to disconnect yourself from me despite the fact that I need your body to go on living, all right, so on the assumption that that's right, you can have,

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I think, a simple two -step argument in defense of the conclusion that,

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I wanna say at least in typical sort of cases, abortion is permissible. So step one says, in the story

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I just described, morally speaking, you would be within your rights to disconnect yourself from me despite the fact that I'm a person with a right to life and I need to use your body to go on living.

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Step two would then say that, morally speaking, the situation you find yourself in when you discover that someone else is using your body to go on living is analogous to the situation that a woman finds herself in when she discovers that she's pregnant, okay?

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There's a person, again, on the assumption that the fetus is a person, person's gonna die if she declines to let the fetus use her body for the next nine months, okay.

20:00

So if you have the right to disconnect yourself from me and if that case is morally analogous to the pregnancy case, then morally speaking, the woman would be within her rights to have an abortion even if it's the case that the fetus has a right to life because, again, that doesn't mean it has a right to be kept alive by using someone's body.

20:18

Can you remind me roughly, how much time do I have left? Eight minutes. Okay, so let me say this then.

20:24

That's the argument, okay. Lots and lots of people think it's a bad argument, okay, including lots of people who defend abortion rights for other reasons.

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I'm one of these idiosyncratic people who thinks it's not a bad argument, okay. I think it's actually a pretty good argument but I do recognize that there are a lot of fairly obvious objections to it because at least on the face of it, there are a lot of pretty obvious differences between the two cases, right?

20:50

The case I described about you, me, and the bone marrow and the pregnancy case. So what I'd like to do with my remaining seven minutes and 40 seconds is just anticipate one objection that probably has already occurred to many of you and I just wanna say a little bit about why

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I think it's a reasonable objection to raise but in the end, I think an unsuccessful objection. So this objection says, look,

21:11

David, there's a huge difference between the two cases. In the bone marrow case, you did not do any voluntary act that led to your being in this predicament.

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But if you set aside rape cases, the woman did do a voluntary act that led to this predicament, namely she had sex.

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If she hadn't had sex, she wouldn't be in the situation where there's this fetus making use of her body and she doesn't want it to be making use of her body.

21:34

So the difference between the bone marrow case and the typical pregnancy case in terms of voluntariness, and in addition, voluntariness in many, many contexts is highly morally relevant.

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You can all probably think of lots of cases where whether or not someone did a voluntary act that led to a certain situation makes a difference in terms of whether or not they have an obligation.

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So on the face of it, I think this is a very powerful objection. But here's the short version of why

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I think it's not powerful enough. There are lots of other cases where doing a voluntary act does not generate a particular obligation.

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So the question is, is there something about the case in which the woman voluntarily has sex, knowing that there's a likelihood that that will lead to pregnancy, that means that she has taken on an obligation to take care of the fetus in a way that you have not taken on an obligation to take care of me because you didn't do any voluntary act that led to your predicament.

22:28

All right, so let me just say a little bit about that. There's basically two ways that a critic of my argument can proceed here.

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One is by means of the notion of consent. So the basic idea is in a number of circumstances, if you voluntarily do an action foreseeing that the action will or is likely to cause a certain situation, you have tacitly consented, even if not explicitly, you have tacitly consented to accept that situation.

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And then the critic says, but look, the woman voluntarily had sex, she foresaw, at least

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I'm assuming in this example, that there was a reasonable possibility that she'd become pregnant, so she's consented to take care of the fetus in a way that, again, you never consented tacitly or otherwise to take care of me.

23:14

Okay, now here's the problem with the consent -based objection. Sometimes doing a voluntary act that foreseeably causes a situation does seem to count as consent, but in other cases, doing a voluntary act foreseeing that it will bring about a certain state of affairs does not seem to count as consent.

23:32

So let me just give you two quick examples. So first example, you're in a casino, you've got some money, you put your money down on red in front of the roulette wheel, you foresee there's a 50 % chance the ball's gonna land on black, and you know that if the ball lands on black, the croupier is gonna take your money, okay?

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In that case, I think virtually everybody's gonna agree, even though you didn't explicitly say, Mr. Croupier, you can have the money if it lands on black, tacitly, by putting the money down, you've consented to the state of affairs that he ends up with the money if it lands on black, okay.

