What happens when humans try to play God? The recent bombing of a fertility clinic in Southern California by an "anti-natalist" – someone opposed to human reproduction – reveals a disturbing philosophy gaining traction. These individuals believe bringing children into the world is fundamentally wrong, with many advocating for the eventual extinction of humanity.
Behind this radical position lies a godless worldview where humans, not their Creator, determine the value of life. As Pastor Bob Fleischmann observes, "When people are godless, they become god themselves—they become the arbiters of right and wrong and who lives and who dies." This core insight connects seemingly disparate headlines we examine: from anti-natalism to a controversial Georgia case of a brain-dead pregnant woman kept on life support, to the miraculous development of a CRISPR-based treatment for an infant with a rare genetic disorder.
Media bias features prominently in our discussion, particularly regarding ProPublica winning a Pulitzer Prize for reporting that allegedly linked pro-life laws to negative health outcomes—reporting our panel argues contained significant factual errors. This raises crucial questions about journalism as advocacy versus objective truth-seeking, and the responsibility Christians bear in consuming and sharing information critically.
Throughout our conversation, the contrast becomes clear: worldviews centered on human autonomy inevitably create impossible burdens, placing responsibility for life-and-death decisions on individuals ill-equipped to bear them. Meanwhile, scientific breakthroughs like personalized genetic treatments demonstrate both human ingenuity and the temptation to cross ethical boundaries when God is removed from the equation.
Have you noticed how difficult ethical decisions become when detached from a biblical framework? Join us as we navigate these complex waters and discover how faith provides the compass we desperately need in today's moral landscape. Share your thoughts or questions at lifechallengesus or email podcast@christianliferesources.com.
SHOW NOTES:
Find strength and courage in your faith at this year’s FEARLESS FAITH Conference. Inspired by Joshua 1:9, “Be strong and courageous,” join us for presentations on navigating life’s storms, understanding God’s peace, and engaging in crucial conversations about euthanasia, anorexia, abortion, prenatal genetic testing, and more. Hear powerful journeys of faith through loss and hope. Don’t miss this empowering event! $50 in person or $40 virtual. Register now: https://christianliferesources.com/resources/events/2025-conference/
Find strength and courage in your faith at this year’s FEARLESS FAITH Conference. Inspired by Joshua 1:9, “Be strong and courageous,” join us Saturday, September 13, at Kettle Moraine Lutheran High School in Jackson, Wisconsin, for presentations on navigating life’s storms, understanding God’s peace, and engaging in crucial conversations about euthanasia, anorexia, abortion, prenatal genetic testing, and more. Hear powerful journeys of faith through loss and hope. Don’t miss this empowering event! $50 in person or $40 virtual. Register now: https://christianliferesources.com/resources/events/2025-conference/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
On today's episode….
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I think you have to remember that when people are
godless, they become godthemselves, they become the
arbiters of right and wrong andwho lives and who dies.
And so this fellow, in his zeal, just determined that there
were going to be deaths, whetherit was embryo deaths, people at
the clinic and ultimatelyhimself.
And you know, antinatalism is aconcern, but the bigger concern
(00:27):
is the anti-God, the notknowing about God, not knowing
about Christ, not knowing abouteternity.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
That becomes the issue and life resources.
People today face manyopportunities and struggles when
it comes to issues of life anddeath, marriage and family,
health and science.
We're here to bring a freshbiblical perspective to these
issues and more.
Join us now for Life Challenges.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Hi and welcome back.
I'm Krista Potratz and I'm heretoday with Pastors Bob
Fleischman and Jeff Samuelson,and today we have the June
current event episode that weare bringing to you, and I am
pretty excited about thisepisode.
I think we have a lot of funstuff to talk about here.
Interesting things in the news.
(01:26):
The first article I want tobring attention to is one that
you found, bob on this, I guessmaybe growing trend of
anti-natalism.
Can you give us a littleexplanation as to what that is?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
First of all, you pretty much get the idea that
any kind of crazy notion seemsto always be simmering out there
somewhere.
But when we had a bombing ofthe fertility clinic in Southern
California, it found out thatthe guy was called an
antinatalist, which means he'sagainst having children.
(02:03):
And I don't know if it was apendulum swing to the Elon Musk
pushing for more children, butit was basically a suicide
terrorist type event that hebombed a clinic and it looks
like they were able to save theembryos that were within the
clinic and stuff.
But it brought antinatalism tothe surface.
