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Martyred for the Gospel

Martyred for the Gospel
The burning of Tharchbishop of Cant. D. Tho. Cranmer in the town dich at Oxford, with his hand first thrust into the fyre, wherwith he subscribed before. [Click on the picture to see Cranmer's last words.]

Daily Bible Verse

Monday, August 08, 2016

Is There a Universally Recognized Human Right to Homosexual Immorality and Same Sex Marriage?




It is quite frustrating to see Evangelical theologians missing the whole point in their comments about homosexuality, transgenderism, and same sex marriage.  The vast majority of them are trying to find common ground with secular humanists who have invented their own facade which they call "human rights."  [See:  Is Same Sex Marriage a "Human Right"?]  The real question is who decides what these human rights are and how is the deduction made?  Is there an objective standard for determining morality?

This where I am strongly an advocate of the late Dr. Gordon H. Clark's presuppositionalism.  According to Dr. Clark's apologetics, everyone starts with undemonstrable and unprovable axioms or starting points.  This is clearly true of empirical science as well since empiricism is really based on logical positivism of one degree or another.  In fact, Dr. Clark went so far  as to say that empirical science is based on the fallacy of affirming the consequent.  Basically, a theory is a presupposition and the scientist finds every inductive evidence he or she can to affirm the theory.  So why is it that two scientists can examine the same inductive evidence with two different theories and come up with affirming conclusions for two different presupposed theories from the same evidence?  Even scientists are fideists.  [See:  Science and Truth].

The answer, of course, is that they have affirmed the conclusion beforehand.  If it is raining, the streets are wet.  The streets are wet, therefore it is raining.   If A, then B.  B, therefore A.  Of course there could many other factors involved that could cause the streets to be wet.

Logical positivism is self refuting because it says that only what can be learned from the five senses is legimately knowledge.  But the beginning premise is itself not capable of observation since it is an abstract proposition that can only be thought with the mind.  Do animals understand the proposition that 2 + 2 = 4?

To cut the argument short I would ask the question that if everyone--including scientists--begins with presupposed axioms, why would the world at large fault the Christian for beginning with the axiom of Scripture?  All knowledge for the Christian worldview begins with Scripture as the axiom.  Scripture is the God-breathed Word of God.  Every single word is fully inspired by God.  (2 Timothy 3:16; Matthew 4:4; 2 Peter 1:19-21; Psalm 119:89).

I keep repeating this point but it is worth repeating again.  Is the human mind just a product of chemistry in a body, a brain of grey matter?  Or is the human mind really a soul created by God through providence and natural generation?  Philosophers of science have yet to solve the mind/body problem.  Exactly how does the brain produce a thinking and sentient soul in the first place?  Yet we have psychologists and psychiatrists pronouncing yet another fallacy of affirming the consequent.  If there are genetic and biological predetermining factors that could cause homosexuality and transgender dysphoria, then there will be homosexuals and persons with transgender dysphoria.  There are actually homosexuals and transgender confused persons, therefore homosexuality and transgender dysphoria must be caused by genetic and biological predispositions of the human body.  But presupposing this is again affirming the consequent.  If A, then B.  B, therefore A.

The fact that no empirical scientist can demonstrate how a brain can manifest a thinking and sentient soul should raise questions about the logical fallacy of presupposing a confused individual was born with a man's body and a woman's mind or vice versa.  Just because a person has same sex attractions, does that prove that the person was biologically or genetically predetermined to that lifestyle or attraction?  The cause could be psychological disorders rather than genetics or biology.  Presupposing that the streets are wet because it is raining ignores the fact that the street could be wet because a water line broke some other place and flooded the area.   The same is true of presupposing the consequent and finding causes to support the consequent.  There could be any number of other causes underlying homosexuality and transgenderism.

Finally, do we know that there is some set of human rights that everyone universally is entitled to?  According to secular humanism these rights are "universally recognized."  But is that statement itself true?  Obviously not since every culture has different customs.  In ancient Greek and Roman societies sexual promiscuity and homosexuality and even pedophilia were commonly accepted practices.  In Christian societies these are taboos.  In short, presupposing a set of human rights based on popular opinion is a contradiction because there is no universally recognizable authority for developing a set of human rights.  Popular vote does not determine morality per se because morality is maleable and relative to each society.  Unless there is a deontological basis for morality there can be only a totalitarian determination of morality by the state.  For Christianity there is a higher authority than human opinions.  That authority is the Word of God, the Holy Scriptures.  We ought to obey the governing authorities and the civil authority.  (Romans 13:1-14).  But when the government commands Christians to accept homosexual marriage, transgenderism, and the murder of unborn babies, the Christian has a higher obligation to obey God rather than man.  (Acts 4:19, 5:29).  In recent comments President Obama said that Christians must accept the dogma of secular humanism and change the teaching of the Scriptures.  [See:  Christian Churches 'Must be Made to Affirm Homosexuality'].  The dogma of homosexual marriage and transgenderism is soon to be a legally enforced doctrine of the socialist state.  The same thing has been said by Hillary Clinton in regards to abortion.  Christians must accept the dehumanization of human babies or face legal sanctions, according to Clinton.  [See: Hillary Clinton: Force Christians to Change Their Religious Views to Support Abortion].

[Cf. Leviticus 18:22-23; Romans 1:27; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11; Genesis 19:5; Judges 19:22; Deuteronomy 22:5; Leviticus 19:28; 1 Kings 18:28]

I will ask this question again.  Which god is it that gives human beings the right to murder infants and practice perversions like homosexuality and mutilate their bodies to look like the opposite biological sex?  (2 Corinthians 4:3-6).  

