 We are going to talk for the next two days about arguing. How many of you like arguing? We have liars in this room. Let's start over. How many of you when you argue you want to win? If your hands not up you are lying or you need counseling, one of the two. We are going to talk about arguing men and women because right now as we are here outside Orlando, our nation is having a huge argument that impacts you, your children and your grandchildren for decades to come. And how we respond to that argument as believers is going to dictate our national policy on abortion, doctor-assisted suicide, even the definition of marriage. And here are the two major questions we're arguing about as a nation tonight. Number one is truth true. In other words, is moral truth real and knowable or is it just a preference like choosing chocolate over vanilla? Secondly, what makes humans valuable? Are you and I valuable for what we are intrinsically or only what we do functionally? And those two questions of truth and human value are driving all of the political debates you're seeing right now on those issues. Now, I've already noticed that some of you are taking notes faster than broke people at a Dave Ramsey seminar and you're welcome to do that if you want to. That was a joke, an attempt to bond with my audience and it went down faster than the magic last year. But anyway, don't worry, I'm a Lakers fan. You think you got it bad. We are going to supply you because I'm going to email to Pastor Rick exhaustive notes on everything I'm going to cover with you. Meaning, if you think you can leave and not come back tomorrow, your salvation's riding on it and I'm a Calvinist. All right? No, seriously, we're not going to give you those notes. We're going to take names when this thing is over and those that were faithful to the end will reap the reward of the notes. Anyway, we are going to provide you with these notes so that if you feel like, hey, I've covered something too quickly or you're going, wait, I really wish he could back the train up a little bit and just go over what he just said. You're going to have it all in front of you written out systematically. You'll be able to refer to it. There's footnotes, there's source material in it, meaning you're going to be able to check it all out. And that's all going to be available to you and we will see to it. You get that and we'll give that information out tomorrow. The question of truth and the question of human value are driving our national debates over abortion, over the definition of marriage and over cloning and embryonic stem cell research. And to give you an example of where we are as a country, let me just describe for you what happened before we moved from Los Angeles where I had lived most of my life to Atlanta in 2004. At that time, my son, Michael, my youngest son was five and I had him in Northridge Park in the San Fernando Valley pushing him on the swing and a well dressed woman puts her daughter in the swing next to Michael and says, what do you do for a living that you can come to the park like most dads can't? How come you're here and they're working? And I tell you folks, I don't like to get into it with people when I'm not on the job. I don't want to fight with you when I'm not out speaking. I want to coach Little League. I want to, you know, do whatever. I don't want to fight with you. So I gave a cop out answer. I do lectures on bioethics. Nobody ever asked what that is. She said, I don't like abortion. Uh oh, we're into it now. What was the key word in that sentence? Like, I don't like abortion. I think it's bad, but I'm glad it's legal because I don't want to impose my beliefs on others who disagree. You've heard that, haven't you? Like every day. So very gently. And by the way, one of the things I will say to you this weekend is we are ambassadors for Christ. We're not sledgehammers for Christ. We are ambassadors. That means we're gracious. We try to be nice. And when we're not nice, we repent, right? All right. So very gently when she said, I, you know, just, I don't like abortion, but I don't want to impose my views. I said, can you tell me why you're personally opposed to abortion? And very gently she responded and said, well, I'm opposed to it because everybody knows it's killing. You want to guess what my next question was? Can I repeat what you just told me? You personally oppose abortion because you say it's killing, but you want it to be legal to kill unborn humans? And she just pushed your daughter for a few more seconds. There must have been 10 seconds of pause and she turned to me and said, you know what, you're right. I did just say that and I don't like how that sounds now that you've kind of unpacked that for me. She bought into the notion that when it comes to moral truth, you should no more claim you're right than if you were talking about your favorite flavor of ice cream. Welcome to your world, men and women. This is the world you live in. On the question of human value, there is a professor at the University of Colorado by the name of David Boonen. David Boonen has written the most intelligent book defending abortion you will ever read. David Boonen is not a flamethrower. He is not the politician you've