Rethinking Death

October 29, 2024. A documentary with this title appeared in 2022 – produced by leading scientists at the Parnia’s Lab, New York University Langone – giving rise to a continuous investigation and discussion of what happens when we die.

Historically, cardiac arrest was the definition of death. When the heart stops beating, there is no breathing, and the pupils are fixed, you have died. 98 percent of people are still declared dead by those criteria. But since the 60ties, another criterium emerged: brain death. Here, the brain suffers from permanent damage, with no blood flowing to it. Yet, the heart is still beating, because a respirator is still sending oxygen to the lungs. 2 percent are diagnosed this way.

We have been told that brain cells die within a few minutes of oxygen deprivation, but studies have now shown that this is not true. Brain cells from decapitated pigs can restore their biological functions. So, we are left with the question of what death actually implies, and what happens to our consciousness.

Even more astonishing is the fact that humans who are dead from a biological perspective can still be brought back to life. Where did they go through this period? People have described very vivid experiences during this period: lucid, transcendent, meaningful experiences, absolute love, more real than anything else they have experienced and quite different from the hallucinations sometimes seen at the end of life.

This is what we call ‘near-death-experiences’ (NDE), yet according to the documentary those experiences should rather be called ‘Recalled experiences of death’ (RED) since those patients were truly dead in a biological sense with no brain activity at all. The astonishing fact is that such a patient can refer to things going on in the hospital ward which is impossible for others to know about, even what the doctor was thinking of.

As Dr. Parnia concludes: “Death seems to be the beginning of something new. What exactly happens with our consciousness after death remains unclear, but science does as a minimum suggest that we do not seem to become annihilated when we cross over into death (as the materialists or physicalists believe) and into the great unknown and that perhaps human actions, human thoughts and intentions do matter.”

   Rethinking Death: Exploring What Happens When We Die – YouTube

God at the Bottom of the Glass

October 3, 2024. I guess that most of you already know who Francis S. Collins is – the famous Christian biologist and distinguished researcher, known throughout the world for his supervision of the Human Genome Project and for his performance as a longstanding director of the National Institutes of Health, steering the American nation calmly through the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Many of you are presumably familiar with his classic book: ‘The Language of God. A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief’ (2006). Now, a new book by Dr. Collins has been published: ‘The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust on discovering the hand of God in the science of his creation.’ Christianity Today has presented an excerpt from this book: ‘God at the Bottom of the Glass’, on discovering the hand of God in the science of his creation. You may find this on the internet, watch the enclosed YouTube video, where Francis Collins presents his book, or even better order this book. No scientist today has a better experience with the relationship between biology and Christian faith than he. Dr. Francis Collins explores his faith and science in new book, ‘The Road to Wisdom’ – YouTube

A Christian Approach to Gender Dysphoria 

September 11, 2024. The past decade has witnessed a dramatic increase in the number and prominence of transgender people. This increase has raised questions, in the scientific community and especially in the church. What is the biological basis of gender? How can someone be the “wrong” gender? How should the church respond? Biology professor Dr. Tony Jelsma will describe what is known about gender dysphoria and discuss Christian approaches to this controversial topic. With permission, we are bringing Dr. Jelsma’s lecture here: Gender Dysphoria: A Christian Biologist’s Perspective. A Lecture by Tony Jelsma. (youtube.com)

The Environmental Crisis Is Also a Spiritual One

August 23, 2024. I think we all recognize that behind the environmental crisis – biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change – we will find greed, selfishness, and apathy, which are moral and spiritual issues. Therefore, we will never effectively solve this challenge without a spiritual approach.

Earlier this year ecologist Richard Lindroth, who is a Christian, gave a thought-provoking talk at the BioLogos Conference in the U.S. about the environmental crisis, how we got here, what will and won’t work, and the need for creation connection. Biologist, Dr. Ciara Reyes-Ton has written a summary of this speech and with permission, a link https://lnkd.in/eQR8tvBg is given here to her article, just as this presentation is based on it.

“We are not going to recycle our way out of the climate crisis or the biodiversity crisis”, Lindroth said. About his background, he said that at a young age “nature was imprinted on my soul”, and by the age of 7, he wanted to become a biologist. Now, as a retired professor of biology, he encourages his grandchildren to develop similar connections with nature and invites them to explore a nearby grassy field, collecting caterpillars to be reared up and released as adult butterflies.  