(02:26):
And so when you do a deep diveinto it and study it, there were
stories that had been done onit here and there in the past
but just never got attention.
Well, now it's got attentionand when I first read the story
it reminded me of the oldanti-population arguments that
we're going to outuse ourresources and so forth.
(02:48):
But with antinatalism you haveto understand their ultimate
goal is no one has children,period that in time the human
race ceases to exist.
They have a variety of kind oflike nuances to it, but like one
of the people said, you know, Idon't regret the child I have,
(03:14):
but I don't want more childrenand I don't want her to have any
children.
And of course we've beenconcerned about the whole
population explosion thing iskind of imploded now, and now
we're going to startexperiencing negative population
growth and that's going up as aconcern, and now you have a
group that's probably excitedabout it.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
Yeah, it's interesting that there seem to
be kind of two motives orstreams going through there.
One is the more environmentalkind of attitude of human beings
on this planet are a mistake,so we need fewer of them and
eventually none of them.
The other seems to be a bitmore a good word for it escapes
(03:54):
me, but they're taking more of acompassionate kind of view in
the sense of well, any child whocomes into the world is going
to have to face suffering, andthey didn't get a choice in that
, and it's just unfair for us toimpose that on anyone, that
they would come into a world anda life where they might
experience things less than joy,and therefore it's wrong for me
(04:19):
to make that decision for achild and therefore we shouldn't
be doing that anymore, which ofcourse ends up in exactly the
same place of no more children.
It's really very much a godlessworldview.
It presumes that there is nohigher power involved in
creating life really at anystage, and that means there's no
(04:42):
one who has authority over lifeand no one who gives life
meaning.
God is completely out of thepicture as far as they're
concerned, and so therefore, allpower, all agency, all
responsibility rests on you asan individual, because I'm the
one making the decisions aboutmy life, and I'm the only one
(05:02):
who can make a decision aboutwhether I bring more life into
the world.
The irony of that, of course,is that all that power and
responsibility you've taken awayfrom God, you end up putting on
yourself as a burden, becausenow, oh yeah, it's all on me.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Some of those people almost lamented that in a moment
of weakness we had a child.
You know, it was like they'recarrying it with them and yeah,
I like that analogy.
That's like seen as a burdenfor them.
It's a peculiar perspective butit's very consistent with kind
of the life ethic that's beengoing on.
(05:39):
You get to the point where youcan terminate unborn life.
You begin to, you know, evenfertility clinics and IVF and
all that kind of stuff.
You feel like you become themaster of not just your fate,
but kind of one of thecornerstones of the antinatalist
perspective is the poor childhas no voice in this.
(06:01):
You know, we somehow usurp thechild's authority by bringing
the child into existence.
It's kind of their mentalityand it becomes a little bit
circular.
Definitely godless fits intothe save the planet, the
environment type approach andassisted suicide, terminating
(06:21):
life, that's no longer worthliving.
I think it's always importantto remember on a lot of that
stuff Is that what seems, youknow, nutty?
Now Give it 10 years and thencome back and take a look.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
I think the interesting thing about the
article that you shared Was thatit was parents talking about it
, and I think they specificallygot a group of parents too that
felt this way about theirchildren and their children's
life and everything too.
Because I think sometimes, youknow, we associate okay people
(06:56):
like not wanting to have kids ornot maybe caring about the
planet as people that don't havekids or can't have kids or
something like that.
So to see a group of parentswho think, oh man, I really wish
I hadn't had a child.
Or they said, you know, in thearticle I mean the one lady said
(07:17):
, okay, it probably maybe isn'tthe worst thing in the whole
world if her daughter somedayhas children, but she would
really not ever want to be agrandparent.
We hear that and that justsounds so sad and I mean maybe
to us even kind of bizarre too.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
Yeah, and these parents in the article they talk
about how they're.
Oh, you know, I love my kids.
As much as they say that, howcan you imagine that those
children growing up, evenreaching adulthood and knowing
that their parents thought itwas a mistake that they existed
at all?
Speaker 1 (07:53):
And that their parents, too are telling them do
what you want, but man, Ireally don't want you to have
any children.
I mean, like that's kind of acrazy message too, I think.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
You know, about 40 years ago Wisconsin Public
Television had done a story onthese pregnancy counseling
centers and they came in withcameras hidden in a purse and
they came into one of ourcenters and fortunately the
counselor, everybody at thecenter was stellar.
