Conference on Answering Abortion Arguments with Scott Klusendorf the 5 Objections Session 3

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All right, we have a little surprise for you later on because we've kept this something of a secret, but we have another presenter that's going to be here as part of our bioethics conference and he will be here a little bit later to present the other side of the issue.

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And because we believe in equality of viewpoints and keeping, you know, everything fair, equal time and all of that, we have somebody else who's going to be showing up a little later on to challenge

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Scott's position. And with that, I will introduce Scott Klusendorf. Please welcome him.

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All of you will enjoy meeting my friend Dr. Zeke Diversity later this afternoon, so I want you to know he is a friend.

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He is not someone you will find abrasive. He is a thoughtful, contrasting view to my own, and you will enjoy meeting him.

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All right, let's review what we talked about last night. We talked about the three key words for a pro -life apologist.

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What are those three key words? I heard some of you saying it.

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Shout it out loud if you know what it is. Syllogism. What's the second most important word?

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Syllogism. Anybody need to be told what the third one is? Syllogism, syllogism, syllogism.

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What is our pro -life syllogism? Premise one, it's wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being.

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Premise two, abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being. Conclusion, therefore, abortion is wrong.

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What we're going to do today is show you why you have got to stick to that syllogism like glue, because when you make your pro -life case, people will try to change the subject on you.

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I gave you a few examples of that last night. In this session, we're going to look at five ways people try to change the subject on abortion.

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Five bad ways they like to argue on the subject. Our case that we presented last night can be summarized as follows.

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The science of embryology indicates from the earliest stages of development, you were a distinct living and whole human being.

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You weren't part of another human being, you were already a whole living member of the human family.

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In fact, everybody right now, hold your hand up like this, and I want you to give yourself a good pinch.

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No, this is not designed to wake you up this morning. I get it if you're sleepy. I'm an agnostic until my second cup of coffee every morning.

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I get that, but that's not why we're doing this. Give yourself a good pinch. Congratulations, you just sent a couple of hundred somatic cells hurling to their deaths on the lap in front of you.

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And I have more bad news. Every one of those cells individually contains your

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DNA encoding. Did you just commit mass homicide? For those of you that are about ready to spit your coffee, you did not.

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And let me explain why. These cells on the back of your hand are merely part of a larger human entity, you.

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They are not distinct whole human beings the way you were at the embryonic stage, the way I was at the embryonic stage.

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There's a difference in kind between each of our bodily cells and the embryonic human beings we once were.

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That's the science of embryology. We defended that science and we defended it well, but we didn't stop there.

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We also went to philosophy. We argued that there's no essential difference between you, the embryo, and you, the adult that justifies killing you back then.

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Differences of size, level of development, environment, degree of dependency are not good reasons for saying we could kill you then, but not now.

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What was the one thing we said we all shared equally? When you were staring around the room, students, eyeballing, you know, potential hot dates for a later time, what was the one thing we all share equally in this room?

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Human nature. That bears the image of who? God. We know that as Christians.

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That is the only true basis for equality. So that's a summary of what we argued last night. Now you may remember we ended last night by talking about our favorite

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Aunt Betty from Boston. Do you remember that? She's eating her turkey and stuffing.

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She wants to know why you're pro -life and she looks at you and you have to give a one minute response to Aunt Betty.

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Let me review what that one minute response is, which by the way will be in the notes we're going to give you when this conference ends at 11 o 'clock tonight.

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We'll have those available for you. That was a joke, an attempt to bond with my audience and it went down faster than the

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Seahawks are going to go down this year. But moving right along, pity me,

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I'm a Broncos fan, anyway, moving right along, Aunt Betty looks at you.

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Why are you pro -life? Here's your one minute defense. Aunt Betty, I'm pro -life because it's wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings.

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And the science of embryology says from the earliest stages of development you were a distinct living and whole human being.

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You weren't part of another human being like skin cells on the back of my hand. You were already a whole living member of the human family even though you had yet to grow and develop.

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And you know what else Aunt Betty? There's no essential difference between you the embryo and you the adult that would justify killing you back then.

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Differences of size, level of development, environment, degree of dependency are not good reasons for saying we could kill you then but not now.

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Now we got that done in under a minute. We didn't cite any Bible verses but we conveyed biblical truth.

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We put that pebble in her shoe. Now of course Aunt Betty is not going to fall to her knees at that moment and say thank you for straightening out all my wrong thinking.

