Blasphemy in the Name of Science

 

Blasphemy: impious utterance or action concerning God or sacred things;

Theology. the crime of assuming to oneself the rights or qualities of God.

irreverent behavior toward anything held sacred, priceless, etc.: He uttered blasphemies against life itself.

I have come across the entity BioLogos before, but never really spent time on the site or looked into the background.  That is until one of my regular commenters, A Texas Libertarian (ATL), sent me an email….

What I knew of them: Christians who are comfortable with evolution.  From their “What We Believe” page:

We believe that God created the universe, the earth, and all life over billions of years.

We believe that the diversity and interrelation of all life on earth are best explained by the God-ordained process of evolution with common descent.

Now, this isn’t the part that I find blasphemous, or, if you prefer, it isn’t the blasphemy on which I intend to focus.  Yes, I believe the Bible – all of it – is inerrant and God’s word.  Does this mean that He intended for everything in the Bible to be understood in a historical and scientific manner, through the lens of the Enlightenment?  Hard to imagine, given the initial, pre-Enlightenment audience.  In any case, this understanding of creation isn’t really the point.

So, back to BioLogos and the blasphemy in the name of science.  ATL sent a couple of examples from the site:

Is the COVID-19 Vaccine a Miracle?, by Jim Stump (Vice President at BioLogos):

Miracles in the Bible were rare or extraordinary events, to be sure. But more than that, they were “signs and wonders” that pointed to the reality of the Kingdom of God.

So is the COVID vaccine a rare or extraordinary event that points to the reality of the Kingdom of God?

Yes, he says, the jab is a rare, extraordinary event to have been developed so quickly.  So, check “yes” for the first necessity for a miracle.  But does it also point to the reality of the Kingdom of God?  “I say yes!” says Mr. Stump.

And when we take the vaccine, we too are pointing to the Kingdom of God by protecting the most vulnerable in our communities.

Wow!  He doesn’t say how one person taking the jab protects others (nor has this been demonstrated by science or in the real world), but let’s read on.  Among other characteristics of the Kingdom of God, he offers that one such characteristic is healing the sick.  Of course, the jab is making sick the healthy, but this small deviation apparently is of no matter to Stump.  Further, I haven’t heard anyone claim that the jab “heals” the sick.  Give them time, I guess.  Maybe Stump is also a prophet.

So Francis Collins, Kizzmekia Corbett, Tony Fauci, and many others are giving us glimpses into the Kingdom of God through their scientific work that prevents millions of people from getting sick and dying.

This is quite contrary to the reality, as even those who have been jabbed are getting sick, passing along the virus, and dying.  Perhaps Stump should pray for the miracle of healing the blind – himself.  Returning to this idea of miracles – and let’s even pretend that this jab a miracle.  Does this suggest that it is from God, a sign of His Kingdom?  Not necessarily, at least not according to Jesus:

Matthew 24: 24 For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. 25 See, I have told you ahead of time.

That’s not all:

2 Thessalonians 2: 9 The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, 10 and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.

It gets worse:

11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie 12 and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.

Which reminds me of why smart people are so stupid.

So, just because it is a miracle doesn’t mean it is from God.  And if the test, offered by Stump, that the vaccine is protecting the most vulnerable, is his way of confirming that it is from God, well, we already know that this is a lie.  Therefore, it is a miracle of the false messiahs, false prophets, the lawless one.  It isn’t from God.

But there is more.  A second post sent by ATL, Should Pro-lifers be Pro-Vaccine?  This is part six of a nine-part Christians-should-get-the-jab series.  Each of the nine is worthy of rebuke, but let’s stick to this one – plus, I haven’t even touched on the best part of this whole saga, and I don’t want this post to run too long.

Curtis Chang tackles this question.  He is a theologian on the faculty of the Duke Divinity School and a Senior Fellow at Fuller Theological Seminary.  Chang offers that, yes, a pro-lifer should be pro vaccine, even if the following is true:

But it is quite possible – maybe even probable – that HEK 293 originated from an elective abortion.