I mean, everything was good,fortunately the counselor,
(08:26):
everybody at the center wasstellar.
I mean everything was good.
But in this PBS story thiswoman had her baby and so the
baby is bouncing on the knee ofthe grandma, the girl's mother,
and the reporter said well, nowthat you've got your
granddaughter it was agranddaughter, you know, you can
(08:53):
hold her.
Do you feel you know anydifferently about it?
No, I still think she shouldhave had an abortion and I
remember we were just all thevolunteer board at the time and
we all just kind of like lookedin amazement at it.
But that's what I thought ofwhen I was reading this article.
They act as if they care fortheir children and they want you
to think that they do, butfundamentally it was a mistake.
They didn't want to havechildren and I think maybe one
(09:16):
of the things that has to be onthe back of our minds is what
does this translate into?
If it's like I suggest and thatis what's a crazy idea today
becomes more mainstream in 10years.
We've got to ask ourselves whatdoes this start to look like in
10 years?
And first of all, I'm alwaysstunned over how they resort to
(09:37):
terrorist activities in order toaccomplish agenda.
I think you have to rememberthat when people are godless,
they become God themselves.
They become the arbiters ofright and wrong and who lives
and who dies.
And so this fellow, in his zeal, just determined that there
were going to be deaths, whetherit was embryo deaths, people at
(09:58):
the clinic and ultimatelyhimself.
And you know, antinatalism is aconcern, but the bigger concern
is the anti-God, the notknowing about God, not knowing
about Christ, not knowing abouteternity.
That becomes the issue.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Well, there is another interesting story that
has attracted, I think, a lot ofmainstream media attention too,
with a woman in Georgia who was, I guess, determined brain dead
and was pregnant that sheneeded to be on life support and
(10:38):
they had to try to save thebaby.
I think I summarized thatpretty well, but any additional
information there?
Speaker 4 (10:46):
Well, one of the news hooks for this is that there
I'm going to quote from the AParticle to make sure I get the
language right she's been onlife support for three months to
let the fetus grow enough to bedelivered a move Her family
says a hospital told them wasrequired under the state's
(11:06):
strict anti-abortion law.
And that's part of the newshook for a lot of the media that
this is because of theanti-abortion law that this is
happening, abortion law thatthis is happening.
One of the ironies, of course,is that when you get down deeper
into the story, you find outthat the family hasn't actually
asked for the mom to be takenoff of life support.
(11:30):
It's just like so what does thathave to do with anything, but
that's kind of their hook.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Yeah, I mean, I guess I too was thinking like oh okay
, is there some like legalbattle going on where the family
is trying to?
No, you know, the family wantsher to be on life support.
What they call legacy media issuch a very anti-life mindset.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
So that for them it means like next to nothing that
we're talking about an unbornchild here.
It's like some violation of aright, violation of autonomy use
of the body, of autonomy use ofthe body.
Now there's some deep roots.
You know that.
You know going back to, youknow the permission you give for
(12:23):
what can be done to your body.
You know after your death, youknow like they still like to ask
the family if you want to organdonate and that kind of stuff.
So they try to make a big dealout of the autonomy issues, the
right to privacy, all of thosekinds of things.
But really the story is youcould see how a Christian news
agency would flip this aroundwhere, for the sake of a life,
(12:46):
they're keeping a body.
You know working to bring thischild to the point that it can
live outside of the womb.
It sounds wonderful, it soundsnoble.
It has to be hard on the family.
I realize that it has to behard on the family.
I realize that.
But it's just a matter ofperspective.
And I'll tell you, especiallyin the last few years, I make it
(13:07):
a point to listen to differentkinds of media and you just see
how almost an agenda trumps thereal facts of the story.
Like you said, jeff, the waythat they hook you in makes it
sound like there's this biglegal battle going on and really
the battle is taking placewithin the reporters.
(13:28):
I mean, they're the ones whowant you to feel a certain way.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
Well, one of the interesting things about the
article this is a general rulewhen you're reading something
that deals with anything kind ofcontroversial, search for
what's not mentioned.
And the thing that's notmentioned at all in this article
and it's a pretty long one isthe father of the child.
It doesn't mention whether hehad a relationship with the mom,
if they were married, if thiswas just a kind of a, you know,
(14:00):
one-time thing and there's norelationship or whatever.
And it certainly doesn'tmention his attitude towards the
child, which I think you knowpersonally as a news reader,
would be something I'd reallywant to know about.
You know, does he want thischild, you know?