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She's typically going to respond to you one of five ways. And what we're going to look at in this session is five bad ways people argue.

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Because you don't have to memorize every objection to the pro -life view you're going to hear. If you can remember these five categories you can almost always, not every time, but almost always slot their objection into one of these five bad ways people argue and respond accordingly.

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So let's look at the first bad way they argue. They assume rather than argue.

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By the way, just to give you a preview of where we're going, we're going to look at how people assume rather than argue, how they attack rather than argue, how they assert rather than argue, how they confuse functioning as human with being human, and how they hide behind the hard cases.

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That's the roadmap of where we're going. Let's look at that first one. They assume rather than argue.

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You lay out your pro -life case. You make a case that the unborn are distinct, living, whole human beings.

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You defend it well with science and philosophy. And as sure as the day is long, you get done, and the person you're talking to says, well, if we outlaw abortion, women are going to die in the back alleys of America from dangerous coat hanger abortions, and their blood will be on you.

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You will be the one who drove them to the back alley, dangerous abortionist around the corner in the inner city, and their deaths will be on you.

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Now let's stop right there for a moment. What were our three key words for pro -life apologetics?

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Let's review them again. Syllogism, syllogism, syllogism.

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Let's go back to our syllogism. It's wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being. Abortion does that, therefore it's wrong.

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Let's assume back alley abortions actually happened. In a minute,

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I'm going to argue it's a myth, but set it aside for a moment. Assume it's true.

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Does that fact refute our syllogism, yes or no? No. It's an attempt to change the subject.

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It's an appeal to pity that assumes the unborn aren't human. How do I know it assumes the unborn aren't human?

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Here's why, because unless you assume the unborn aren't human, you know what this argument is really saying? Because some people die attempting to intentionally kill other innocent human beings.

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We ought to make it safe and legal for them to intentionally kill innocent human beings.

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Why should the law be faulted for making it more risky for one human to intentionally kill a completely innocent one?

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This is crazy thinking. It assumes the unborn are not human. Why am

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I bringing this up right now? Because typically what happens when pro -lifers are confronted with the back alley abortion argument, they go immediately to statistics.

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Well, it's not true that women died by the thousands from illegal abortion. They're right about that, but you don't say that up front.

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When somebody presents you with a woman who's going to die from an abortion, your first reaction should be empathy.

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You know what? You're right. Any woman who dies from an abortion is a tragedy.

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We agree on that. But notice what the objection assumes.

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It assumes the unborn aren't human, and you can point that out to them. Then you can do your statistics, and your statistics, which all of you

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I think have probably been made aware of, indicate women did not die by the thousands or the hundreds of thousands prior to Roe v.

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Wade, prior to legalization. The typical argument, if you listen to Nancy Pelosi or anybody on the left these days, is that if we outlaw abortion, women will die by the millions like they did before abortion was made illegal.

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Well, did that happen in this country? Well, some women died, of course, no doubt.

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Some women did die. And pro -lifers who say that almost no women died from illegal abortion have not done their homework.

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Of course some women died from illegal abortion. The question is, how many, and what does that look like in light of where we are now?

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So let's look at not quotes from pro -lifers, but quotes from the other side that indicate women did not die by the thousands from illegal abortion each year prior to Roe v.

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Wade. So I'm going to cite for you four pro -abortion sources to make my case.

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By the way, little insider information here. Anytime you can quote the other side sources rather than pro -life sources, you will look more credible, and you should do it as often as you can.

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And believe it or not, they hand us a ton of golden nuggets. So let me give you four right now.

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Source number one, Dr. Mary Calderon, Planned Parenthood's own medical director in the 1960s, writing in the

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American Journal of Public Health in August of that year, argues that the death rate from illegal abortion is so low, it's not even worth commenting on medically.

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The rate is so low, it's not even an issue that we need to talk about. This is Planned Parenthood's medical director writing in 1960 when allegedly, we're told, thousands of women were dying annually from illegal abortions.

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And she says it's not even an issue. Why? She tells us in the article. Point one, the introduction of penicillin in the late 1940s made all surgical procedures safer, meaning women, men, nobody's dying from post -op infections the way they were prior to the widespread introduction of penicillin.

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Point number two, why women weren't dying from illegal abortion. It wasn't guys with rusty coat hangers doing the abortion, says

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Calderon. It's doctors in good standing in their communities who simply skirt the law.

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It's not a rusty coat hanger dude. It's doctors, trained as such, and that's why the death rate is as low as it is.