24:02

But here's a second case, okay, where someone also does a voluntary act foreseeing that the result might be that someone else will end up with their money.

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A woman's considering going on a walk in a neighborhood, people warn her it's a dangerous neighborhood, there's a 50 % chance she'll get mugged, and she goes anyhow, and sure enough, she gets mugged, okay?

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She voluntarily put herself in this situation foreseeing that it might well result in the mugger having her money, okay?

24:27

Does voluntarily going on the walk mean that she's consented to let the mugger take the money?

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Okay, then presumably we all say no. So sometimes doing a voluntary act where you foresee that you'll end up in a certain situation does seem to count as consent, and sometimes it doesn't.

24:43

So the key question is, what should we say about the pregnancy case? Okay, to make a long story short, and I do think it's a long story,

24:50

I do think these are complicated issues, if what you don't like about my bone marrow story is that you didn't do a voluntary act that led to her being plugged in, let's just change the story.

25:01

I'm lying there comatose in the hospital, you walk in the room, the doctor explains, David needs your bone marrow for several months to go on living, and suppose you walk over and voluntarily plug yourself into me, okay?

25:15

You voluntarily connect yourself to the device that's gonna start extracting the bone marrow, okay? Well now, there is something you've consented to.

25:22

You've consented to the fact that right now the bone marrow is being taken out of you, right? But have you consented by that act to continue letting me use your bone marrow for as long as is necessary?

25:33

If after an hour or two you decide, this is worse than I thought, it hurts more than I expected, I don't wanna do this anymore, do we think that because you started helping me, you've consented to continue helping me for as long as it takes, okay?

25:46

And I think if you think about other sorts of cases where people voluntarily begin to help someone, so you give a homeless person a meal, does the act of giving him the meal mean you've now consented to keep feeding him for as long as it takes for him to go on living, okay?

26:01

In other contexts, I think we think the answer is no. So the short answer here is yes, there is this difference between the two cases, but I think if you think it through carefully, what you'll conclude is the difference isn't strong enough to undermine the argument.

26:15

Do I have time left on my hand? Yes, you do, two minutes. Two minutes, okay, what can I say in two minutes?

26:21

Probably not a whole lot. So let me say this, there are other differences between the case that all of you seem to agree about, the case where you have the right to disconnect yourself from me, and the case that you among yourselves disagree about, that's the case of the pregnancy.

26:41

I think it's a pretty long and complicated task to go through the differences, try to work your way through the question of whether they are or are not relevant, are they relevant enough to undermine the argument.

26:52

So maybe I'll just wrap up my opening statement by saying, I would be shocked if anybody were convinced by what

26:59

I just said to change their mind about abortion, that would strike me as irresponsible. I certainly wouldn't be convinced by the argument just by that brief exposure to it.

27:08

But what I hope you're at least convinced of so far is there is more to the story than just trying to decide whether the fetus has a right to life.

27:17

It's at least not obvious that just because the fetus has a right to life, it has a right to make use of the woman's body if she doesn't want it to.

27:25

So maybe I'll just stop there. We'll let things, I'm too confused. I sympathize. Okay.

27:34

They then had a few questions. There will be more clarification by Boonen in the rest of the encounter to the point where basically he ends up saying that he would feel that any child that is viable should not be aborted.

28:03

But he gets there in a rather circuitous route, as you can tell. That's just sort of how, from a

28:13

Christian perspective, vain philosophy works. But anyway, there you have the presentation.

28:20

I've been watching a lot of the comments in the chat channel. And someone says, this sounds like the guy's first debate doesn't seem to have prepared his opening statement very rigorously.

28:32

That is not my experience. I have debated many people who are accomplished debaters and they still don't seem to do their homework.

28:41

And it is a rarity for me to encounter someone who actually times their opening statement, who actually has a conclusion to their opening statement, who isn't always going, how much time

28:52

I got left in? I mean, I've debated people. I've debated Jerry Maddox. How many times have I said to Jerry Maddox, I'm gonna buy you a timer?

29:00

Because it's like, how much time do I have to, you know? So no, I would not actually take that away.

29:08

As you were listening, there were certain obvious objections that came up.

29:15

But again, my request was that you think presuppositionally. My hope is that as you listened to that, that what you were really noting down, making mark in your mind, whatever, was the fundamental importance of worldview analysis.