Is he happy about this or is heone of those guys who's like
well, I don't want thatresponsibility.
We also never even hear fromthe doctors or the hospital
(14:24):
because privacy laws keep themfrom commenting on the case.
So the only person that we'rereally hearing from is the
woman's mother speaking for thefamily, and I'm not saying
there's anything wrong in whatshe's saying or suggesting she's
lying or anything like that,but that's very limited sourcing
, really, for knowing what'sreally going on.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Well, and I think one of the lessons there is when
you begin to read with acritical eye, you recognize that
almost every news story to tosome degree is an editorial.
It reflects the opinion of thereporter or the writer and it's
going to have the flavor ofwhere they're coming from.
And what Jeff said is abrilliant point Keep an eye out
(15:10):
what is not in there.
If you were the reporter, whatare the things you would do?
I mean, there's certain familymembers that you would be
talking to and I think thechild's father would certainly
be like front of the line andnot interviewed at all, and
probably because he held anopinion contrary to what the
(15:30):
reporter wanted.
Because the reporter is tryingto emphasize now what do I think
is going on here?
I think this is Georgia.
I think chances are pretty good.
One of those doctors involvedwith this is not comfortable
ending the life of the unbornchild and I think the doctor
says you know we've got this lawand we got to follow it.
He invokes it.
You know, if you've worked inthese kinds of environments, you
(15:54):
know that sometimes the bias ofthe people involved the
decision makers, the medicalpeople they're the ones who will
take the action, because theycould have just as well have
said she's gone, we coulddisconnect the ventilator, we
could ignore the unborn child,but they didn't.
And I don't think it's becausethey were running scared.
(16:14):
That may have been theinterpretation by a disgruntled
nurse, a disgruntled doctor, butno, I think you know.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
The fact that Georgia has one of these laws tells you
the nature of the people livingdown there, that a lot of them
feel very strongly that unbornlife is a life of interesting
things, I think when the motherwent in to or was determined
(16:43):
brain dead that the child waseight weeks old, it was not very
far along point of view too, ifthe baby can continue growing.
I mean, we don't even know too.
Would we release this episodelike if the story will still be,
(17:04):
I mean even going on?
Speaker 3 (17:05):
and stuff too.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
I mean, the hope was that they could get the baby, I
think till August at least, whenthe baby would be possibly 22
weeks old, and then do aC-section for that.
But just you know, it's justinteresting from a medical and
scientific perspective if thiswill even just work, so to speak
(17:28):
.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
I mean there were near the end of the story when
they kind of talked to otherethicists and so forth.
One of them had said removingthe woman's mechanical
ventilation or other supportwould not constitute an abortion
.
Continued treatment is notlegally required.
So in other words, that's whatI'm saying is that someone's
(17:51):
making a story here that isn'treally there.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
I was kind of wondering that too.
Yeah, it isn't really there.
I was kind of wondering thattoo.
Like I mean, you know as muchas I too, personally, am for
life and you know againstabortion, I do wonder, like if
there is just okay, it's justtheir time to go, type of thing,
like is this, you know, becausethe sad reality is that there
(18:19):
are pregnant women that passaway and so does their child,
and is this just you know, asituation like that?
Speaker 2 (18:29):
We don't know, but I think you know from a Christian
ethical perspective we don't sayyou know the exception clause.
When we talk about abortion,the goal is always to preserve
life.
The goal isn't to pick yourfavorite life or anything like
that.
You pick the life that you cansave.
So your goal is to save thelife you can.
(18:54):
They cannot save the mother'slife in this one, and you know
I've been involved in some ofthese decisions with families.
It's pretty, pretty rare thatyou're in one of these type of
situations and I've beeninvolved with one or two of
these, you know, in the lastfour decades.
But it's pretty rare that themother has died.
(19:15):
But they want to sustain herlife to protect the child, and
the fact that they could do itis pretty remarkable in and of
itself.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yeah, Well, moving along, here we have another
article that was found from theWashington Post, and this one
was talking about, I believe,how they used CRISPR to make a
drug for a child, and, jeff, doyou want to maybe describe a
(19:45):
little bit of that?
Speaker 4 (19:47):
Well, the headline they put on it was how the Race
to Invent a Drug for One SickBaby Made Medical History.
And it focuses on a baby, kjMuldoon, and he was born in
Philadelphia and as soon as hewas born they discovered.