In his speech, Lindroth points at some of the main causes of the crisis: Dualism, bad theology, and technology. Dualism is “the philosophical separation of the mental or the sacred from the physical or the secular. That philosophy has fully integrated into our Western worldviews, beginning with the Greek Platonism, accelerating with the Enlightenment disenchantment, and especially with the rise of Secularism.”

Technology has separated us from the natural world. For example, “the average Americans spend 93 percent of their lives indoors. Kids, on average, spend less than 10 minutes per day in unstructured outdoor play, but seven hours per day in front of screens.”

And theology? “We have reduced the Gospel to simply the salvation of individual human souls, and we have emphasized dominion in relation to the natural world. Dominion is actually a posture of colonialism. It emphasizes possession, control, extraction, and enrichment for the privileged few.”

Instead, we need “creation connection”: This is not going to solve all our problems. “But what I am arguing today is that it’s an essential and critical step towards doing so. Creation connection is necessary if we are to fully worship God as the creator of the cosmos, to live as created beings enmeshed within the community of the created, and if we are to love the sacred, extraordinary earth and those who will inherit it from us.”

An example that can be followed by everyone: “Step outside. Look at the sunshine, look at an eclipse, look at leaves – mindfully, intentionally, emotionally. Hold that for 30 seconds a day, and it will rewire your brain paths to better connect with the natural world around us. Keep a nature journal. I started an awe diary. Learn the names and habits of your wild neighbors, engage with a like-minded community, model your creation care commitments, and work towards local, institutional, and societal changes that promote creation care and creation connection.”

Darwin’s Personal Beliefs

August 8, 2024. Charles Darwin, the former student of theology at the University of Cambridge and the world-famous naturalist and author of ‘Origin of Species’ (1859) never became an atheist: “In my most extreme fluctuations, I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of God”, he wrote to a friend.

Rather, he would describe himself as an agnostic. However, this was by no means a fixed position since he was “bewildered” by the question of faith, and also sometimes described himself as a theist, especially towards the end of his life: He was greatly challenged by “the extreme difficulty, or rather the impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity for looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look at a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a theist.”

It was by no means his theory of evolution that caused him to doubt the Christian faith – this was caused by his critical view of the Bible as history and by the sudden death of his much beloved nine-year-old daughter Annie, a tragic event that he could not reconcile with a loving God. Yet, he was affectionately respectful to the faith of his wife and family members and his Christian friend, the American biologist Asa Gray, and he wrote: “It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent theist and an evolutionist.”

Darwin even concludes ‘The Origin of Species’ with the following sentence: “There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

(Notes: Letter, May 1879; private Autobiography, April 1881; Origin of Species, Penguin 1958, p. 456).

Order and Chance in Evolution

July 15, 2024. “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). One of the good aspects of nature and the universe is its fundamental order – regulated by natural laws and the physical and chemical constants. Does order also apply to biological evolution, or is the emergence of species like humans just a happenstance?

We have dealt with this question in former posts. The dislike of Darwin has been centered on the apparent randomness of evolution, which seemingly contradicts any plan or order in bringing forward the new species, including humans.

However, this needs some clarification:

1) Since God is the Creator of everything, meaning nothing exists unless God makes it possible, chance events only occur because God allows them. The asteroid crashing into the earth 65 million years ago, which led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and the diversification of mammals, leading up to humans, seems to be a chance event and as a result of no plan. But it depends on the perspective – whether it is ours or God’s. Since per definition, he is outside time and space, terms like ‘plan’ obviously shift meaning: For him, there is no interval between the decision and the completion. As Catholic Harvard professor Martin A. Nowak puts it: “For the atemporal God, who is the creator and sustainer of the universe, the evolutionary trajectory is not unpredictable but fully known” (sciencemeetsfaith.wordpress.com).

2) Chance plays a big role in evolution but it is secondary to the underlying order in Creation. Just like an asteroid crashing on Earth, mutations in organisms occur randomly. However, just like the asteroid must follow gravitational laws, mutations are directed by the law of natural selection to make organisms adapt to the environment and thereby generate order and progress. In this way, natural selection is a creative and progressive process that brings into existence new characters and organisms that never existed before, including humans.