29:46

And from the Christian perspective, the clarity and the power of having a biblical worldview, having the

30:01

Bible as a revelation from God that so clearly speaks to the human condition, lays out for us fundamental truths, such as the beauty and natural state of motherhood.

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Once you have those things, then you have a solid foundation upon which to avoid having to create a patchwork quilt of ethical and moral statements that are based upon analogies that all of us just naturally go, he's reaching there.

30:50

Do we really have to sit around doing these kinds of thought experiments to know what life is?

31:00

Is this really all we are left with?

31:08

I would hope not, but certainly the world is that way. All right, so with that said, what are just some of the things that I noted both while I was writing and then just now, just made some notes, see how they match up with what you came up with.

31:29

First of all, the interminability of an argument is irrelevant to truth claims. It's quite possible that other factors keep people from agreeing on the conclusions of arguments.

31:38

In other words, this really speaks to the whole issue of doing debates and the cultural issues and things like that.

31:49

He was saying, we don't seem to be getting anywhere. Well, okay, does that mean something?

31:56

Yeah, we need to find a new way around this because we're at loggerheads. Well, are we at loggerheads because the truth is not knowable?

32:07

That we don't have enough information? No, in fact, I would argue that in reality, what we are seeing today is such a massive amount of information that demonstrates beyond all question the humanity of the pre -born child, all the

32:29

DNA and genetics and the developmental biology that we now know, that we didn't know only a matter of decades ago, that as Albert Mueller has so very clearly expressed more than once, one of the greatest dangers to the pro -abortion movement are ultrasounds.

32:54

We have an entire generation of people now who are watching as children, they saw their siblings or themselves up on the refrigerator as that, it used to be very grainy, black and white, that type of, there we go, that you only see that much because of the way it was.

33:17

Now it's 3D and color and all the rest of this stuff. And we have an entire generation that goes, that was me in that picture.

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And that's my brother and that's my sister. And the greatest argument against abortion would be transparent wombs.

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And now we basically have transparent wombs with the technology that we have now. And so there truly is no excuse any longer for this barbaric practice.

33:54

And so the defense of it will always be dehumanizing to man.

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We'll get into that a little bit more. But the point is just because there are other factors from the

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Christian worldview, we recognize there are other factors that have resulted in this loggerhead, but it has nothing to do with the clarity of the truth, it has nothing to do with the arguments.

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It has to do with the fact that there are people who want to have a mechanism whereby they can indulge their sexual desire and then avoid the natural result of that indulgence.

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And they don't care if that involves murder. That's how wedded to their own sin and rebellion they are.

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So he then makes the argument, the right to life is not the same thing as being kept alive by another person.

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And obviously as soon as that issue was raised and then you saw the bone marrow thing, this seems to be the big illustration now that's,

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I don't know when it popped up, but like I said, I heard it on the Catholic Answers Live thing, then it was

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Boone's primary presentation here. So it seems to have developed in the not too distant past.

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Just a few obvious issues to look at that.

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First of all, each and every one of us has gone through gestation.

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It's a natural phase of life, a necessary phase of life, each one of us has experienced it.

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And that must be kept in mind because the only people who are making the argument that that period of life is somehow unnatural and in fact, paralleling it to disease and talking about disconnecting without then being very open and saying killing are people who survived that period of gestation, whose mothers did not choose to end their lives at that point in time.

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And I really have to wonder about people who utilize their

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God given intellect in light of what we know about human development today to make this kind of argument and not recognize, you know, that was me, that was me.

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Secondly, this argument is fundamentally based upon playing games with dependents.

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A three month old child, post birth child, three months since birth, a three months old child cannot care for itself and if it was abandoned, would die.

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In the vast majority of human history and even the vast majority of human experience, even to this day, that child is fed at the mother's breast and hence is still dependent upon the mother's body even after birth and hence, though he will try to address this later,

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I think he fails horribly, face plant fails to avoid what he recognizes is the absolute necessary corollary to his argument.

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He specifically says, I am not arguing this, doesn't matter. He fails to avoid the necessary consequence and that is this argument is fully, fully supportive of post birth abortion infanticide.