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Then Mary Calderon says 90 % of illegal abortions are done by these doctors.

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That's not a pro -life source, that's a pro -abortion source. Pro -abortion source number two,

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Dr. Daniel Callahan, in his book, Abortion Law, Morality and Choice, a guy who supports abortion, argues that only 40 ,000 women a year of reproductive age die from all causes.

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It's crazy to claim 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 died from one cause, illegal abortion, a year.

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That just won't work. He says the realistic figure is, at most, maybe 500 women died, not 5 ,000, not 10 ,000.

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Third source, again, pro -abortion source. By the way, these will all be in your notes. Aren't you just anxious to get these notes so you can have these?

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Dr. Christopher Tietz, Planned Parenthood statistician in the early 70s, called the claim of 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 deaths a year, unmitigated nonsense.

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That's his term, not mine. Fourth source, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who co -founded

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NARAL, National Abortion Rights Action League, with Lawrence Lader, argues in his book, Aborting America, that he wrote at the time when he was not yet pro -life.

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In that book, he says that he and Larry Lader made up the claim of 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 deaths a year out of thin air and sold it to a sympathetic press who ran with it.

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With no evidence. So you don't have to worry that the evidence is against you on this, but before you argue those statistics, you've got to point out the main thing.

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We want to keep the main thing the main thing. The main thing is, the argument assumes the unborn aren't human.

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The same is true with the argument about overpopulation. Have you heard this one? Why, if we don't have abortion, the world's going to run out of resources and, you know, if we don't do something right away, we're all going to, we're going to be annihilated.

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We're going to die. Paul Ehrlich, in the 1960s, first argued that if we did not solve and reduce the world's population by 1980, the world was going to cease to exist as we know it.

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He has since then issued three additional false prophecies. You know, the people on the left love to accuse religious people of having all these false dates and, you know, they, every time

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Harold Camping would forecast the end of the world, they throw that on us. The left has got people that are saying, wow, if we don't clean up the environment, we're all going to perish.

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If we don't get rid of overpopulation problem, we're all going to cease to exist as we know it.

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They're making dates all the time and they're being proven false. But notice the real issue here.

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What does the argument for overpopulation assume? It assumes the unborn aren't human.

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Would anybody advocate killing five -year -olds so we can have more to eat? By the way, if you really want to preserve scarce resources, why kill fetuses who aren't even eating yet?

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You know who you should kill? All the young dudes at this table over here. They eat more than anybody else, right?

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Why are we killing fetuses who aren't even eating yet? Don't worry guys, you're safe.

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The whole argument assumes the unborn aren't human. Trot out your toddler. I have a two -year -old in front of me. His parents can't afford to feed him.

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They don't have enough resources. Would it be okay for them to eliminate their poverty problem by eliminating their toddler?

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What's the answer going to be? No, you can't do that. Your reply? Why not?

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Well, because he's a human being. Ah, you haven't forgotten already, have you?

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Honey, what'd you learn last night? Ah, if the unborn are human like that toddler, should we kill them to preserve scarce resources any more than we kill a toddler?

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Well, that's different. The unborn aren't human. The toddler is. Well, you could be right about that, but you've got to argue for it.

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You can't just assume it. It assumes the unborn are not human. By the way, just a little note, why do countries suffer from scarce resources?

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It's not because they have too many people. In fact, in the West, we have just the opposite problem.

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We are not replacing our population at a fast enough rate. And meanwhile,

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Muslim populations, third world populations are having lots of kids. The Western world is not.

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In fact, Europe's birth rate has dropped to about 1 .4 kid per family.

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They need to have 2 .1 to just sustain their current level. Not grow, just sustain.

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The U .S. is the last I saw at about 1 .9, which means we are actually going to be underpopulated rather than over as you look forward.

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So we're not suffering from this. What is the real cause of overpopulation or rather scarce resources?

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Socialist governments who squash market economies. You know what the number one thing that has lifted people out of poverty?

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What do you think the number one thing is? It's not charity. It's not government programs.

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It's capitalism. Market economies undergirded by the rule of law and with a moral foundation do more to lift the poor out of poverty than any government program you've ever looked at.

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And yet, many people want to blame the unborn for their being scarce resources, okay? So second bad way people argue, they not only assume rather than argue, they attack rather than argue.

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I want you to pretend that somebody says to you, gravity is real.

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And you look them in the eye and say, that is the ugliest hairpiece I have ever seen on a human being in my life.