3) This anti-chance element of natural selection is further supplemented by even more anti-chance selective forces such as mind, choice, and behavior. Insofar as animals are more or less free to make choices, this ability has played a large part in their own evolution, especially in primates with humans as the most extraordinary case.

4) The order in nature directs the evolutionary process toward certain outcomes so that even distantly related organisms evolve similar traits: convergent evolution. This has proved to be much more widespread than we thought, due to the research of British palaeontologist Simon Conway Morris, who is a Christian. Can we predict the evolutionary outcome? In fact, to a large degree. It is all determined by the physical, chemical, and environmental conditions and restraints that those organisms are surrounded by. For example, there is just a limited number of ways to fly and swim. When moving in the air, wings are needed, so it is hardly surprising that powered flight evolved three times independently in vertebrates: in birds, bats, and pterosaurs (a flying dinosaur). Similarly, if a big animal moves swiftly through the water a torpedo-shaped body and a tail fin are needed, so this also evolved independently in the distantly related tuna, dolphin, lamnid shark, and ichthyosaur (also from the dinosaur era).

As you perhaps know, our advanced camera eye is shared by the octopus and other distantly related groups among the worms. And the marsupials in Australia and the placentals in North America have evolved in much the same way regarding overall body form, locomotion, and feeding habits, giving rise to rather similar ‘moles,’ ‘cats,’ ‘wolves,’ ‘anteaters,’ and ‘mice,’ for example.

What are we saying by this? That evolution is certainly restricted by the laws of nature. The prodigious diversity of plants and animals should not make us forget that we live in a highly ordered universe described by modern physics and chemistry. This order is essential for evolution to work. It sets the primer of what evolution can do. Did it lead to the emergence of human-like beings? Conway Morris thinks so: Sooner or later, the biological properties that characterize humans will emerge.  And this order is set from the beginning of Creation and the Big Bang: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).

Choice, Mind, and Behavior in Evolution

July 1, 2024. Have you ever noticed that some animals, particularly insects, closely resemble an unpleasant or even dangerous species yet are completely harmless?

We may certainly be in doubt. And if you are in doubt, a bird may be, too, whether to approach it or not. It has to make a choice – to eat it or not. Animals make a lot of decisions about risks and rewards based on their immediate surroundings. And making decisions implies some mind.

Remember that choices are important in humans. God gave the first couple the freedom to choose, and they made a fatal choice (Genesis 3).  

Choices result in behavior – such as eating a fruit – and so in animals. The famous biologist Ernst Mayr said that “behavior is the pacemaker of evolution.”  We sometimes forget that natural selection is not just a result of passive environmental influences such as cold climates leading mammals to have thicker fur. It may also involve active decisions by predators, conscious or not.

The example mentioned above illustrates the phenomenon of mimicry. For example, the hornet moth (Sesia apiformis) looks very much like a hornet (Vespa crabro). The sting of the latter is painful, whereas the hornet moth is completely harmless. The moth is the ‘mimic’ that has obtained an adaptation to avoid being eaten by assuming much of the same appearance as the wasp. The predatory bird has to decide which of them to eat and which to avoid on the basis of ‘careful’ comparison of one design with another that it has previously seen and, from its experience, learned to avoid. The choice can be good or bad for the bird – and especially for the insect.

However, we can go further. An animal’s fur becoming passively thicker because of adaptation to the climate and the hornet moth becoming better adapted by the predator’s active choice not to eat it are both external agents of natural selection. But natural selection is not the only selective force acting in evolution: If mind, choice, and behavior – in that order – are the promoters of evolution, this represents an internal selective force that may also change the species itself. Animals are curious, exploratory creatures, especially birds and mammals, and some individuals may choose the selection pressure themselves because they are smarter and seek out new challenges. Adaptations for running, climbing trees, digging, and so forth may have arisen because of that.

Natural selection itself is anti-chance, but internal selection based on mind, choice, and behavior is even more anti-chance.

