Eric Metaxas on “Producing” Children from Skin Cells

[audio:http://www.breakpoint.org/images/content/breakpoint/audio/2013/100713_BP.mp3]

Nearly a year ago scientists in Japan developed a process by which mice offspring were “produced” in a lab using little more than skin cells obtained from the mice.

The discovery has many wondering if it is possible for scientists to “produce” biological children for human beings by a similar process, but it also carries troubling implications for bioethics.

Eric Metaxas comments on the ethical questions this discovery raises,

“Well, I think C. S. Lewis would have responded with another question: ‘Is there anything that should be forbidden?’ That’s precisely the challenge he issued in his famous essay, ‘The Abolition of Man,’ and to which academics of his day had no answer….As part of mankind’s conquest of nature, Lewis argued, we’ve conquered our own belief in moral absolutes. After all, the materialist would say, such beliefs are also part of nature. They’ve evolved to help us survive. But now that they’ve outlived their usefulness, we’re free to rise above them. The problem, as Lewis pointed out, is that we have no higher level to which we can rise. When we give up saying, ‘I ought,’ the only thing we can still say is, ‘I want.'”

You can read a full transcript of Metaxas’ comments at BreakPoint.

Action Committee Responds to Marijuana Proposal

The following press release was received from the Family Council Action Committee based in Little Rock.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, October 4, 2013

On Thursday afternoon Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel certified a group trying to legalize so-called “medical” marijuana to begin gathering petition signatures to place their measure on the November 2014 ballot. On Friday Family Council Action Committee President Jerry Cox released a statement.

“Ultimately, this is about legalizing marijuana,” Cox said. “This proposal is very similar to the one Arkansans voted down last November, and it still has a lot of the same problems: It’s vaguely-worded; marijuana stores will open in Arkansas; and people will still be allowed to grow their own marijuana.”

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31 Years Ago Today: Congress Declares 1983 “Year of the Bible”

Beinecke-gutenburg-bible

On October 4, 1982, the 97th Congress of the United States passed Senate Joint Resolution 165 (co-sponsored by, among others, Arkansas Senator David Pryor) authorizing then-President Ronald Reagan to declare 1983 “The Year of the Bible.”

The resolution begins by saying, “Whereas the Bible, the Word of God, has made a unique contribution in shaping the United States as a distinctive and blessed nation and people,” and goes on to declare “that renewing our knowledge of and faith in God through Holy Scripture can strengthen us as a nation and a people.”

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