seen breathing fire on television. He's not the street activist who shouts at anybody who attends church on Sunday. This is a guy who actually has a great deal of affection for pro-life people. He actually thinks they're more thoughtful than a lot of people on his side of the issue. Here's his book. Here's how he opens his book, which is a defense of abortion. He says the following. I'll paraphrase it for you. On the desk where I wrote this book, there is a series of photographs of my son Eli. In the first photograph, he is only a few hours old and he's wearing a hat to preserve heat that he wore home from the hospital. In the next photograph, he's around six months old and he's struggling to crawl on his grandparents' floor and even struggling to kind of sit up. In the next photograph, he's at the beach along the Gulf of Mexico, his wispy hair blowing in the wind. In each of these pictures says David Boonen, we are looking at the same little boy. And then Boonen says this, get ready. In the top drawer of my desk, I keep another photograph of Eli. This one taken 24 weeks before he was born. The sonogram image is murky, but reveals clearly enough a hand outstretched toward the mouth, thumb extended toward the lips, and says Boonen, there is no doubt in my mind that this image also depicts the same little boy just at an earlier stage of his development. And says Boonen, there is no doubt the thesis I will defend in this book is that it would have been perfectly permissible to have ended his life at that point. Does it get any more personal than that? Boonen says, that's my boy at the embryonic stage. That's my boy right now. Same guy. He didn't evolve from an embryo. He didn't come from the blob of tissue. That was him. And we can kill him anyway and listen to his reasoning because Eli as an embryo, as a fetus, lacked organized brain function to where he could have a desire for anything. And until you have desires says Boonen, you have no right to life. In other words, your value as a human being is not based on whose image you bear. It's not based on the fact that you're simply a human being. It's based on the functions you perform. That's the worldview battle going on right now in our culture. And we wonder why kids are okay with pot. Let's think about this for a moment. Why is marijuana okay with millions of so-called Christian kids? I know I speak at their worldview camps. You want to see heck break loose? Make the point that you shouldn't be smoking pot and that just isn't acceptable as a Christian. Well, why not? And you know why they question it? They have no idea what it means to be a being who bears the image of his maker. And as a result, it's in anything goes definition of human value. Why do people make a big stink right now about whether you identify as a man or a woman? Because human nature is up for grabs. Objective meaning is disappearing from us. We will talk about that tomorrow. Definition of marriage, the same thing. But you and I are on hostile turf tonight. And we are going to have to know how to make a case for the pro-life view on hostile turf. And we are going to have to be people who are equipped to engage. And to give an example of what I mean by this, when my son Jeff graduated high school in 2009, I took him to the beaches of Normandy, France. When my kids graduate, they get a dad kid trip. And it just so happened, this worked out well. I was going to be speaking in England anyway, so you know, hop across the channel. And we went to Omaha Beach. How many of you have seen Saving Private Ryan? Remember the first 40 minutes of that film, how gruesome it was? The first wave of Army Rangers that hit the beach that day sustained nearly 80% casualties, injuries and deaths. Why? Number one, the tide charts were wrong. The guys were dropped into water that wasn't shoulder deep. It was, in some cases, 20 feet deep. And they're carrying 100 pound packs and weaponry that goes straight to the bottom and drowned before they even get a shot off. Those that don't drown live, but only by ditching their weaponry. Now they have to run across the beach unarmed with no weapons while they're being fired at with inflating fire from the sides and from the front. And we're looking this scene over. Jeff and I are looking this over, and it's like no way. And Jeff said, dad, let's go down to the water. Let's wait out into the surf. And let's come back toward the beach the way our guys would have. Yeah, we're talking an emotional moment. And of course, the French tour guide with no sense of diplomacy whatsoever is yelling at us in French, hurry up, you're holding up the whole group. I'm like, hey, babe, we saved your butts in this war. We're staying right here to enjoy this moment. But I couldn't help but be struck about what it would have been like to run across that beach without having what you needed to engage a well entrenched foe. And men and women, that's where we are as Christians. We have to know how to make a case for life that can engage that culture in a way that is attractive, winsome, compelling. And we have a job description in front of us. And this weekend is about how we think biblically about the key issues where the battle lines are drawn right now. Abortion