Can it be that if animals are more or less free to make choices, this ability has played a large part in their own evolution, especially in humans? Famous biologists such as Alister Hardy think so. Conway Morris even believes that the general tendency in evolution toward increasing complexity and the emergence of conscious creatures is a biological destination and endpoint: mind meeting Mind, evolution as the process by which the universe has become self-aware. As he hypothesizes: “The universe is actually the product of a rational Mind, and evolution is simply the search engine that in leading to sentience and consciousness allows us to discover the fundamental architecture of the universe” (The Guardian, February 12, 2009).

The Creativity and Directionality of Evolution

June 17, 2024. Once, there were only bacteria on Earth. How did we get from here to the prodigious diversity of species, including human beings with intelligence, consciousness, and capacity to believe in God? As the well-known evolutionary palaeontologist Simon Conway Morris, who is a Christian, has stated: “The heart of the problem, I believe, is to explain how it might be that we, a product of evolution, possess an overwhelming sense of purpose and moral identity yet arose by processes that were seemingly without meaning” (Life’s Solution, 2003, p. 2).

Some people seem satisfied with the answer: ‘God did it!’. True, but this is certainly not an adequate answer for scientists. They will know how. We must use our reason to find out in which way the whole of biodiversity and the evolution of man may have taken place, a journey that has just begun.  

In the former post, we stated that evolution is not just a random process. Natural selection is an anti-chance agent that leads chance into adaptive channels, resulting in an increased capacity of organisms to adapt. Natural selection is not guided by any plan or direction beforehand, because it cannot predict environmental conditions. However, natural selection is a creative and progressive process that brings into existence new characters and organisms that never existed before: virus, bacterium, worm, fish, dog, and a human being.

Theodosius Dobzhansky, the main founder of neo-Darwinism, and a serious Orthodox believer in Christ, said: “What this seems to mean is a statement of the undoubted fact that, seen in retrospect and in its totality, evolution was indeed progressive, and in this sense directional and oriented” (The Biology of Ultimate Concern, 1967, p. 118-119).

One of the best-known evolutionary directions or trends during geological time is probably the general tendency of animal lineages to increase in body size as shown by mammals and birds. Also, biodiversity has increased: there are more species on Earth today than ever before despite mass extinctions and, rather recently, human interference. Most conspicuously, across the millennia of natural history, organs have become more differentiated and specialized – especially regarding the nervous system. Brains have become much larger and more complex.

So, reason and intelligence have been one such direction and progress in evolution, in the sense of better mastering the environment. The human being is the best example, and the Bible affirms that humans are created to be the master and steward of creation. There is no contradiction: we are not just the random products of chance and error. Rather, we are justified in interpreting evolution in a theistic way as Pope Benedict XVI said: “Reason is there at the beginning, creative, Divine reason” (Easter Vigil Homily, 2011).

Evolution Is Not Just a Random Process

June 10, 2024. When Charles Darwin back in 1859 put forward his theory of evolution by means of natural selection, it was met with opposition by some religious people. This was essentially not because of a literal reading of Genesis chapter one, because even fundamentalist Bible readers realized that there was no contradiction between God being the Creator and nature being the producer of the different species (see chapter 1:11-12 among others). Rather, the dislike of Darwin centered on the apparent randomness of natural selection and the appearance of new organisms by chance, seemingly with no room for Divine design or purpose.

Consider a natural variation within a species such as a butterfly getting some red-colored spots on its wings. The spots are caused by mutations or gene combinations that are purely random events. Now, the process of natural selection starts, acting upon this genetic material in a non-random way: organisms more adapted to their environment are more likely to survive and pass on the genes that aided their success than individuals without those genes. It might be that, for example, the colored spots give this butterfly better protection against birds and reptiles.

Natural selection is a biological law that is not random, rather it is directed to make it possible for organisms to adapt to the environment and thereby generate order and progress. It can even cause species to change and diversify over time into the overwhelming diversity of species inhabiting our world today. The traits that organisms have acquired throughout evolutionary history are not chance events but rather determined by their functional utility to the organisms to serve their needs, being ‘designed’ for that ‘purpose.’

So, design or purpose should not be strange words for biologists. However, as Darwin taught us, they can be explained by natural selection without involving a supernatural power – this was, in fact, the reason why some Christians at the time made reservations: Has God been left unemployed? Yet, we may agree with the famous Christian botanist Asa Gray, Darwin’s friend and promotor in America, who stated that evolution by natural selection is no less Divine because natural causes could explain it.