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Now suppose it is the ugliest hairpiece. Suppose there are things growing in it that have legs.

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Does it change for a fact that gravity exists? All you've done is change the subject and attack the person.

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How many times have you heard this? Oh, you're pro -life? How many unwanted kids have you adopted?

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None? There goes your whole case. Really? Let's go back to our syllogism.

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It's wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being. Abortion does that, therefore it's wrong. Suppose I'm a cruel, evil conservative that doesn't give a rip about kids once they're born.

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Suppose I'm that heartless. How does it follow that A, the unborn are not human, and B, that killing them is okay?

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You didn't refute my syllogism. All they did is attack me personally. They did nothing to refute my argument.

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You see this all the time in the abortion debate. You're a man? By the way, nobody should accuse pro -lifers of being a man these days.

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You don't know who you're talking to in the age of Caitlyn Jenner, right? I mean, you're a man? How do you know I'm a man?

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I mean, seriously, this is crazy stuff. But that aside, you're a man.

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You can't get pregnant. What right do you have to speak on this issue? Arguments don't have gender.

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People do. By the way, don't women use the same pro -life arguments as pro -life men? You've got to refute the argument.

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It doesn't do any good to attack the person's gender. This is why I said, men and women, you've got to come back to your syllogism again, again, and again, and again, until they get tired of you repeating it.

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Because they're going to constantly change the subject on you. By the way, if no man can speak on abortion, we have to reverse

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Roe v Wade, because it was decided by who? Nine men. It also means

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Planned Parenthood needs to fire all their male lawyers, so does the ACLU, that are working to fight to keep abortion legal.

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This is crazy thinking. Arguments don't have gender, people do. Now, you'll get more sophisticated versions of this, where they attack you personally.

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They'll say, you're against all killing? What about capital punishment?

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What about killing animals? What about war? You're in favor of some war?

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You're not totally against capital punishment? You eat meat? There goes your whole case.

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Stop right there, let's go back to our syllogism. Always go back to your syllogism. Did we argue all killing is wrong, yes or no?

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What did we argue? What's our first premise? It's wrong to kill who?

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Intentionally kill an innocent human being. Is it possible that the death penalty does not involve intentionally killing an innocent human being?

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Well, of course, it's a different category. War could be justified. Therefore, it's not the intentional killing of an innocent human being.

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But even before you go there, notice what they've done. They've ignored your syllogism.

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In fact, they've distorted it, they've changed it. This is called attacking a straw man. You attack what you want the person to argue, not what they're actually arguing.

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So they look at us, you're against all killing? We didn't say that. And this is where you need to do what we called narrate the debate.

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What does that mean? Here's what that means. You explain to the person, remind them of what you just argued, why their objection does not answer what you actually argued, and repoint them to what you're really saying.

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That's called narrating the debate, and you're gonna have to do that constantly in conversations with people. Remind them of the syllogism you just argued, and get them back arguing the main thing.

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Now, I don't think pro -lifers are inconsistent, just so you know, because we may support some wars and may even support things like the death penalty.

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And this is where our Catholic friends have given us a very helpful distinction that many of their philosophers have advanced.

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And though we differ from them theologically, there are things we can learn from many of their best thinkers.

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And one of those distinctions that they have put forward, that I think is very useful, is a distinction between a contingent evil and an intrinsic evil.

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A contingent evil is one that is wrong, but it's wrong because of the circumstances surrounding it.

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It's not wrong in principle. An intrinsic evil is wrong on the face of it and must always be opposed.

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Abortion is an intrinsic evil according to this way of thinking of things. Abortion is the intentional killing of an innocent human being, therefore, it is an absolute or intrinsic evil and must always be resisted, always.

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But there are some things that are contingently wrong. For example, is dating an intrinsic evil or potentially a contingent one?

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Well, if you're single and you're a Christian and you're wanting to spend time with another

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Christian of the opposite sex to see if there is a possibility there of a future together and you approach that with a pure heart and pure motives, dating is fine.

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But if you're married to someone else and you're trying to date someone else that is not your spouse, well, then dating becomes wrong, but it's a contingent wrong in that case, not an intrinsic wrong, where rape and murder would be an intrinsic wrong.

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So let's look at an issue like war. Is war a contingent evil or an absolute evil?

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What do you think? Contingent. It depends on whether the cause is just and whether you are approaching it with a mindset of ending an evil so that we can get back to a peaceful state for all nations.

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If your motive is good and your cause is just, then we could say that war is not an intrinsic evil.

