LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2016, Page 229

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IV. THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS­­—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS

superior calling to anyone else’s: “Ours ... is a high and lonely destiny.”317 And
he has come to see that dumb animals are not as useful as human beings for
the experiment he is doing: “I wanted two children. You see I’m in the middle
of a great experiment. I’ve tried it on a guinea-pig and it seemed to work. But
then a guinea-pig can’t tell you anything. And you can’t explain to it how to
get back.”318
Uncle Andrew does not value Polly as a human being made in the image
of God but only because her ability to communicate helps his experiment.
When Digory rebukes him for sending Polly into a world that he could have
investigated for himself, Uncle Andrew’s response is revealing:
“Me? Me?..... A man at my time of life, and in my state of health,
to risk the shock and danger of being flung suddenly into a
different universe? .... Do you realize what you are saying?
Think what Another World means—you might meet anything—anything.”319
Lewis goes on to skewer the double standard that allows Uncle Andrew
to defend his own dignity and value while denying it to others. When Uncle
Andrew meets a more powerful person, Jadis of Charn (who becomes the
White Witch in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe), he does not appreciate
being reduced to her slave. As philosopher Immanuel Kant would argue, the
problem with the idea that a scientist has a special privilege to use others as
experimental material is that it cannot be universalized. The scientist would
not appreciate being used as material for another scientist’s experiment.
Lewis’s example is fictional, but there are many painfully real examples
of how such thinking has allowed horrific scientific abuses. One need only
think of the Nazi eugenic experiments under Adolph Hitler. Science’s noble
calling was corrupted and men of science rationalized their evil by characterizing it as routine and socially expedient. Such a grim historical episode is not
a condemnation of science by any means, but it is a cautionary reminder that
every person and every human enterprise is susceptible to the corruption of
sin.320
Another cautionary example of the danger of science separated from a
high regard for human dignity and value is the notorious Tuskegee syphilis
study of African-American men in the twentieth century (1932–1972). Patients
gave no consent to the experiment, which left them untreated for a deadly

317

C. S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew (New York: Harper Trophy, 1994), 21.

318

Ibid., 15–16.

319

Ibid., 25.

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disease, even after penicillin became available and could have provided treatment and cure. 321
Another example that is more contemporary (and also socially and politically controversial) is embryonic stem cell research. In such research, human
embryos—human beings in the earliest stage of human life—are not treated
as human beings or afforded the value of human life, but rather as a fitting
subject for scientific research and experimentation. While human knowledge
might be expanded in the process and some future suffering might be alleviated, such “research” cannot be morally sanctioned.322
One lesson that can be learned from these abuses of science is that science
is never an excuse to deny the humanity and dignity of another person. The
terms “subject” or “patient” must not be allowed to create the illusion that a
person made in the image of God is merely a constituent of an experiment
that will serve the interests of humanity as a collective or abstract entity.
We must resist the temptation to conflate a person who is sick (physically or
mentally) with an incidence of a sickness. Patients notice and appreciate caring
doctors who take them seriously as persons—persons who happen to have a
health condition—rather than treating them as “statistics” with a pattern of
symptoms.
The Christian concept of vocation is again helpful here, as it reminds us
that it is not our own interests but the interests of the neighbor that compel us
to service in and through our various vocations. In Jesus’ parable, the good
Samaritan did not view the robbery victim as a crime statistic or offer aid in
the hope of advancing his personal projects. Instead, he put the victim’s welfare first, and then used the results of the available medical science to serve
that person’s needs:
But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and
when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and
bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set
him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care
of him. (Luke 10:33-34)
So also the Christian who works in the sciences can see and understand
that Christian faith and love motivate a concerted emphasis on using his or
her abilities and skill for the well-being of human beings, who are created by
God and endowed with dignity from Him. Such a scientist will not give up
on the task of research and study, but will carry out his or her daily calling
within the moral parameters of biblical theology. So, for example, a Christian
medical researcher may indeed carry out stem cell research, but will choose to

321
James Jones, Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, New and Expanded ed. (New York:
The Free Press, 1993).

320

Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York:
Basic Books, 1986).

322
Cf. CTCR, Christian Faith and Human Beginnings: Christian Care and Pre-Implantation Human
Life (2005); available at http://www.lcms.org/Document.fdoc?src=lcm&id=353.