He did so because he was familiar with the Genesis account (see above) and the great philosopher Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) who on this basis made a distinction between God as the primary cause of everything that exists and nature itself as the secondary cause, acting at the same time and in quite different ways.

Asa Gray did not fall into the trap of confusing science with his Christian faith to speak of ‘Intelligent Design’ as a scientific theory. He kept science and the philosophical interpretation of science apart, so while the former is intended for biology classrooms and textbooks, the latter can be spoken of in churches and everywhere else. He maintained that evolution can be interpreted from a theistic as well as from an atheistic point of view: while the former has a belief in God as the primary cause, the latter does not.

But both sides agree that evolution is not just a random process and that natural selection is an anti-chance agent.

Breast Milk – and the Limits of Science

June 4, 2024. We are so impressed by science and its accomplishments – space stations, nanotechnology, robotic surgery, mapping of the genome, etc. – that we easily forget the limitations of science.

So, I want to pick up the thread from last time about the limitations of science and, again, use breast milk as an example, inspired by a feature article in a leading Danish newspaper this year (Politiken, January 3) by Professor of Health Per Sangild: “We all know that breast milk is the best option for babies but we do not know actually why it is so. It is too complex to analyze the many thousands of proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, and signaling substances that interact with each other and which together are responsible for the well-documented protective effects of breast milk and breastfeeding.”

He concludes about science: “So, there is considerably more that we do not know anything about than what we do know – although our knowledge is fortunately increasing. But every time we discover new phenomena, several new questions follow, which are unanswered. If one drew our collective expertise as a circle, around us is an even larger circle. The distance between them represents what we do not know, but which we ‘believe’ something about. And this distance does not get smaller the more we know – it grows the more questions we can formulate.”

What is needed is humility and Socratic wisdom: We are only as wise as our awareness of our ignorance. As previously stated, a partial explanation of why science is limited is found in our sensory organs. We are not like bumblebees that can detect flowers’ electrical fields. And luckily our bodies are not aware of the 100 trillion (10¹⁴⁾ neutrinos that pass through our bodies at the speed of light every second, the most abundant particles in the universe having a mass, some of them dating back to the Big Bang.

So, science itself puts limitations on our cognition and experience. First of all, there is a vast field outside the scope of science: Moral and aesthetic judgments, how to use our knowledge, and conclusions about the supernatural. Questions that deal with supernatural explanations are, by definition, beyond the realm of nature – and hence also beyond the realm of what can be studied by science. Thus, using the accomplishments of science as an argument against God is irrelevant.

Rather than a self-sufficient know-all attitude, humility and the acknowledgment of ignorance are closer to a religious understanding of the world and the awe-inspiring power of nature – as long as we will never be able to even explain the benefits of babies’ first foods.

Do Science and Religion Belong to Two Separate Compartments?

May 27, 2024. Most religious scientists, such as Christian biologists, do not consciously involve God when teaching science, leading a discussion, or preparing in the lab. Though I can only speak for myself, I guess it is so.

   And they do not think of science when taking part in a religious ceremony such as attending church. So, do science and religion belong to two separate compartments?  

   This reminds me of a headline in a newspaper some years ago: “Faith and science can be reconciled as long as they are separate.”

   There is much truth in this. Science investigates the natural world, while religion deals with the spiritual and supernatural – hence the two can be complementary. They deal with different realms of human experience. In particular, the way they deal with the same things is different, comparable to the two halves of our brain, as we discussed earlier. For an overview, see Science and religion – Christian Biologists on our homepage.

   Yet, we should not be too quick to separate science and religion. There are striking interfaces: Both deal with life, nature, purpose, origins, suffering, death, etc. We should distinguish between the different approaches to reality but not separate them from each other.

   So, let me propose a different statement: “Faith and science can be reconciled as long as we remember to distinguish between them.”