For the sake of understanding the pro-life Christian’s worst fears, let’s assume this is the case.

Well, there is a worse fear… Jon Rappoport, quoting AnnaMaria Cardinalli:

“What we may not know follows. The most prominent cell line, called HEK 293, comes from an abortion performed in the 1970’s. It’s labeled 293 because that’s how many experimental attempts the researchers needed to get a working cell line. Therefore, though the abortion-to-experiment ratio is not precisely one-to-one, hundreds of abortions went into the project, even if they didn’t result in the working line.”

“HEK stands for human embryonic kidney. To harvest a viable embryonic kidney for this purpose, sufficiently healthy children old enough to have adequately-developed kidneys must be removed from the womb, alive, typically by cesarean section, and have their kidneys cut out. This must take place without anesthesia for the child, which [anesthesia] would lessen the viability of the organs. Instead of being held, rocked, and comforted in the time intervening between their birth and their death, they have organs cut out of them alive.”

So, there’s that.  Rappaport has a series of a half-dozen posts examining this issue, easily found at his website.

But, let’s say that Chang, who may not have been aware of this (but, then, one wonders why he is opining on abortions and the jab), might otherwise be on to something.  That it isn’t so bad, even if it was an elective abortion from a long time ago.  How does he give pro-life Christians a pass? 

Take a seat.  He says that the vaccine is the savior, the redeemer; it is Jesus Christ.

You think I am kidding?

Indeed, I suggest that the COVID vaccine can serve as an image of God’s redemption. Redemption is God’s ultimate answer to the problem of original sin. Redemption is taking something that originated in a wrongful state, and reworking that thing into something good. The Bible tells us that in his death and resurrection, Jesus redeemed human sin.

The jab redeems, just as Jesus redeems.

In other words, Adam’s original sin had an impact on us all. We are descendants of his spiritual cell line, so to speak. But the origins of that spiritual cell line, that began in death, is not the final verdict. The spiritual line of Adam has been reworked by Jesus. What began as a story of sin and death has been reworked into a story of forgiveness and life. That is what it means to be “made alive in Christ.” That is redemption.

Just as Adam is the aborted child who gave us the cell line, Jesus is the vaccine.  See how easy that is?  Do you believe I am stretching it?  Let’s see:

The idea that what began in death could be reworked into life is hard for the human mind to grasp. This is why we need images of redemption in the world. We need examples that can serve as metaphors of what Jesus accomplished, that show us, “Jesus’ redemption is kind of like that…”

Jesus’ redemption is kind of like the jab!  I prefer the metaphor of Tony Stark snapping his fingers and ridding the universe of Thanos.  Now, that saved lives, instead of aborting lives.

I propose that the COVID vaccine is an image of redemption. Yes, the vaccine may have a distant origin story in abortion. But that past has been reworked and redeemed into something that saves life. We can point to the vaccine and say, “Jesus redemption is kind of like that.”

Not yet clear enough?  That last sentence isn’t enough for you?  How about this?

And indeed, the production of a vaccine in less than a year is really a miracle. Something like this has never happened this quickly. I personally believe God’s redemptive power was present in the process.

Yes.  Let’s call the vaccine the miracle of salvation, God’s redemptive power in action.  Let’s also call this blasphemy in the name of (pseudo) science.

Another article at the site, Should Christians get vaccinated?, looks like it could have been written by the NIH; you have read all the same talking points at some dot gov website or heard them on your favorite mainstream news site, so no need to reiterate these here.  Instead, take a look at this picture from the article:

 

Why do I see hands that performed an abortion?

So, let’s get back to the NIH, the really fun part of this story.  Again, I thank ATL for pointing this out to me.  Guess who is the founder of BioLogos?

Francis Collins is one of the world’s leading scientists and geneticists, and the founder of BioLogos.

In 2008 he was appointed to his current role as Director of the National Institutes of Health, where he has been overseeing the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

And, now, we have come full circle….

Conclusion

Matthew 7: 15 “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles, are they? 17 So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 So then, you will know them by their fruits.