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No question about it. He tries to throw in some ad hoc way of getting around it but it's just painfully obvious that as he's presenting this that his whole presentation of the bone marrow transplant stuff clearly would support the concept of infanticide.

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I mean, Peter Singer would go, hey, you're great, man. Don't try to step back from that. This is super, this is great, this is cool.

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A three month old child cannot care for itself. If it was abandoned, it would die. Each of us is to greater or lesser degrees, especially dependent upon our age, dependent upon others.

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Personhood cannot be determined in this way, though that is clearly what is happening in the euthanasia movement. As Dr.

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Kreeft himself has pointed out, though I don't know that he got to it. I think he did here in just a few minutes.

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I think he did, if I recall correctly. But as Dr. Kreeft has pointed out, we are, for example, are we less persons when we are unconscious while sleeping than while conscious?

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Because we're certainly more dependent upon others when unconscious. I am dependent upon someone not breaking into my home and killing me in my bed while I'm asleep.

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At that point, what if I'm in a coma? Am I less of a person? I've had a number of surgeries.

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When I was under the effect of anesthesia, was I less of a person? Because I was completely dependent upon others?

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These are questions that obviously make the parallels quite questionable.

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There is no meaningful, logical, moral, ethical, or if I may use the term human parallel between the bone marrow scenario and motherhood.

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Now, that's a term that has fallen out of favor in our society, but there was a day when motherhood was something that was considered a very honorable and a high calling.

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And woe to any nation when that changes. And it has changed for this nation, it has changed.

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He didn't use that phrase, but the only way this kind of argument can possibly progress is by paralleling a cold hospital room with its machines and tubes with the beautiful design of the woman's body and the miracle of pregnancy.

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That's the only way you can do it. That's what he's doing. And men, you're not a dad if you weren't involved, even if you are a dad, but you weren't involved in the pregnancy, you're a baby daddy.

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I'm not even sure that we should use the term daddy for that, but if you haven't put the hand on that womb and just had that experience

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I'm not sure if you can fully understand this. And certainly as a man,

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I cannot fully understand what my wife said to me, what my daughter has expressed in the birth of her child.

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But I just naturally believe that because we're made in the image of God, it takes, well, brainwashing.

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It takes an external deceptive form of argumentation applied over time to remove from our minds the recognition of the beauty of God's creative design in fatherhood and motherhood.

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It requires Darwinism, it requires naturalism, and it requires the public educational system.

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Because it takes a lot of work to suppress what

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God has put within us. And to get someone to the point of being able to parallel the cold, sterile hospital room with the machines and the tubes, with the beauty of the developing child in the mother's womb, and the relationship that that woman has with that child, even before birth, it's dehumanizing.

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It is absolutely dehumanizing to even try to make that parallel. It really, it truly is. The fetus does not have the right to use someone else's body.

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That argument, which he stated, is a fundamental violation of everything we know of human existence.

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Know experientially and know intellectually, scientifically. As I said, it's an argument used only by those who have already successfully used someone's body to make it through that particular period.

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The only way to disconnect the child, that's the terminology he used, the only way to disconnect the child is to kill the child.

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Now he later on will say, well, you know, if we theoretically, hypothetically developed a means by which we could remove the fetus without killing the fetus once it is viable, and of course, viability keeps going farther and farther back, then that would be what we would have to do.

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Of course, he knows in the vast majority of abortions performed in the world today, that's not what happens.

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Even though certainly his argument would fundamentally undercut

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President Obama's support for partial birth abortion, which is really nothing less than infanticide, it is barbaric on a level that is just morally and ethically repulsive.

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I have, I personally cannot have respect on any level for the moral and ethical understanding of anyone that could actually think that it is appropriate to deliver the body of a child and then stick scissors in the back of its head and suck its brains out.

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Such a person is a moral pygmy on any level, and I have zero, I want to make sure this is clear, zero respect for anyone who says, well, it must mean you're a one -issue voter.

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Well, if you are such a moral and ethical pygmy that you can't get that part, yeah, that's definitely, yeah.

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Won't vote for you for dog catcher. I respect dogs too much, just so you get the idea there.

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And that's a moral, ethical, and religious statement. To disconnect the child is to kill the child.

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That's painfully obvious. The relationship of the child to the mother is natural.