   They should not be put into two hermetically sealed boxes, which is not even possible for the Christian scientist. As the famous chemist and devout Methodist Charles Coulson emphasized: »For it is to assert that you can plant some hedge in the country of the mind to mark the boundary where a transfer of authority takes place … It presupposes a dichotomy of existence which would be tolerable if no scientist were ever a Christian, and no Christian ever a scientist, but which becomes intolerable while there is one single person owning both allegiances.«

   There is only one truth after all, as Pope John Paul II stated in his encyclical letter ‘Fides et Ratio’: “Revelation renders this unity certain, showing that the God of creation is also the God of salvation history.”

   Both science and religion could thus benefit from a dialogue and even an integration. This is exactly the idea of the present forum. Some down-to-earth questions could be: How could science benefit from this dialogue? How could theology and the believers benefit from this dialogue? Could it make the Christian testimony more easily grasped or relevant to modern people?

Biology and the Sacred

May 20, 2024. At first glance, these two words seem at odds with each other. Are we not used to consider biological science conformed to a materialistic and reductionist view? 

   It depends on the level of observation. A biochemist uses a spectrophotometer to quantify the concentration of biomolecules, and a microbiologist the microscope to study cells – but these levels or instruments will be of no use to an ethologist, studying animal behavior, and an ecologist studying ecosystems.

   And what about social scientists studying human cultures or even theologians studying religious faith? The natural world may be seen as a hierarchy of levels of complexity, and we have to accept the different scientific approaches to reality. Atoms and molecules are not more real than cells, cells are not more real than organs, and organs are not more real than human persons.

   Biology has a lot to do with the sacred. Throughout history, the study of nature has led naturalists and biologists to believe in the existence of God, his power, order, and beauty. 

   As far as we can trace back, at least for the last 200.000 years, humans have practiced religion and believed in an afterlife. In biological terms, humans are religious animals. Faith and spirituality seem to have a survival value.

   Even human anatomy has testified to the relevance of the sacred. Psychiatrist and neuroscience researcher Iain McGilchrist has reminded us that both halves of our brain are involved more or less in the same things, but the way they approach things is very different: While the left hemisphere has an analytical approach, studying parts, aiming to grasp and control life through rules, paragraphs, maps, and machines – the right hemisphere approaches reality with the whole picture, human relations, stories, emotions, art, values, meaning, and the sacred.

    So, materialism and reductionism are not consequences of biological science but of our interpretation of it. Taking a holistic perspective of biology leads to the idea of the sacred.   

   In one of his thought-provoking videos, ‘A Holistic Response to Cultural Decline’, McGilchrist claims: “Unless we rediscover the sacred, we will never avoid the downfall, the destruction of our civilization.”

Do Christians Care Enough about the Climate Crisis?

May 11, 2024. Last year was a year of climate disaster in Africa. Thousands of people lost their lives, while another 35 million were affected by torrential rains, flooding, intense heatwaves, and persistent drought conditions.  

   Researchers believe human-induced climate change, such as the droughts in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya, was to blame for increasing the probability and intensity of this extreme weather.

   Do we as Christians care enough about the climate crisis? Many Christian organizations care a lot about the environment. But a report published by the Pew Research Center on November 17, 2022, shows a somewhat different picture regarding Americans.

   While a solid majority of Christians and large numbers of people identifying with other religious traditions here consider the Earth sacred and believe God gave humans a duty to care for it, highly religious Americans (regularly attending religious services and consider religion very important in their lives) are far less likely (41 percent) than other U.S. adults (72 percent) to express concern about warming temperatures around the globe.

   And whereas 70 percent of other U.S. adults find that the Earth is getting warmer because of human activity, only 39 percent of highly religious people think the same. Yet, there may be different figures among the Christian denominations and ethnic groups.

   As Rebecca Copeland, a theologian from Boston University, has pointed out (The Brink, August 15, 2023), Christian theology and Church life tend to focus on human beings and human salvation and neglect everything else. Have we forgotten that Genesis 1 repeatedly says that creation is very good and that we are called to be responsible stewards of the Earth? Also, the Qur’an says that the true servants of God are those who walk on the Earth humbly.

   It is not so that those Americans deny that climate change is a problem, only that there are bigger problems than that. However, as Copeland states, the point is that there is no issue that you can be concerned about that the environment is not part of.

   Another argument says that the effects of global warming will appear in the distant future or in faraway places. Yet, as Christians, we have the great advantage of being connected to churches and congregations all over the world. Let us listen to our brothers and sisters in Africa and Asia and support those politicians and parties in our countries that help fight the climate crisis. By the way, when was the last time you heard a sermon on our responsibility to care for God’s creation?