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But what if we compare that to abortion? With abortion, we are intentionally wanting to promote evil, the killing of innocent human beings.

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It's not like war where we may foresee the death of innocent civilians but not intend those deaths.

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A general and a just war can foresee the deaths of innocent civilians. He does not intend them. With abortion, we not only foresee the death of the unborn, we what?

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We intend the death of the unborn. That's what we mean when we say that abortion is not a contingent evil, it's an intrinsic evil.

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So when they say to us, you're against all killing, they're failing to make that distinction between contingent evils and absolute or I should say contingent evils or intrinsic ones.

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They're failing to do that. They're just lumping it all together. Here's another example of attacking the person rather than the actual argument.

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Somebody looks at you and they say, you're pro -life?

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What are you doing about world hunger? What are you doing about refugees?

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What are you doing about the opiate crisis? What are you doing about wage controls, housing?

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Now I mentioned this last night, but notice what this does. Suppose we're inconsistent on all those things.

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Suppose we are. How does it follow that because we're inconsistent, our syllogism falls apart?

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Could our syllogism still be true even if we're inconsistent, yes or no? Yes, it stands or falls on the evidence, not our behavior.

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Suppose I, you don't know this about me, but suppose I am actually not a pro -life apologist.

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I'm actually an abortionist, and six days a week I perform abortions. On the seventh day,

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I show up and give pro -life apologetics presentations because I just like doing it.

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Could my arguments for the pro -life view still be true, even if six days a week,

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I lived utterly opposite of what I proclaimed? Of course, because arguments stand or fall on their merits, not the person advancing them.

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And what our critics love to do is simply attack the person, rather than refute the actual argument that we are making.

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And that's not gonna work. We gotta keep bringing them back to the syllogism. By the way, this is not just abortion where this happens.

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This happens in your attack, or the attacks you get for your Christian faith. I don't know how many of you have read the book or seen the book by Christopher Hitchens that I think is just a hallmark book of where we are today as a culture.

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He talks about, in a book he's written, about how religion poisons everything.

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The main title has just escaped me for a moment. I'll think of it in a second. Jim, do you know? God is not great, how religion poisons everything.

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You got it. In that book, Hitchens gives us a list of evils done in the name of religion.

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And if you want a laundry list of evils done in the name of religion, read that book. What's interesting is, what's his purpose in writing this book?

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To convince you that Christianity is not true. How does it follow, though, that because Christians and other religious people have done bad things, that Christianity is not true.

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Now, I did not get permission from Pastor Jim to do this, so I'm going out on a limb here. But I'm going to tell you how to disprove

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Christianity. Did you know it could be disproven? It can be. Christianity can be falsified.

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All you gotta do is prove the resurrection of Jesus Christ did not happen.

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And Christianity is done. By the way, before you attacked me, the Apostle Paul said this in 1

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Corinthians 15. He said, if Jesus didn't rise from the dead bodily and historically, we're dead in our sins, we're the world's biggest joke, and we among all men are to be pitied.

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That's what he said. In other words, what Hitchens should have done is marshaled evidence to show the resurrection didn't happen.

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Did he do that? No, he didn't touch that subject. All he did is attack individual believers for their alleged crimes against humanity.

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That's not refuting Christianity. That's attacking the person rather than the argument. Third bad way people argue, they assert rather than argue.

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We're going to do a session on this later, so I'll just touch on it right now.

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But let me ask you a question. Tell me if this is an argument or an assertion.

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Women have a right to choose, argument or assertion. Assertion because I gave you know what?

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No evidence, I just made a statement. How about this? Socrates is a man, all men are mortal, therefore

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Socrates is mortal. Argument or assertion? Argument because I gave you premise, premise, conclusion.

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How about this? My sister is not here today, therefore she has eloped with Elvis in Las Vegas and Michael Jackson is doing the music for the ceremony.

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Argument or assertion? How many of you said argument?

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Can I see your hands? Put it up high if you said argument. You sir are correct.

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It was an argument. Yes it was. How did you know it was an argument? What gave you the clue? There you go.

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It's a bad argument. You know how we knew it was an argument? Did I have the word therefore in there? Did I have premises and a conclusion?

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Yes I did, that's an argument. But it's a very bad argument. Notice the conclusion does not follow from the premises.

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How does it follow that because my sister's not here today, she's in Vegas with Elvis and Michael Jackson? That doesn't follow.

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There's better explanations than that. In other words, it's a bad argument.