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The natural, unnatural barrier in this argument must be respected and recognized.

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In 99 .5 % of the cases, it is a chosen and voluntary relationship.

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Up until this morally and ethically challenged generation, it was understood that engaging in sexual behavior has consequences.

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It places a moral constraint upon you. It places a moral weight upon you.

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There was a day when men were taught in this culture that if you got a girl pregnant, you had a responsibility.

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The foundations of that have been washed away. Once again, Darwinism, naturalism.

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Because one animal in the Darwinian scheme does not have any responsibility to another animal in that way.

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It's, hey, get your genotype out there, man. You know, that's pretty much all

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Darwinism left us with. And yeah, I know, I know, I know. Well, but you know, all of our morals and ethics actually have genetic bases because if you do this, then maybe you'll have more offspring.

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Oh, please. Anyway, in 99 .5

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% of the cases, that relationship between mother and child was chosen and voluntary.

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And if you want to try to parallel that to being mugged, you're only demonstrating the absurdity of your argumentation.

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Now, again, I have the distinct feeling that many philosophers view the doing of philosophy as an intellectual game, as a mechanism of showing your wisdom.

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A little bit like watching a grandmaster playing chess. Oh, they're really good at that.

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And I happen to love chess. I happen to think it's a great game. Don't get to play it much, but it's not gonna change the world.

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And it's not gonna answer questions concerning the very value of life and how we are to live in this world.

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And yet, here you have a philosopher glibly making these arguments that if they had been made by a philosopher, oh,

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I'd estimate, what'd he look like? Early 40s? All right. 40 some odd years ago?

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Might have led Mrs. Boonin to abort him.

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And I think at that point, if he really thought that through, he might possibly take it a little more seriously than he does.

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A little more seriously than he does. Only, my friends, the

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Christian worldview rescues us from this kind of naturalistic mess because that's what we're seeing here.

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This is, I feel sorry for the student in the philosophy classroom, whether it's the

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University of Colorado in Boulder or any other university, college, community college,

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I don't care where it is. Our society is in a naturalistic mess because naturalism, when you have a materialistic worldview, when you have man at the center, when you do not have a

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God who has spoken, then we all have to be infallible and we all have to be omniscient.

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Because, well, it could always be this way. And since you don't know about this, you might be wrong about that.

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It is the destruction of human knowledge and it results in this.

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This kind of, well, I can come up with an analogy that I might be able to tweak this,

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I might be able to tweak that. And this is philosophy. Well, it's not really philosophy because the beginning of wisdom is what?

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Fear of the Lord, knowledge of God. And the result that we're seeing, we need to understand, in this presentation,

50:30

I think a lot of you saw this, motherhood is so grossly devalued.

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It is dehumanized, it is just emptied of the beauty that God designed it to have.

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I feel so sorry for those students. It's literally paralleled to disease and that's exactly what the pro -abortion movement has wanted to do.

50:58

That's exactly what they've done. I mean, this is what Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger and all of the, whenever I think of these folks and that anger wells up within me,

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I realize first of all, but for the grace of God, there go I. And secondly, every single one of these people, every single person who's ever promoted partial birth abortion, every single person who has sought to suppress the truth of God in this area will stand before God to be judged.

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Every justice on the United States Supreme Court will stand before their creator someday to answer for what they have done in this life and what they have done in the promotion of this holocaust.

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And when I think of that, I can only but pray that they in this life will repent because you don't want to stand before the creator of all life to explain your murder of unborn children.

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Be better if a millstone were hung around your neck as the scriptures say.

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So the Christian worldview, the Christian worldview rescues us, that doesn't make it true.

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But what it means is what we see when we read Romans 1, we read 1

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Corinthians, we read the biblical presentation of man and woman and sexuality and motherhood and fatherhood and we see these things, we are encouraged to see the harmony that exists between what we see and the more we learn about genetics and the more we learn about the development of the child.

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Somehow 40 different authors over 1 ,500 years got it right.

52:47

Isn't that amazing? Well, I didn't know how long that would take, but it pretty much, actually we actually have just a, yeah, we can still go about another 10 minutes or so.

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I hope that was helpful to you. I thought that hour went pretty quick and I realized we got started late. I hope that was helpful to you.