Respect for Unborn Human Life

May 6, 2024. In my country, a new legislation has just been passed, allowing for abortion – meaning the voluntary termination of the life of a human fetus or embryo – to take place until the end of gestational week 18. Formerly, the time limit was 12 weeks, although exemptions were easily granted in cases of fetal disabilities. Besides, 15-17-year-old teenagers do not need to ask their parents.

   As a Christian, considering the value and dignity of human life, I feel intensely uncomfortable with abortion as a solution to anything. I do not think that this is the place for discussing legislation in the different countries we are living in, so I will restrict myself to a few biological remarks about human life and fetal development, hoping that those facts will not be forgotten in the public debate.

   In a scientific view, it is beyond any doubt that a human being, like all other sexual beings, starts its life as a fertilized egg and that this zygote belongs to the species Homo sapiens and is endowed with a unique genetic composition. However, it is not clear when this human life will also become a person, meaning that biology alone cannot protect human dignity. The scientific fact is that the brain is not completely developed until young adulthood.     

   So, we are left with two positions. The first is that personhood begins at fertilization and is inherent in a human being at all stages of development. A human being does not become a person at a particular stage of biological development, just as the stages of the fetus do not describe development into a human person. Therefore, a human being must be respected as a person from the very start of its existence. This is the Catholic position, also shared by many, if not most, other Christians.

   A secular view that arrives at the same conclusion is: Simply due to the virtue of the potentiality that the embryo has to develop the characteristics associated with personhood, the embryo has value and thus deserves all the rights and protection that are normally afforded to persons.

   The second position is that personhood and dignity are achieved sometime after fertilization, established at some stage of embryonic or fetal development such as implantation, gastrulation, the appearance of all organs, or at some stage of brain development, as mentioned above. This implies that not all human beings are human persons, and not all human beings have moral status, or, at the very least some will be of lower status. This ‘gradual’ view of human dignity, in its consequences, will not be different from the eugenics practiced by the Nazis.

   Nevertheless, the view that human babies are only valued according to their stage of development (and whether they are wanted or not) is shared by most people today and is reflected in the different kinds of legislation, whether it be an abortion limit of 6, 12, 18 weeks, or even higher. Already at gestational week 6, the embryo has formed, now 4 weeks of age. Most organs have started to develop such as the heart, liver, and lungs, and two weeks later the first electrical brain activity can be measured. At week 12 of pregnancy, the fetus, now 10 weeks old, looks rather much like a newborn, only it is about 6 cm, and it may be sucking its thumb. Almost all organs are completely formed, even fingers and toes are visible, the heartbeat can be picked up, the kidneys produce urine, etc. At 18 weeks, 16 weeks old, now 14 cm, it can even hear its mother’s heartbeat.

   The pure gradual view is now turning against itself: an abortion at this stage is monstrous. In fact, any violation of unborn human life is against the God-given Natural Law or conscience, embedded in human nature – the right to life is a basic human right – and respecting this life cannot be canceled out by any particular culture or government laws. So, most women will do their very best to protect their baby at any gestational week. And, if not, they will feel bad about undertaking an abortion. Many will have their mental health affected and be looked down upon, so they will rarely talk about it in future. As it has been said: God always forgives, humans sometimes forgive, but nature never forgives.

Opening of the Debate

April 30, 2024. Let me start this debate: Why is it that so many famous scientists throughout history have been committed Christians – yet we often meet with people who say that they cannot believe in God, referring to science as their argument?

   The Scientific Revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries was permeated with a Christian worldview, and nearly all its leaders were devout Christians such as Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Pascal, Boyle, and Newton, all famous scientists in their fields.

   There were famous Christian biologists, too, playing a big role in this Revolution, such as Francesco Redi and Niels Steensen, up to this day followed by names like Gregor Mendel, Louis Pasteur, Francis Collins, and Jane Goodall.

   Of course, believing in God or not does not depend on a lot of smart people holding that view. Yet, at least we confirm that many great biologists have been people of faith, and they are still here. So, why is it that people often associate ‘biological science’ with ‘disbelief in God’?