Tag Archives: Science

Politics

Men Don’t Give Birth

"Doctors prepared to do an emergency cesarean delivery, but in the operating room no fetal heartbeat was heard. Moments later, the man delivered a stillborn baby."

apnews.com/b5e7bb73c6134d58a0df9e1cee2fb8ad

If men have babies, what’s even the point of talking about gender and sex categories? The categories are literally meaningless.

First:
“Sex” and “Gender” were synonyms. They both meant male and female as traditionally understood. Girls. Boys. Pink. Blue.

Then:
“Sex” and “Gender” were separated. Sex referred to biology. Gender referred to cultural norms around biology. Male vs. Masculine. Gender—being cultural—was malleable, and things like gender fluidity and transgender became common terms.

Now:
Sex and gender are synonyms again. But now they mean “malleable designations that mean whatever an individual wants them to mean.” The malleability of culturally-based gender notions has been back-migrated into biological sex.

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Faith

Conversation About Origins

Note: Until my early thirties I was a convinced Young-Earth Creationist. I firmly believed that the Earth is approximately 6,000 years old, and that the global flood of Noah as described in Genesis 6-9 was a historical event that occurred approximately 4,500 years ago. As described elsewhere, in September 2010 I began a new research project that led me to question my previous convictions. In the Spring of 2011 as my doubts mounted, I had the opportunity to speak with Ken Ham at a homeschool convention, and on his recommendation, wrote a later to one of Answers in Genesis’s staff members. This e-mail captures my thinking and research on this topic at that time in some detail. Dr. [Name Redacted] did in time respond (see the postscript at the end), but his answers were not sufficient to end my doubts. (DL, Sept. 18, 2021)

Dear Dr. [Name Redacted]:

Ken Ham suggested I write you and gave me your e-mail when I approached him after one of his speaking engagements in the Spring.

I was reared in the church. I made a profession of faith at four. I was heavily involved in Child Evangelism Fellowship through junior high and high school. I took a bachelor’s and a master’s at Bob Jones University. In the ten years since, I have been heavily involved in Christian education and (on my own time) in Christian apologetics, often in regards to the scientific inadequacy of Neo-Darwinism and the evidence for Y.E.C. I have read fairly widely in the field of Y.E.C., most recently (as it happens) in Coming to Grips with Genesis.

Over the last ten to twelve months I have begun to seriously question the tenability of Young-Earth Creationism.
WIth that doubt (which has come to border very closely on flat disbelief), has come a concomitant and unsettling uncertainty regarding the veracity of the Scriptures as a whole. As you know, if Genesis isn’t true, we must seriously ask whether any of it is true.

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Faith

Aiming Low

Note: I can trace the first unraveling of my lifelong faith in the reliability of the Bible to a specific date—September 27, 2010. On that day, at 1:35 pm Andrew Sullivan (of whom by then I was an avid reader) posted a short post entitled “Aiming Low” which ended with a single question, asked rhetorically: “How do you rebut a Senatorial candidate who believes that the earth was made 6,000 years ago?” The implied answer which Andrew seemed to assume all his readers would undoubtedly recognize and agree with was, ‘You can’t. They’re past reason.’ I, a convinced and passionate Young Earth Creationist (YEC), was provoked by what I perceived as both slight mockery from a writer I respected and admired and sad ignorance of the obvious scientific basis for the Biblical account of origins. I determined to write to Andrew to set the record straight. I began an email which I intended to be a clear, succinct and persuasive argument for a young earth–a clear demonstration that the YEC position was not nearly as irrational as he assumed. I never finished it. The research and reading I began as I wrote the email spiraled completely out of my control, and by the following Spring I had developed serious doubts about the historicity of the Flood narrative in Genesis. (DJL, July 16, 2023)

It’s hard to write an e-mail like this: the venue is wrong for the content and what you are able to communicate despite the formal limitations is going to be misread.

Nevertheless, here goes.

  1. I) The standard evolutionary mantra is patently, egregiously, and demonstrable inadequate as an explanatory tool–despite what the experts, Wikipedia, and Dawkins all say (and believe me, I’ve read my share of all of the above).
    1. A) Darwinian natural selection can function only if 

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