Is Donald Trump any better?  No.  Trump is for using tax dollars to fund Planned Parenthood, which exists solely for women's health issues.   Of course, the term "women's health" in liberal jargon means the right to murder an infant in the womb at any stage of development from conception up to just prior to a normal birth at nine months.  Viability is not the determining factor but sheer dehumanization of a human person.  Even Hillary Clinton acknowledged that an unborn child is a person in a rare slip of the tongue:   [Hillary Clinton Admits That Abortion Kills a ‘Person’].   Donald Trump is a relativist in regards to morality as his affirmation of the LGBTQ lobby clearly shows.  Trump is no friend of Evangelical Christianity and to affirm his candidacy is the same as attacking Christianity since he would uphold totalitarian laws restricting religious freedom and theological dissent from the dogmas of the secular humanism state.

For the Christian the final authority in all matters of morality, faith, and practice is not the secularist state or socialism.  Instead the Christian is obligated to obey God when there is a conflict between state dogma and biblical deontological morality.  The Christian cannot in good conscience obey laws that command him or her to recognize a perversion as "marriage" or obey laws that command them to recognize a woman's right to murder her unborn baby at any stage after conception up to and including just prior to a normal birth.  The sixth commandment says, "Thou shalt not murder."   (Exodus 20:13).  The Bible is a book that is logical and propositional in nature and it is perfectly legitimate to logically deduce civil and judicial laws based on the morality revealed in the general principles of the Decalogue and the other moral laws revealed in Holy Scripture.  [See Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 1:6].

 6.      The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit or traditions of men. (2 Tim. 3:15–17, Gal. 1:8–9, 2 Thess. 2:2) Nevertheless, we acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the Word: (John 6:45, 1 Cor 2:9–12) and that there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, and government of the Church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature, and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed. (1 Cor. 11:13–14, 1 Cor. 14:26, 40).   WCF 1:6.

In short, true Christians are at this time a small minority or remnant in the United States of America and around the world.  Most of the western countries are now openly socialist, materialistic, and hostile to biblical Christianity.  Persecution is just around the corner.  How much longer will the liberal media and the totalitarian state be content with religious freedom?  They are already willing to take away the second amendment right to bear arms.  The freedom of speech and freedom of religion is also on their hit list as relative to the socialist and secular humanist agenda to stamp out the archaic religions of the past and replace them with theological relativism and secular atheism.  Those who are supporting Trump are not offering a legitimate alternate but simply affirming the same result but with a different leader.  Trump is willing to equivocate and dissimulate to win the Evangelical vote.  But in the end Trump's agenda is no different from the agenda of the far left.  His only points of difference with them is on the issue of open borders and free trade or the Transpacific Partnership.  Other than that Trump is still a socially progressive liberal.  But the question is how is it progress when America is regressing to atheism and paganism rather than staying true to the Christian values deduced from the Bible?  It is the rule of law that is deduced logically from the Scriptures that has made our nation great and that has caused western civilization to advance peace around the world.  Instead the secularists want to exalt an intolerant pluralism that does not include the right to believe the Bible literally as it is logically and propositionally revealed from God himself.  The best summary of the system of propositional truth in the Holy Scriptures is the Westminster Confession of Faith.

Humans alone are created in the image of God.  Since God is a spiritual being with no body, it logically follows that the image of God cannot be a material body.   (John 4:24).  It is man's soul which is spiritual and immaterial and it is this spiritual and immaterial soul that is the image of God.  God, being Logic (John 1:1), enlightens every man with the ability to think.  (John 1:9).  Man is not a tabula rasa at birth but is innately endowed with the ability to reason, think logically, keep time, remember the past, and examine contingencies to predict various outcomes for future events.   [See:  The Image of God in Man, by Dr. Gordon H. Clark].  If morality is relative to culture, then morality changes with culture.  The basic premise of secular humanism is that deontological ethics deduced from the archaic Scriptures of Christianity is subject to revision.   Tomorrow it might be perfectly fine to eliminate subhuman homeless persons who have nothing to contribute to society.  Unborn babies are merely a source of human body parts used to enhance the lives of those better able to pay for this service and who have something more significant to contribute to a socialist utopia.  Any political or theological dissent based on an objective standard of morality is intolerable to the secularists.  Although they pretend to be tolerant the one thing they cannot tolerate is legislating morality.  Instead they prefer to legislate immorality and outlaw religious dissent based on the proposition that the Bible is the plenary and verbally inspired words of God and without error in every proposition recorded therein.

Thinking Christians need to stand for the truth and make it known that relativism and progressivism is not an option and that they are willing to suffer persecution if necessary.   Those so-called Evangelical  churches that are more concerned with not losing their tax exempt status--read state licensed or state controlled churches--are not faithful to the Scriptures but to the state.  This distinction will become even more evident as time goes on.

Some so-called Scripturalists are libertarians or libertines.  They believe the axiom that nothing is wrong except what harms another person.  But the Decalogue and the Scriptures disagree.  Leaving out the first table of the Ten Commandments is unconscionable.  Belief in the God of the Bible is the very bedrock of a democratic and constitutional Republic.  Without the Bible the rule of law means nothing.  I end with the question,  "How do you deduce a libertarian political philosophy from the logical and propositional system revealed in the Bible by good and necessary consequence?"

Charlie J. Ray, M.Div.


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