will spend tonight talking about abortion. I will lay out a case for the pro-life view. I will deal with five bad arguments that people raise against the pro-life view and tell you why they don't work. And then tomorrow, I will deal with the single biggest objection not only to the pro-life view, but to your Christian faith, the issue of relativism. What's the most popular bumper sticker in America today? You know what it is. Co-exist. Why is that bumper sticker so popular? I'll tell you why tomorrow. I told you you were all coming back. Then we're going to get into some really interesting areas where we as Christians not only need to think biblically out there in the culture, we need to think biblically right here within our own churches. We're going to talk about reproductive technologies. You want to know emotional pain? Have you ever spent time with a couple that wants to have kids but can't? I am telling you that pain on a 1 to 10 is a 13. I had one couple tell me they'd rather have cancer than have to walk through what they walked through. In fact, the wife had had cancer and she said this was worse. So how do we help people in our churches think biblically about reproductive technologies that assist couples having children? Then, if it hasn't happened to you yet, it will. You will walk a loved one through their final days. I just did this with my sister five weeks ago and I walked through what we're going to talk about. When is it okay, if ever, to withhold treatment? When is it okay to treat their pain even though it could? You could foresee it hastening death. Is that ever okay? What do you do when your dad or mom is in the final stages of cancer and that feeding tube is actually prolonging and increasing their suffering? What do you do in that situation? These are questions we as Christians have to be able to articulate biblical answers to and we're going to do that. Then we're going to get into what could be in our final session the most interesting one. What does it mean to have a human nature and is it ever okay to enhance it? Is it ever okay to alter the biological part of our nature to make us able to do more stuff? Now, as you can see, none of this will be controversial all weekend. Yeah, I'm equipping all of you for Thanksgiving table next year, right? Where I know I will not be invited. Anyway, that's where we're going to go and you're going to get exhaustive notes on all of this. Let's start tonight though with the issue of abortion. Everybody get ready to write down the three most important words when it comes to the issue of abortion. Are you ready? Three most important words. You've got to get these down and I need you to pay very, very close attention to each word. Ready? Okay. Word number one, syllogism. Let me spell that for some of you. Some of you just looked at me and said, I didn't know we were doing Greek and Hebrew tonight. Syllogism, S-Y-L-L-O-G-I-S-M. Syllogism. Word number two, make sure you get this. Syllogism. Anybody want to guess what the third word is? Yes, syllogism. So what's a syllogism? A syllogism is simply an argument put in a formal structure. How about this? Socrates is a man. There's premise one. Premise two, all men are mortal. Therefore, Socrates is mortal, right? Socrates is a man. All men are mortal. Therefore, Socrates is mortal. That's a syllogism. Premise, premise, conclusion. Guess what? Pro-life Christians have a syllogism and it is vitally important you know how to stick to it like glue. And I'll explain why before we're done tonight. Here's your pro-life syllogism. Premise one, it is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being. You're free to write it if you want, but it will be in your notes. I just thought I'd share that is. Premise one, it is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being. Premise two, abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being. Therefore, what's our conclusion? Abortion is wrong. Premise one, it is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being. Premise two, abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being. Therefore, abortion is wrong. Now that men and women is what we call an argument and argument is not insulting someone and saying you're not very attractive and neither is anybody else with your family name that's an insult an argument is where we actually lay out an argument a case for our view and step one is having a clearly defined syllogism premise one and by the way we lock the doors at the end of each session and nobody leaves till they recite the syllogism so you really are gonna you know remember the old eagle song you can check out but you can never leave tonight you don't get to leave until you know that syllogism premise one it is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being premise two abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being therefore abortion is wrong and we're going to look right now at three key questions that will establish the truth of that syllogism and its validity as well the first question we're going to look at is what is the unborn the second question we'll look at is what makes humans valuable and then thirdly we'll ask the question tonight what's the point