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Here's the good news. Most of what passes for arguments on the street level against the pro -life view, they don't even rise to the level of arguments.

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They're just assertions. Women have a right to choose. Choose what? And where does that right to choose come from?

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They need to argue for that. They don't, they just assert it. Or you pro -lifers, you just love your religion.

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Okay, that's an assertion, it's not an argument. When someone slaps an assertion down in front of you, who bears the burden of proof?

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Not you. If I claim right now that there's a pink elephant swinging from the middle exit sign right above the book table right now, and a couple of you just looked, don't laugh, that was the right thing to do.

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Who bears the burden of proof, you or me? I do, I made the claim.

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I made the claim. When someone claims the fetus is not self -aware and therefore is not a valuable human being, they're making a claim, not you.

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The burden of proof is on them, not you. Christians have a habit of assuming the burden of proof way too often, when it's the other guy that's making the claim.

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He makes the claim, he should have to bear it. This happened, I experienced this firsthand,

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I think it's been about 12 years now, University of Maryland. I gave a pro -life talk.

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We had about 120 students present, most of them secular. And I gave a case for the pro -life view, showed a video clip similar to what you saw last night, made my case, and during the

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Q &A, a student, an exchange student from Indonesia stood up, and he said to me,

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I like you. I like you because you're rational, I like that you brought science into this, I like that you brought philosophy into this, and I like that you didn't just bring some religious case,

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I really like you for that. But, he said, I have a problem. How can you claim that an embryo that is not even self -aware has a right to life?

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Now, before I tell you how I answered, what's the typical pro -life response to that? Why the embryo has a brain by week six that we can measure on an electroencephalogram, and we know embryos and fetuses can dream by week 11, and no, no, no, wrong answers.

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As soon as you answer that way, what have you just done? You've bought the premise of the critic. Challenge the premise.

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So when he said to me, how can you say an embryo that's not even self -aware has a right to life,

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I looked at him and said, tell me, why do I have to be self -aware not to be killed?

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I put the bird to proof back on him, he made the claim. And he just stood there, and he kinda got a smile on his face.

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It was the most strange 10 seconds I've ever experienced. And he just looks at me, and he finally looks at me, and he points, and he says, touche.

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In other words, no one had ever challenged his own assertion. He was the one claiming you had to be self -aware not to be killed.

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I called his bluff. That's what you should do. Too often as pro -lifers, we end up assuming the burden of proof.

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Our critics say to us, oh, you're pro -life? What are you doing about world hunger? What are you doing about all these other issues that involve life?

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Instead of challenging the premise, we say, oh, well, we do care about these other things. Well, we do, but that's not the right answer at that moment.

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Look him in the eye and say, tell me, how does it follow that because I oppose the intentional killing of an innocent human being,

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I gotta take responsibility for everything? Make them defend their own claims. Put it back on them.

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Now, later today, we're going to do a session, and we're going to introduce you, that some of you are aware of this already, of Greg Kolko's Columbo tactic, how you reverse the burden of proof.

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We're going to talk you through how that can work, but you need to be aware of why people love to change the subject and allegedly attack your syllogism with just assertions.

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They have not refuted anything at that point. They've just made claims. Fourth bad way people argue.

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They confuse functioning as a human with being a human.

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The argument goes like this. Well, all right, the unborn are human, but they're not persons because they're not self -aware yet.

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I don't know if any of you watched the debate between Dr. Mike Adams and abortionist

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Willie Parker at the University of North Carolina Wilmington last February. If you have not, sometime in the near future,

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Google it, it's all over the place, and watch that debate. Willie Parker describes himself as a good

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Samaritan, the, quote, Christian abortionist, and he views his abortion work as, quote, a ministry, unquote, to poor women who need his services.

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During the debate with Mike Adams, which by the way, Adams absolutely crushed

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Willie Parker in this debate. It was almost embarrassing to watch how badly Parker got destroyed, but Parker tried one trick.

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He had one trick up his sleeve. He tried to claim that the question of when life begins is not the real issue.

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The real issue is personhood, and the fetus is not yet a person, though it is fully human.

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He said it's fully human, but it's not a person. Now, is that an argument or an assertion, just to get started?

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An assertion. Why should anybody believe there can be such a thing as a human that's not a person?

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Have you ever met a human that wasn't a person? Those of you with teenagers, keep your hands down.

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Right? You've never met anybody like that. This is just an assertion, but I wanna introduce you to the worldview idling behind that assertion, because one of the things we mistakenly do as Christians, we fail to address the worldview that may be driving some of this.