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That debate's online on YouTube if you'd like to hear the rest of it, because as I said, I don't want to misrepresent

53:13

Dr. Boonen. He did add further things later on, but there was his presentation and we need to think clearly and appropriately about these things and I hope that's helpful to you.

53:29

I did want to talk a little bit about what happened on Tuesday.

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I think some people have felt I was being disingenuous. I fully expected on Tuesday to get a phone call from Richard Porter.

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I had blogged what he had said to me or he said, remove that and I'm not gonna go on.

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What I did is I just put everything he had said and said, you know what?

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He didn't say, I don't do anything for the kingdom. Here is what he said and I think

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I was pretty accurate in understanding what he was saying. The nice thing would have been to just a single tweet saying, forget it,

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I'm not gonna do it. Didn't do that. Well, you're naive to think you would go on. Well, no, let's just listen again to what he said.

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You tell me. He contacted me. I didn't know who he was, never heard of him before.

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He contacted me May 10th and he said, Craig toppled Paul Helm. He would eviscerate you.

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Calvinism is not biblical. Have a nice evening. All right, so I didn't contact this man.

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I didn't go looking for him. He contacted me and those are pretty aggressive words. They're not overly respectful.

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I didn't know who he was. Maybe he's a high powered guy. Maybe he's a teacher someplace. Maybe he's got a lot of experience.

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I don't know. So he went on.

55:01

He said to Kai Logan, incredulity isn't an argument, grounding objection fails.

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And then he said, well, Craig isn't too big on debates with, this is to me, with believers, particularly ones who aren't respected academics in the relevant areas.

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It says, that's another fact. He does more for the kingdom than you could ever dream of. Get off his case.

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That's pretty personal. Add, wouldn't you say that's pretty personal? I responded by saying something about his emotions and he said,

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I'm fine. I'm just tired of you and the damage you do to God's kingdom. Now remember, the one thing he objected to is the saying

55:41

I said in my brief little summary that I don't do anything for God's kingdom. The reality is he says, the damage you do to God's, it was actually stronger than how

55:50

I reported it. So how dare I be nice? You're the sound of one hand clapping.

55:58

That's, again, what if I was speaking of someone else like this? I mean,

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I would have people coming after me like anything. He says, your critiques of Molinism are awful.

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Hence why scholars won't interact. Vidae, Flynn, Fredoso, or Keithley. That's nice.

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Absolutely, why not reach out to Fredoso, Flint, or Keithley? Then I asked, would you come on?

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He says, what day? Time. Stop harping on Craig.

56:29

Middle knowledge is in the Bible. Hence, Molinism easily follows from that. Are you a compatibilist? I remember asking him, you don't know that?

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How can you say he would eviscerate you if you don't know that I'm a compatibilist? And his response was,

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I just think you lack the philosophical train to do good systematics. So obviously you need to be philosophically trained to do good systematics.

56:49

That's my honest opinion. Calvinism is not biblical. You don't write for academic journals and publishers.

56:57

Not a knock, just a fact. Now does Ravi, he's awesome. I have,

57:03

I want to know what position you currently hold. Fair -minded people change views often. Oh, wait, which was basically saying

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I'm not fair -minded. You're just not a clear thinker in these matters, my view.

57:15

Craig isn't the only Molinist, sir. I'm more Flintian. That's nice. I wanted, one of the questions

57:20

I wanted to ask him is, okay, what specifically, how specifically does Flint's view differ from Craig's view so as to answer the objections that I've made?

57:30

And I had a few resources sitting here, Molinism, the

57:36

Contemporary Debate, Persick's edited work that has Flint and a number of these others in there, and had others queued up, ready to go over here.

57:48

Didn't move them since then. Of course, we have The Only Wise God. And of course, Keith Lee's book starts off by saying, if you want a fuller discussion of these things, see this.

57:57

Okay. Here's Flint, Divine Providence. There's Fridoso with Molina and Middle Knowledge.

58:08

So, you know, we've had a few things here. I had to ask some questions. So I asked him, you know, what has he written?

58:18

What has he published? And he says, I've never said I'm a theologian. I have no published works.

58:25

Still be glad to show you why your philosophical theology is bad. My first question was going to be, okay, could you please define what philosophical theology is?

58:34

Because I'd like to know. I know what biblical theology is. I know what systematic theology is.