what's the point so let's look at that first question what is the unborn our culture believes men and women that abortion is a complex issue abortion is not a complex issue it's psychologically complex but it's not morally complex here's what I mean by that if you know a 14 year old girl who's pregnant and her boyfriend is going to dump her her parents aren't supporting her her school will kick her out she will lose the opportunity to earn good money because she now has a kid she'll lose the opportunity to go to college do you feel sympathy for her of course but does it follow there's no morally correct way to proceed whether abortion is right or wrong starts with the question what is the unborn can we kill the unborn that depends what is the unborn my friend greg kokal of standard reason has a perfect illustration to get to the heart of this he says imagine you're at your kitchen sink one night washing dishes after supper your back is turned and your five-year-old boy comes in while your back's turned and says to you daddy or mommy can I kill this some of your legs go no they would never ask such questions would they little girl over here going yeah those little boys in my class do that all the time well you see this ring on my finger here it's been there for 30 years 31 years this october where i've been married to the most glorious woman in all of christendom for that amount of time and we have a son who is 26 us army son 25 us army we have a son 19 and a daughter 15 and i want to assure you that i have personally heard the question daddy can i kill this times without number and almost often his hands are around his brother's throat when he's asking the question daddy can i kill this what's the first thing you want to know what's the first question out of your mouth as a concerned parent not why what what does he got cockroach snail fire ant do whatever you want don't show your mother neighbor kitty whoa and brother by the throat you have issues correct you would never in a billion years say sure son have at it till you answered that predicate question what does he got i know some of you're going wait a minute this church brought this dude in from atlanta for that it's simple but it gets us right to the heart of the abortion controversy can we kill the unborn yes we can if if what if the unborn are not human i've done debates on college campuses my most recent debate partner has been malcolm potz you don't know malcolm potz but malcolm potz was one of plan parenthood's first international medical directors he was the guy who got great britain's abortion laws liberalized in 1967 he now teaches a population control course out at berkeley and once a year i get to jump on the plane and fly out to that bastion of conservative thought out there to debate him in front of his own students and i love it i got 660 of his own students sitting out there i have nothing to lose in that gig nothing there's two of them who think like me the rest don't he's got everything to lose and in our last debate i was supposed to speak first he preempted me he walked up to the podium and he said to his students scott is here today because he wants to jam his religious view down your throat in fact he thinks he's got the answers to the whole universe scientists don't know when life begins philosophers don't know when life begins theologians don't know when life begins but scott knows in fact he's so certain of it he feels he has the moral authority to take away your choices and i find his arrogance appalling it was great to be at berkeley that day he had 20 minutes to give an opening he took about two minutes i had 20 minutes how much time do you think yeah i took it all here were the opening words out of my mouth which if he had bothered to research me he would have known i was going to pull this on him i said ben and women i agree with everything dr potz just said he's right abortion should be legal through all nine months of pregnancy no questions asked he's right pro-lifers like me ought to butt out of this issue and let every person make up their own minds he's right that no laws should govern the woman's autonomy he's right that religious people shouldn't take their theological views and impose them on others i agree with everything he just said he's right if those two pro-life girls i just mentioned they passed out at this point if what if the unborn are not human and if dr potz can use the science of embryology to demonstrate that the unborn are not one of us and philosophy to show us that even if they are we have no duty to value them i will concede this exchange because i'm more committed to truth than i am ideology in fact men and women i'm vigorously pro-choice on women choosing their own religion choosing their own husbands choosing their own careers choosing their own cars the pets they want to own the car or the homes they want to own i'm pro-choice in all that but some choices are wrong like intentionally killing an innocent human being simply because he's in the way of something we want that's a choice the civil society should not allow but if dr potz can demonstrate for us empirically that the unborn are not human i'm with him do you think he took me up on my little challenge