UCG Doctor Writes Book On "When Does Human Life Begin?"

A UCG Doctor has written a book on when does human life begin. 

When Does Human Life Begin?

A Fresh Look at Scientific, Scriptural, and Historical Evidence
There is a tension that exists between those who believe in scientific  progress through any means and those believe in a foundational morality  as the basis for all of our actions, and scientific advances. Nowhere is this debate more fiercely seen than that in the stem cell and abortion  debates seen today. What is the basis for this conflict and for the  positions each side takes? The nexus of this conflict is one of the most fundamental questions mankind has faced one that reaches the very  level of our own unique human identity When Does Human Life Begin?

In order to understand the question of when life begins we must first  attempt to understand what forms the foundations of our current history. This book is the beginning of an effort to align history with the  perspective of scripture and biology to investigate life’s origins. This book provides a unique perspective into a debate totally entrenched in  dogma and emotion. While is it deservedly so a hot-button topic - few  may stop to consider the reasons for their belief, or of their  opponents. It is hoped that by further understanding the foundation for  our current thinking - that we can come to an understanding that brings  greater clarity to the debate _ and the solution.

Excerpt from book : Chapter 1

 

J. Lawrence Merritt II, MD•• John Lawrence Merritt III •• John L Merritt, MD

Does Faith Crumble When Errors Are Exposed?

There has been several discussions(arguments?) here about faith and what happens to faith once some of it's underpinnings are stripped away.  Does faith crumble away when things we assumed to be true are only myth, allegory or metaphor?

One should also note that just because it is a myth, metaphor or allegory does not make it meaningless.  Some of our greatest national stories on who we are as a people are centered around myths, metaphors and allegories.

Christianity Today recently had an article on Adam and Eve The Search for the Historical Adam  NPR (National Public Radio) picked up the story and it went viral.  Evangelicals Question The Existence Of Adam And Eve


NPR had this to say: 

Polls by Gallup and the Pew Research Center find that four out of 10 Americans believe this account. It's a central tenet for much of conservative Christianity, from evangelicals to confessional churches such as the Christian Reformed Church.

But now some conservative scholars are saying publicly that they can no longer believe the Genesis account. Asked how likely it is that we all descended from Adam and Eve, Dennis Venema, a biologist at Trinity Western University, replies: "That would be against all the genomic evidence that we've assembled over the last 20 years, so not likely at all."

 The OOZE (Evolving Spirituality) has an article up on this subject The Debate About Adam and Eve Has Nothing to do With Adam and Eve! 

The NPR article, rightly calling this a Galileo moment, cites professor Karl Giberson: “When you ignore science, you end up with egg on your face… The Catholic Church has had an awful lot of egg on its face for centuries because of Galileo. And Protestants would do very well to look at that and to learn from it.”

 The article goes on: “Asked how likely it is that we all descended from Adam and Eve, Dennis Venema, a biologist at Trinity Western University, replies: ‘That would be against all the genomic evidence that we’ve assembled over the last 20 years, so not likely at all.’”

Evolution isn’t the issue. Adam and Eve are not the issue. The science on origins is only becoming more solid- although there is an interestingly powerful myth that circulates in Christian subculture that there are tons of credible scientists that dispute the issue. Biblical scholarship isn’t the issue either- very few (any?) well-respected Biblical scholars take Genesis 1 and 2 as history (you can find creationists among biblical scholars at plenty of schools- but they have virtually no contribution to the field and trade credibility for tenure… it’s all about the money). The issue isn’t inerrancy or infallibility. Evolution is so contentious that most of my professors at seminary hesitate to admit to the class that they, along with pretty much everyone in the field of academic theology, believe in evolution (and it creates a firestorm when they occasionally do!). You won’t hear that in the pulpit either- because the study of the text is not the issue either. You also don’t generally hear that Genesis 1 and 2 are two different stories, written several hundred years apart in different parts of the world. You don’t hear that, even if you desperately want to take Genesis 1 and 2 literally, you cannot because of internal contradictions. That’s just a matter of reading the text, and when pointing that out is considered controversial and gets professors nervous about job security, we are reminded that the study of the text isn’t actually the issue.

So what is the issue that gets so many Christians wrapped  up in such a tizzy?  The OOZE article continues:

So what is the issue?

Fazale Rana, vice president of apologetics group Reason to Believe, opines: “From my viewpoint, a historical Adam and Eve is absolutely central to the truth claims of the Christian faith…But if the parts of Scripture that you are claiming to be false, in effect, are responsible for creating the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith, then you’ve got a problem,”

Exactly. She gets credit for honesty. What undergirds this controversy is not a disagreement about the text or science; instead, it’s the belief that faith crumbles once you admit that the text has an error, isn’t historically accurate, or else it says correctly exactly what it means to say and you’ve simply misunderstood it all this time.

Philosophers Imre Lakatos and Thomas Kuhn described this phenomenon as epistemological webs and paradigm shifts. Lakatos described all our knowledge as interconnecting in a web, with more important, reinforced ideas consisting an epistemic core. Experiences hit the boundary of this web and force you to decide whether to incorporate new data or reject it. The knowledge within the web need not all cohere- it is only most important that the core ideas cohere well. When the web’s integrity breaks down due to dissonant data points, it becomes more parsimonious to think with a different core set of beliefs. This results in what Kuhn calls a paradigm shift in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

The text of scripture is very, very rarely the issue in theological debates. 

The real issue is that we’ve decided to believe something and are desperately grasping for any way we can use the text to backward-engineer justification for our beliefs. This isn’t controversial. It’s just how we are wired…by evolution.

These concepts above are totally foreign to many hardliner evangelicals and to most in the Church of God.  To dare to question, to really examine scripture and tradition in depth is NOT something that is ever done.  To do so is heretical in the the eyes of most.

What does faith mean to you?  Can faith be destroyed by questioning?  Does not believing in a literal Adam and Eve undermine all the rest of the teaching in scriptures?

Armstrongism on the Flood and Squashed Whales

I bet you never knew that our oil today comes from millions of dead, squashed whales who died during Satan's rebellion which caused the first flood.  The earth was destroyed again with a second flood during Noah's time.  Simplistic Armstrongism has to have all the answers to everyting in life.  How little it actually knows!

  In the education that I have received in the past in regards to those two worldwide floods, not remembering exactly where my education came from, in school, from religion, or other sources, I will relate what I have learned that made sense to me then and still does today!! I doubt that most educational institutions today explain those two floods!! They choose to hold to their false theory of how things have evolved into their teaching today, and how man has evolved from ape to man!!

 

  The first flood came about with Satan`s rebellion and the catastrophic results. With the hundreds of thousands of tons of earth compressing the vegetation into the anthracite hardened coal that can be found deep under the ground, and with the rotted flesh from the sea life, especially with all of the may tons of compressed whales that has produced the oil that we now use especially for fuel for our autos, and the tons of compressed trees that had become petrified like hardened rocks that has now become exposed to the surface from the second Noachian flood located in the petrified forest of Nevada.

 

  With the many tons of earth compressing against more of the vegetation into the bituminous soft coal that can now be found in layers nearer the surface of the ground and perhaps with more of the compressed sea life vegetation creating more oil for our use!!