Letter from the Pastor
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January 23, 2022“Follow the science” has been a phrase we have heard often over the past two years. Science has become the new religion, the new god in whom we must listen and show obedience. We are led to believe that science is the only certain knowledge and usurps all other forms of knowledge. However, science or experiential knowledge is very limited. If our only source of knowledge is what we experience, we wouldn’t know much.
Traditionally, there are three ways to the objective truth: philosophy (reason), theology (faith), and science (experience). When all three roads lead and agree to the same, we have attained the truth, if one contradicts the others, then we haven’t attained the truth and must still search for the truth.
“Follow the science”, like so many other slogans today, has become a political statement. Being similar to the attitude of many people toward religion, one picks and chooses when to “follow the science”. This past Saturday, and for the past 49 years with 62 million documented abortions performed, people of all ages, sex, religions and no religion gathered in Washington DC to march for life, to visit Congress and defend the science of life especially the life of the unborn.
So, let’s follow the science. The facts of science are clear: human life begins at the moment of fertilization. These facts are from credible science publications from neutral scientific authorities. Publications such as the textbook Essentials of Human Development: A Life-Span View, The Oxford Dictionary of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia, The Encyclopedia & Dictionary of Medicine, Nursing & Allied Health.
Embryology textbook Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology and Birth Defects, or a medical textbook
The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology.
The American Heritage Dictionary of Science, defines “life” as:
The form of existence that organisms like animals and plants have and that inorganic objects or organic dead bodies lack; animate existence, characterized by growth, reproduction, metabolism, and response to stimuli.
The four defining characteristics of life are all present during or soon after the fertilization of the egg. Obviously there is Growth: we all started as a single cell, look at us now! Then there is Reproduction: a single cell, which contains all the necessary information to produce an entire creature comprised of billions of cells grouped into countless cell types. The third characteristic of life is: Metabolism: the human embryo processes life sustaining chemical activity, or as the book states: “carboxylic acids pyruvate and lactate as its preferred energy substrates.” And finally, Response to stimuli: a “stimulus” is “any event or phenomenon, such as radiation, electrical potential, or addition of molecules that leads to excitation of a tissue or cell.” Experiments have found that human zygotes (A zygote, also known as a fertilized ovum or fertilized egg, is the union of a sperm cell and an egg cell. The zygote begins as a single cell but divides rapidly in the days following fertilization. The zygote's single cell contains all of the 46 necessary chromosomes, getting 23 from the sperm and 23 from the egg) respond to such stimulants.
In all sorts of scientific encyclopedia, dictionaries of medicine, textbooks for medicine state over and over again, when human life begins. It is no longer, (nor was it ever) a scientific question. A doctor couldn’t become a doctor without that knowledge. We all know that life begins at the moment of fertilization or conception, and the only one who knows it at that moment is God. Then about 4 or 5 weeks later, the mother knows, and then anyone she wishes to tell after that. And by that time, a new and distinct heart is beating.
So whether abortion is the killing of human life is not a question from science, it is “questioned” from a political or monetary view. Remember, abortion is a multi-billion dollar industry. The scientific facts of embryology, genetics, and molecular biology leave no doubt as to when each human life begins.
So we are allowing the murder of innocent life, because someone who is alive doesn’t want another person to live. So when will we really follow the science?