now here was his reply i repeat scientists disagree with theologians theologians disagree with philosophy philosophers nobody knows when life begins they all disagree with each other that was his rebuttal men and women you do not need a degree in rocket science to see the flaw in his thinking how does it follow that because people disagree nobody's right did people once disagree on whether women should have the right to vote there's a dude going back there you know i really wish we could go back to those days no i won't point him out though he's running my microphone that wouldn't be a good thing no i'm just kidding he looked back to the wall no it wasn't you there was no dude that was just another one of those jokes that went it was magic but anyway um did people once disagree on whether the earth was flat around did they once disagree on whether african americans were citizens with rights did it follow there were no right answers the absence of consensus says hadley arkis does not mean an absence of truth but there was a deeper flaw here notice what doctor potz said we don't know if the unborn are human therefore we can kill them if we don't know if the unborn are human should we be killing them if you're driving home tonight you see what looks like an old black coat in the road but it could be an elderly gentleman who had a little bit too much to drink at the pub are you going to run the code over or err on the side of caution err on the side of caution or to borrow an example from former president ronald reagan if you're out hunting and you see bushes rustling in front of you and you don't know if it's that deer you've been after or your best buddy do you open fire not unless you're dick cheney right you err on the side of caution there's no way you're gonna open fire pastor that's my only political joke that i'll try to throw in here unless i forget if we don't know if the unborn are human we shouldn't be killing them it's that simple you gotta answer the question what is the unborn before you answer the question can we kill the unborn and you know what the problem is men and women millions of americans never answer they don't even ask the question what is the unborn they simply assume the unborn are not human i'm going to pick on you for a moment but i reward everybody i pick on no don't look over at him i'm gonna pick on you um now do you have a brother what's his name jaron and what's your name lydia have you stopped beating your brother jaron jaron yet have you stopped beating him you did okay was that through prayer and deliverance or how did that healing come about i didn't ask you that have you stopped you have okay i'm glad you have now was that a fair question what was wrong with the question by the way free book for you see me afterward i reward everybody i pick on everybody's i could just see everybody going yeah man would somebody attack me yeah i could just see it now yeah yeah so was it a fair question why not what did i assume did i prove it did i give any evidence i just assumed it and people do this with the unborn all the time how many of you read the book the adventures of huckleberry finn those of you that maybe it's been a few years i think it's chapter 32 or 23 i can't remember which huck being the adventurous boy that he is has been out messing around all afternoon he's late for supper and he knows aunt sally is gonna hammer him and so he puts together a lie to get out of getting in trouble he knows aunt sally will pound him to dust so when he shows up late for dinner he says oh well ma'am we would have been on time but we had to take a steamboat to get here and the steamboat blew a cylinder head i mean complete lie aunt sally says well did anybody get hurt no ma'am they killed a negro but nobody got hurt aunt sally says well that's good because sometimes people do get hurt whoa what was just assumed about the black man that he wasn't one of us on the anniversary of roe v wade two years ago the president of the united states celebrating the supreme court case that gave us abortion on demand said the following today we remember a day that all americans should take joy in because said the president get ready here's the quote because this is a nation where everyone deserves the right to pursue their own dreams what was just assumed about the unborn that they're not one of us the president didn't argue for it he simply assumed it i'm going to give you a little tactic now that will help you when people assume the unborn aren't human sometimes they do it innocently they don't mean to they're like that woman at the park they just haven't really thought deeply about this issue but you need to flush that assumption out into the open c s louis said the most dangerous ideas in our culture are the ones that are simply assumed those are the most dangerous ones so let's take a look at this assumption that the unborn aren't human and let me give you some examples of how people do this and then i'll show you how this tactic works you'll all be doing this in your sleep by tomorrow it's it's real easy it's called trot out the toddler every time you hear an argument for abortion the first thought i want you to have in your head is this would this work as a good