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The worldview underneath that assertion that the unborn are human but not persons is a worldview known as body -self dualism.

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I'm gonna throw out a big term right now, trusting that the coffee is kicking in, and don't worry,

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I'm gonna explain this term. The term is philosophical anthropology.

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That sounds like a big word. Here's what it means. What makes humans valuable in the first place?

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That's all philosophical anthropology is addressing. What makes us valuable in the first place? What is our basis for rights, dignity?

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Philosophical anthropology is basically addressing the question, what does it mean to be human? And philosophical anthropology, as driven in our universities today, is undergirded by this worldview known as body -self dualism that goes like this.

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You are not your body in any sense of the word. Your body is just physical stuff, mere matter in motion.

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That's it. The real you, which is separate from your body, is your aims, your desires, your cognitive thinking, your self -awareness over time.

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That's the real you. But your body is completely, the

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Christian worldview is the body matters. The body has intrinsic purposes.

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We're told that we are to give our bodies to God as a living sacrifice. We are to submit them to the obedience of Christ.

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We're to become more Christ -like in our bodily actions. The Christian worldview is, this is the extra credit, telling me that abortion would not be okay in that situation.

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You would let the mother die in the name of pro -life and you would let raped women suffer forever with the memory that every time they look at their kid, they're gonna remember what some guy did to them.

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You're gonna do that, really? Point number one, almost nobody brings up these issues because that's their true position.

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They bring them up to disguise their true position. And here's how you can do it.

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You distinguish between crusaders and inquirers. An inquirer, here's your pro -life argument.

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She listens to it and she's buying in. She says, you know what? I see where you're going with this. I get it.

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I hear your science. I hear your SLED acronym. I saw your video. You're right, abortion's a bad thing.

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I'm just struggling in my head to figure out how I would tell my 14 -year -old niece,

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Abigail, if she got raped, she'd have to give birth. And I'm just having a hard time because I know that child would remind her of what she went through and I'm just struggling with that.

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Okay, that's an inquirer. You're gonna treat her very different than you're gonna treat the crusader.

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The crusader has no interest in intellectual honesty. He just wants to use rape to make you look bad.

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And so he'll say things like this. You're pro -life? You're gonna force this woman to go through being reminded of this all her life and you call yourself a compassionate

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Christian? I'm gonna treat him differently. Let's talk about the inquirer first. With the inquirer on the issue of rape,

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I'm going to, first of all, establish empathy. You know what? You're right.

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That woman who's been raped, she's gonna suffer a lot. She has experienced a horrific tragedy.

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And you know what else? You're probably correct. In many cases, that child could remind her of what she went through for a long time.

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You're right about that. Don't do what some pro -lifers do when the issue of rape is brought up.

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They go immediately to statistics. Well, most women who get raped don't get pregnant. Totally wrong answer.

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You just got told about a woman who's been sexually assaulted. What should be your first answer? I agree with you, that's a horrific crime.

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Given you and I agree, you say to the inquirer, that this woman has suffered a terrible injustice, and given you and I agree that the child may, in fact, remind her of what she went through, how do you think a civil society should treat innocent human beings who remind us of a painful event?

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And let the question just hang there for a minute. How should a civil society treat innocent human beings who remind us of a painful event?

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Is it okay to kill them so we can feel better? In other words, does hardship justify homicide?

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If you wake up tomorrow morning and find a ton of garbage has been dropped on your front lawn, can you just scoop it over to your neighbor's yard to avoid having to deal with it?

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You would suffer evil rather than inflict it, because sometimes the right thing to do isn't the easy thing to do.

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Now, the inquirer is getting your drift. She's following your argument at this point. Maybe still struggling a bit emotionally, but she's at least seeing the moral logic that's in play.

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The crusader wants no part of this. He will look at you, and he will simply press the issue, call this bluff, so here's how

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I do it. I look him in the eye, and I say, you know what? For the sake of argument, I'm gonna grant that we allow abortion in cases of rape.

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Not my position, but just for the sake of this discussion, let's grant that. Will you now join me in opposing all other abortions that have nothing to do with rape?

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What's his answer? No, women have a fundamental right to an abortion. Okay, let's define what that means.

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If a right is fundamental, there can be no infringement on it whatsoever.

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That means a woman has an absolute right to an abortion for any reason she wants. She doesn't want a female child.