133

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study the possibilities presented by research on umbilical or adult stem cells
rather than embryonic stem cells.

Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe
whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them. Such trusting
obedience is valuable for survival: the analogue of steering by
the moon for a moth. But the flip-side of trusting obedience is
slavish gullibility. The inevitable by-product is vulnerability to
infection by mind viruses... [T]he truster has no way of distinguishing good advice from bad.323

As modern life becomes increasingly professionalized, regimented,
bureaucratic, and mediated by impersonal technology, it is important to consider whether we are losing contact with the real people that God has called
us to serve, and to be intentional about maintaining the genuine love, compassion, and concern for others that Christ embodies and commends. It is not
only scientists, but all of us, who suffer alienation from one another through
the proliferation of bureaucratic forms, the obsession with statistics, and the
distancing of technology. As God became a real man and dwelt among us,
speaking words of love and offering both physical and spiritual healing, we
must first and foremost minister to real people with our real presence for
their real good. We need to ask ourselves, “Am I helping someone today?
Or am I only adding data for a report that helps my career or maintains my
institution’s viability?” If Christ had taken the latter attitude, he might have
presented His Father with an impressive study of the state of human sin, but
done nothing to heal it. Thanks be to God that Christ so loved us that He came
in person, to bear our sins and take the punishment that we deserve, so that
we may approach the throne of grace in confidence (Heb. 4:16). This is the
pattern, putting the good of other people first, that we must emulate in
science and everywhere else.

5. Non-scientists
Science affects everyone in modern societies, not merely because it develops the technologies and treatments we all use, but because it has emerged
as a voice of cultural authority relevant to many of our most important decisions. However, this also creates a vulnerability for the non-scientist who is
exposed to a cacophony of politically and ideologically charged claims made
on behalf of science and, allegedly, with scientific approval or support.
One recommendation for non-scientists is that they learn discernment
when they hear reports in the popular science media, especially if they
overstate the degree of certainty possible in science, or if they are linked to
an ideological agenda. As is true of all human beings, scientists have many
non-scientific beliefs and may wish to use the cultural authority of science
to support those beliefs. In the process, sober scientific findings are typically
conjoined with controversial philosophical assumptions. For example, when
the New Atheists declare that supernatural religious belief can be explained
away, their background assumption is that religious belief is false. Thus, their
speculative naturalistic accounts of religious belief—appealing to a “God
spot” in the brain, or a “mind-virus,” etc.—seem plausible, despite the lack of
supporting data or serious testing.
As one example, consider New Atheist Richard Dawkins’s attempt to
explain away supernatural religious belief.

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Dawkins theorizes that religion can be understood “as a by-product
of normal psychological dispositions,”324 perhaps as “a by-product of the
irrationality mechanisms that were originally built into the brain by selection
for falling in love.”325 It is a useful form of self-deception because it enables
communities to cooperate under some shared goals and guidelines, thus
promoting survival.
One major problem for Dawkins’s argument is that he attempts to apply
a universal rule only selectively. If it is true that our brains are configured by
evolution to slavishly trust our elders, and that we have no way of distinguishing good advice from bad, then this would have to include the advice
of scientists, especially as they increasingly function as the elders of modern
technological societies. In other words, if Dawkins’s account of our brains is
correct, then we can have no good reason to believe it, since we are in no position to distinguish this truth from error.
A second and purely logical flaw in debunking accounts of religious
(or moral) ideas is exposed by C. S. Lewis in his essay “Bulverism.” Lewis
pointed out that offering an account which might “explain away” why
someone has a belief simply bypasses the question of whether the belief is
true. That question can only be settled by investigation of the world outside
people’s minds and brains. Before the skeptic can legitimately claim that
religious ideas derive from a tainted source, he must first show that they have
no supporting evidence, or provide more compelling evidence against them.
In other words, you must first show that a man is wrong before
you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to
assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract
his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining
how he became so silly.326
After all, no one would take seriously the idea that general relativity is
false because modern brain-scanning techniques have shown what is really
going on in a physicist’s brain when he uses the theory to make predictions
323

Dawkins, The God Delusion, 176.

324

Ibid., 177.

325

Ibid., 185.

326

C. S. Lewis, “Bulverism,” in God in the Dock, 2nd ed., Walter Hooper, ed., (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1970), 273.

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2016 Convention Workbook