argument for killing a toddler if the answers know what are they assuming about the unborn that they're not assuming about the toddler that the unborn aren't human like the toddler right now please listen to me very carefully for a moment we do not use trot out the toddler to argue the unborn are human like the toddler we're going to do that in the next step the first thing we're doing is simply framing the argument here's a little piece of advice from debate coaches he or she who frames the exchange wins it that's true everywhere but marriage we're really guys the best thing is to just say i repent i'll do better next time and things tend to go better is that your argument sir somebody next to you is turning beat red but that's okay so let's try this let's frame the argument using trot out the toddler somebody says to you how come you don't trust women to make their own personal decisions you've heard this and you're thinking okay wait a minute i i don't hate women i'm not for a war on women how do i convince this person i don't hate women wrong question what i want you to do instead is put your hand at about knee level and the first words out of your mouth need to be these pretend i have a two-year-old in front of me his parents want us to trust them to rough him up in the privacy of the bedroom should we trust them to make that decision what's the answer going to be no your reply two words why not well because he's a human being your reply one word said melodically ah some of you can say that better than me when i sing things die but you might be able to really pull that off ah if the unborn are human like that toddler should we kill the unborn in the name of privacy or trusting women any more than we'd kill a two-year-old for that reason oh that's different the unborn aren't human the toddler is ah that's the question we need to resolve before we talk about choice before we talk about privacy before we talk about trusting women we've got to answer the question what is the unborn nobody kills two-year-olds in the name of choice and who decides do they unless they're really in trouble up here right so they're assuming the unborn aren't human and trot out the toddler flushes that assumption out into the open where it can be dealt with so let's try it somebody comes to you and says well what about a poor mother she's already got eight kids by eight different men she's pregnant with the ninth she can't feed the eight they're welfare kids they don't even go to school and you're going to force her to bring another kid into this world another child into this world that she can't feed stop right there what did they just assume about the unborn notice their language bring another child into the world do we accept that proposition she already has a child right the question is what is she going to do with him so trot out your toddler i have a two-year-old in front of me his parents can't afford to feed him in fact the family budget for the remaining seven children would be a whole lot better if we simply eliminated the poverty problem by eliminating the extra mouth defeat should they be allowed to kill the two-year-old to make the checkbook balance at the end of the month in other words when human beings get expensive may we kill them what's the answer going to be no you can't do that your reply some of you are too anxious for the eye could just see it in your eyes or you're about ready to come out of your chairs no not yet why not well because he's a human being ah ah what not aha ah if the unborn are human like that toddler should we be killing the unborn in the name of economic hardship any more than we kill a toddler for that reason well that's different the unborn aren't human the toddler is ah that's the question we need to resolve first before we talk about privacy choice economic hardship yada yada yada everybody with me so far let's try one more somebody comes to you and says well wait a minute if we allow or if we disallow abortion we're going to have all these unwanted kids running around that are going to grow up abused and abandoned and you're going to tell me that the more humane thing to do would be to allow child abuse rates to swell rather than deal with this problem before they ever come into the world stop right there what's just been assumed about the unborn that they're not human because by the way if the unborn aren't human or if the unborn are human isn't abortion bad like child abuse is bad yeah so they're assuming something let's flush that assumption out into the open i have a two-year-old in front of me he's been roughed up already and by the time he's five he's going to be really roughed up by abusive parents would it be okay to kill him now to prevent him being roughed up later what's the answer going to be no you can't do that your reply why not well because he's a human being ah if the unborn are human like that toddler should they be killed in the name of unwantedness any more than we'd kill a toddler for that reason that's different ah that's the question we need to resolve are the unborn human like that toddler now by the way have i even yet argued the unborn are human no i have not i'm simply setting parameters around the debate and why am