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She wants a boy child. Abortion's justified. Why don't you defend that position rather than hiding behind rape victims?

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In other words, I'm gonna make him look extreme by calling his bluff. Now, there's one other tactic you can do.

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You can bring people back to the issue that really matters here, the status of the unborn, the question we began with last night, what is the unborn?

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About six years ago, flying from Detroit to Orlando, it was the middle of November.

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I was on my last flight of the year. I generally take a pretty hefty break between mid -November through the winter months to just kind of recoup, and I was ready for it.

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I had to fly to Orlando for one last event, and then I was home free for the year. And I got on the plane, and I looked at my boarding pass, and I thought, oh,

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God loves me. I had an exit row seat in the back of the 757 where you got 20 feet of legroom.

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I thought, this is great, this is awesome. And I get to the back of the 757, and I notice as I'm walking in, everybody is decked out in that section in party gear.

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They got streamers, they got hats, they got rainbow Hawaiian shirts, some of the ugliest

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Hawaiian shirts I have ever seen. It was almost near leisure suit quality, right?

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I'm thinking, what's going on? I sit down, and there's a guy at the window on my row, his wife in the middle seat, and I'm on the aisle.

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And he says, oh, yeah, there's 40 of us. We're all going on a cruise. They're all in their mid -40s to mid -50s.

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I'm thinking, all right, they're doing the midlife crisis thing. They're gonna go on this cruise to kind of deal with that, all right. But I made an error on this trip.

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I had a copy of a pro -life book in my hand. Normally, my books go in the overhead.

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I didn't put it in the overhead. I had it with me, and I sat down in the seat, and the woman looked at this, and she says, oh, it's that book about abortion.

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I said, yes. Now, I will admit, I'm not like some of you where you wanna lead the entire 767 to Christ before you get out to Orlando.

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I find it advantageous to be a Calvinist, Pastor Jim, and let God save wherever he wants on this ride while I take a nap.

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Thank you very much. How's that for a distortion of theology? Anyway, my preaching tomorrow just got canceled.

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So I sit down. The woman says to me, oh, is that book about abortion? And her husband chimes in immediately.

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He says, my wife is scared to death to fly. She's gonna talk to you the whole time.

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Lovely. She said, I'm against abortion. I think it's really bad, but you'll never convince me that a woman who's been raped shouldn't be allowed to have one.

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I thought, all right, I'm into it now. I said, let me ask you a couple of questions if you don't mind.

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I'd like to ask you how we ought to treat the people involved in a rape pregnancy.

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But first, I wanna ask you how many humans are involved in a pregnancy that results from rape, two or three?

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She looks at her husband and goes, two, three, two, three, three.

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I said, you're right. You have the mother, the rapist, and the child. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

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I said, let's talk about how we ought to treat each of them. Her husband's like, honey, this will not end well for you.

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I said, should we execute the guilty rapist? Oh no,

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I'm Catholic. I'm against the death penalty. The death penalty is barbaric. I cannot believe this country still does the death penalty.

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It's sick. I'm opposed to it. We should put the guy in jail forever, but no, we should not kill him.

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Okay, fair enough. How about the mother? Should we execute her for what happened?

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No, that's what those Islamic countries do. They take the woman, they call them honor killings.

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They don't butcher the guy who did it. They butcher her. I said, that's right, that's sick. How about her child?

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Should we execute him for what his father did? She said,

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I feel like you're trying to corner me. I said, I'm not cornering you.

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The argument is cornering you. And she said, I don't know. I need to think about it.

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And I backed off. By the way, insider note here, when you're having discussions with people on apologetics and they say,

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I don't know, I need to think about that, back off. You've put the pebble in their shoe.

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Don't press it. Don't think you have to just get in there with a knife and drive it home.

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No, back off. So I did. Later in the flight, when she brought the issue back up,

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I said, can I make an observation? Of the three people you said were involved in a pregnancy resulting from rape, you wouldn't kill the guilty rapist, you won't kill the mother, but you would kill the innocent child.

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That's how you put a pebble in someone's shoe on these hard issues. So just to review this session, people love to change the subject by arguing five bad ways.

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They either assume, they either attack, they either assert, they hide behind hard cases, and they confuse functioning as a human with being a human.

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These are the five bad ways people tend to argue. We've got them written out in detail in the books and we'll say more about them in the notes, but we're gonna take a break right now for, is it 15 minutes, is that correct?

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So for 15 minutes, load up on caffeine, load up on protein. If you eat carbs, thou shalt surely die.