58:39

What's philosophical theology? And how is it related? Because this man's an apologist.

58:46

How is this related to divine revelation? That was going to be one of the questions

58:54

I was going to ask. We don't get to ask it. So then he asked when the show was, et cetera, et cetera.

59:02

And there we go. And said, sounds good. I look forward to it, was the last thing he said there.

59:10

Then, as I said, once I posted the blog on the dividing line, he came back and said, if you don't take that down,

59:19

I'm not going to be on. And so I posted a second article where I provided most of those quotes. And said, okay, here's what he actually said.

59:25

And since his objection was you're misrepresenting me, if I gave everything he said and quoted exactly, how can

59:31

I be misrepresenting you? Evidently, he was embarrassed by what he said and then chose not to go on.

59:37

One of the things, I had some things, and I'm not going to have time to get into it here, but I wanted to get into some statements from Craig in chapter 10 of this book.

59:53

And especially, I wanted to address some of these specific phrases here.

59:59

Let me very quickly look at a couple of them. This is from Craig, because the relevant subjunctive conditionals of the form, if some agent

01:00:08

S replaces circumstances C, then S would freely perform action A are true or false, logically prior to God's decree.

01:00:17

That's what mental knowledge is from his point, anyways. Even God in his omnipotence cannot bring it about that S would freely refrain from A if he replaced in C.

01:00:35

What's important here is that this demonstrates that middle knowledge can constrain the will of God.

01:00:44

It can constrain the will of God. That's what he's saying. Seems clear.

01:00:53

And then he goes on in description. Given God's free decision to actualize the world, God then possesses knowledge of all remaining propositions that are in fact true in the actual world, including future contingent propositions.

01:01:07

And catch this terminology. God then concurs with the free decisions of creatures to bring about their effects in the world.

01:01:19

God concurs with the free decisions of creatures to bring out their effects in the world.

01:01:25

I also wanted to raise some issues from William Hasker that I thought were interesting.

01:01:35

I had some stuff marked here from Flint. And then there is this really interesting phrase, and I'll finish up with this, from Trenton Merricks.

01:01:48

Molnists say that the world's subjunctive aspect includes more than what would happen were glasses struck.

01:01:55

This is about, this is, I should have read the whole thing, but just follow along with me for a moment.

01:02:01

They add that the world's subjunctive aspect includes what, if anything, each possible agent would freely do in each possible circumstance.

01:02:09

This is the fundamental commitment of Molnism. And if the world is the way that Molnists say it is, then a variety of counterfactuals of freedom are true, and true because of how the world is.

01:02:24

This is, there is a, I want to talk about truth makers. I want to talk about the fundamental objection that I am not hearing meaningful

01:02:37

Christian responses to. And that is the reality that these true counterfactuals of human freedom exist on a level where they constrain the possible actions of God.

01:02:55

And I wanted to go into the word. I wanted to go into what the word said about how

01:03:00

God knows us, whether this is a knowledge that came from outside of God, whether it is a truth that he learns or brings into himself.

01:03:13

And the real issue is what is the origin or source of this knowledge?

01:03:22

If person X will do Y in circumstance Z, and that can constrain the very actions of God, but God does not by his will determine that, then when it says

01:03:35

God knows us perfectly, then there are things that he learned about us, not temporally, but logically, that are determined by something or someone else.

01:03:46

And as Hasker basically says, in essence, it's true because it is. I have a,

01:03:52

I'm wondering how the Molnist avoids the brute fact argument. It's just the way it is.

01:03:59

It's just the way it is. Two plus two equals four because it just does. Not because God willed it to.

01:04:06

It just, just the way it is. And it's true for God, true for all the rest of us. And God didn't will it that way.

01:04:11

It's just a brute fact, just a brute fact. There's some real problems with that from my perspective.

01:04:19

So those are some of the things we wanted to have a talk about. We didn't, maybe someday in the future.

01:04:27

All right, well, there's the program for today. Thank you for allowing us to be a little bit delayed in getting started, but we got everything in.

01:04:34

And as far as I know, by the way, heading for Sacramento this weekend, we've got that up on the blog.

01:04:41

Hopefully you, those of you in that area will be able to come out and say hello. And then next week should be regular schedule, whatever that schedule happens to be.