i telling you to do this why am i telling you about a syllogism here's why when abortion comes up in discussion have you ever noticed it goes off in 30 different rabbit trails this is how you keep people on message this is how you keep the main thing you focus like a laser beam on the question what is the unborn let me answer it for you what is the unborn now pastor i am not going to go to the bible to answer the question it's the wrong place to go the room just got real quiet we're not going to go to the bible we're going to go to the book of Mormon no just kidding um i won't get everybody up that was tempting to snooze right now they all whoa all right get ready we're going to go to the science of embryology and let me explain why the question what kind of thing is the unborn is not a theological question it's an empirical question like asking what kind of thing is a dog or a or a fish right now we're going to do bible don't worry okay but not yet let's first ask what are we dealing with here and here's what the science of embryology tells us and i will footnote this extensively in your notes from the earliest stages of development you were a distinct living and whole human being from the earliest stages of development you were a distinct living and whole human being everybody hold your hand like this for a moment and i want you to start plucking skin cells off the back of your hand go ahead just give yourself a good pinch if your neighbor's not doing it grab some cells off the back of his neck or something i don't know all right congratulations you just sent a couple 100 somatic cells hurling to their deaths on the table in front of you did you know that each one of those cells contains your entire DNA encoding in fact we're going to be able very shortly it's not a question of if it's just a question of when very shortly we're going to be able to take the the nucleus of one of those DNA cells in your body and we're going to be able to clone another living human entity from it okay you just sent a couple 100 of those puppies hurling to their deaths did you just commit mass homicide no you didn't and you know why these cells on the back of your hand are merely part of a larger human entity you they are not distinct whole living entities the way you were when you were an embryo the way i was when i was an embryo that's the science of embryology well of course people are going to raise objections let me just run you through some these will be in your notes the first thing they'll bring up is twinning why that early embryo could split into two up till 21 days that embryo that starts as one breaks into two how can you claim it's a whole living being from the very beginning when it could split question how does it follow that because a living entity splits that it wasn't a whole living entity prior to the split is anybody here ever cut a flatworm in half what do you get when you cut a flatworm in half two flatworms does it follow there was no flatworm prior to the split you'll also hear people say well wait a minute women don't grieve miscarriages the way that they grieve the death of a newborn or toddler well first of all those people are out of touch with a lot of women i know and a lot of men i know they're just they're out of touch because i will tell you the heartbreak of that is real and it's good for our churches to rally around people who've suffered that and love on them because they have lost a family member i know we don't intuitively go there we tend to think that it's different but you know what they've lost a family member and that's not easy and i wish i had an answer for why god allows that i don't but it doesn't change for a moment they've lost something of dear value to them but the argument goes like this from our friends out there women don't grieve miscarriages like they do newborns who die all right let's say for a moment they were right they're not but let's say they were how do my feelings about something change what it is if i got a message when i get back to the hotel tonight indicating that one of my own children had died tonight will i feel worse about that than hearing on the news that 500 children died in india today from malnutrition does it follow my kid is more human than those children no my feelings about something don't change what it is you'll also hear people say well nature spontaneously triggers miscarriages nature it seems has no problem with abortion okay when you hear that is dr potz tried to lay on me when i debated him you're dealing with someone who's really really ignorant of basic biology and quite frankly i expected better from an md how does it follow that because nature spontaneously triggers a miscarriage that a the children in question were not human or b we may intentionally kill them you see the problem here earthquakes happen in third world countries thousands of people are killed does that justify mass murder it's an example of what we call the is ought fallacy just because something is the case doesn't mean it ought to be and yet many of our secularist friends have bought into this another one you'll get is that sometimes pregnancies develop into molar pregnancies or tumors that embryo so the argument goes morphs into a tumor how can we claim then that it's a human being from the very beginning anybody who tells you that is really really ignorant about embryology let me put this to you real clearly molar pregnancies do not start off as complete living human organisms the way you did at the embryonic stage and then morph into tumors they were tumors from the very beginning how many of you know the alphabet song twinkle twinkle little star okay guys come on just nod it's all right you learned it in kindergarten we're not going to hold it over your head now i won't ask you to sing it and i'm certainly not going to sing it but don't those two songs sound the same when they first start off but what happens after the fifth measure you quickly learn they're not the same song in the same way molar pregnancies do not start off as embryos and change into something else they never were embryos they always were molar pregnancies and anybody who tells you different doesn't know basic embryology one last objection you'll get the burning research lab oh this one's fun it goes like this you prolifers don't believe your own rhetoric you don't believe those embryos are human because if you did you would behave differently and i'll demonstrate you don't believe it pretend you're in a burning research lab in this corner by the light over there below the light is a newborn baby in this corner over by the exit sign is a vial full of frozen embryos this building is an inferno you do not have time to save both you can either save the newborn or the vial full of 12 frozen embryos where are we all going we're all going to the newborn and by the way that's the right decision and our critic then says see even you don't believe those embryos are human because you automatically went for the newborn there goes your whole case question how does it follow that because i save one human over others that the ones left behind are less human pretend this building is on fire and i have a choice of saving all of you or my 15 year old daughter emily rose who is going to fry yeah yeah i won't shoot you on the way out but i'm saving her first because i'm her dad and i have a responsibility to her i don't have to you i'm getting her out first then we'll come back does it follow you're less human than she is because i save her first not at all these are all very bad arguments against the pro light view i do get one though that i think we could maybe just use a little help on if we're honest and we look at a picture of an embryo at maybe the 10 cell stage and it looks just like a little ball of cells it's kind of hard to think wow that's one of us because our intuitions don't naturally go there but let me see if i can reorient our intuitions a little bit pretend you're on a safari this is an example from richard steth and it's the pre-digital era and you have in the year 1970 a polaroid camera does anybody here under the age of 45 know what a polaroid camera is no you're not i think some of you are raising your hand thinking you're under the age of 45 i hear your confession but you're saying it so does it make it so are you teaching word of faith your pastor what's going on here now polaroid cameras for you young ones the way it worked when your parents were growing up you shot a picture and it recorded it on this stuff called film and you had to shoot 36 or 24 exposures then once you got all the pictures shot you took the film out of the camera and you drove it to the far corner of the supermarket parking lot to this little shot called photomat and you would drop the film off and you'd wait a month for your pictures to come back half of them overexposed that was the unbelievable horror we lived in prior to your smartphones now pretend you're on a safari it's 1970 you're on a mexican safari and you have a polaroid camera because the polaroid camera was the answer to the photomat problem you'd shoot a picture it was a very ugly looking thing really it was it looked like satan who invented it it was really ugly you'd shoot the picture but it would spit the picture out and it would be a white piece of paper and then you'd just wait and then it would you'd shake it a little bit yep and you'd wait and about 90 seconds to two minutes later your picture emerged you didn't have to go to photomat it was right there you're on a safari you shoot a picture in this mexican jungle of a black jaguar jumping across the trail in front of you nobody shoots pictures of black jaguars but you got it on your polaroid and while you're waiting i come up to you while you're waiting for the picture to emerge that you just snapped i ripped the polaroid camera out of your hand i yanked the paper out of the camera and i tear it up are you mad at me yeah you are what if i said to you the following what's the big deal no jaguar there in that picture that was just a white paper with a brown smudge on it is that going to get me off the hook you're going to look at me incredulous and you're going to say brown smudge on a piece of paper are you kidding me the jaguar in the picture was already there we just couldn't see him yet in the same way men and women you were already there from the one cell stage we just couldn't see you that is the science of embryology