Well, shortly after he was born, they discovered that he had an
extremely rare and severegenetic disorder, which I'm not
(20:11):
going to try pronouncing, theyjust call it CPS1.
And so they said, okay, whatare we going to do?
Because in most cases, childrenwith this, they don't survive
past infancy.
But science, medical science,has advanced to such an extent
now that they saw an opportunityhere, an opportunity to put to
(20:33):
work all these things thatthey've learned about genetic
technology and CRISPR, whichthey use to kind of rewrite
genes on the fly, and all thisstuff.
And they said, well, maybe wecan create a drug that will
maybe not completely heal thechild but will fix him enough so
(20:55):
that he can have a more normallife.
And I'm sure, from the parent'spoint of view, it took a long
time, but it was remarkable.
It was within the space ofmonths that they got this thing
done.
They gave it to the little boyand he's improved dramatically,
you know, of course it remainsto be seen whether this is going
(21:19):
to last.
You know whether it's going tobe a permanent change.
You know whether there areother things that are going to
come along down the pike water.
But it's just amazing and youknow, if I had written the
article I would have had troubleleaving out, thank God.
Or you know, praise the Lordfor this, or you know, praise
the Lord for this.
But it's just quite amazingwhat they are able to do with
(21:40):
this technology, which in somany cases it's tempting to look
at it and just see the dangersof it.
But here it is being done forsomething really amazingly good.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
You know, part of the challenge of CRISPR is you need
to identify exactly what'shappening, what's going on in
DNA and which of thecombinations are being affected
directly.
And it is not simple.
I mean, if you remember that ittook years to map out the human
genome that they have to findin all of that very, very long
(22:12):
sequence of molecules.
They have to find in thereexactly where they do it.
And that's problem number one.
When you read the New EnglandJournal of Medical article on
this, that was problem numberone is to correctly identify,
because oftentimes when you'vegot a problem, there's more at
work than just that problem, andso but that was kind of like
(22:34):
incredible event number one wasthat they were able to really
focus in on it.
Then, with CRISPR, they're ableto go in and actually do a
repair, and I think you're goingto find stories about this
person, this child, 20 yearsfrom now.
I mean, I think that they hitit and because part of the
fantastic part of the story isthat they were able to do it,
(22:58):
for it only affects I believeone out of every 1.3 million
births a year are affected bythis and yet they were able to
find it there and they feel thatthe technique they used to
identify the problem area wasthe big deal that can be used
now in other areas.
And now this is all great news,and I'd like, like Jeff said
(23:23):
someplace in the article, wewould have written thank God.
But the flip side is, leave itto sinful people to take a
really, really cool and goodthing and really, really mess it
up.
And so imagine now that you'vegot this ability, and so it's
only a matter of time before yourefine it.
And I'll put in my little plugfor AI.
(23:44):
I think AI is going to beincredibly helpful for finding
more cures like this in otherareas.
But watch, and so you know, ifyou remember the old, old TV
series, the Six Million Dollarman, you know we can make him
better, we can make him stronger, we can make him faster.
That's almost more temptationthan any of us can handle.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
I mean, it's just a little tweak, just a little
stood out for me is that, asawesome as this was, there was,
it seemed, to me at least, likean underlying pessimism with it
or just like this like, oh, wedid this all for one sick child,
we used all these labor hourslike just for this one child.
(24:34):
It didn't necessarily come outand say it in a very negative
way in the article, but it justwas something that I kind of was
kind of picked up or rubbed mea little bit the wrong way.
Speaker 4 (24:47):
Yeah, it's natural to read this and ask well, how
much was this one baby's lifeworth?
To a certain extent, asChristians, we say we say, well,
you can't put a price tag on it.
But there's also the practicalmatter of stewardship.
It's, like you know, spendingmillions upon millions of
dollars.
It is interesting thatsomewhere in toward the end of
(25:09):
the article there was um just astatement of from one of the
doctors or scientists involveslike yeah, you know, we, we
can't put a price tag on this,which is a way of saying it's so
astronomically high we can'teven try to pin it down.
Um, yeah, if you got to ask, wecan't help you.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
Um, and you know it's .
It's just you know so much, youknow, and you say, well, yeah,
that's just way out of line withwith the benefit that you're,
you're getting here, you know,because that money could be used
to help so many other people.
But, of course, from thescientific point of view, you
prove the concept with this onecase and that means you've got,
(25:48):
you know, the building blocksfor the rest of the cases.
And as with so many other typesof technology, you know, we see
it even, just you know, withplain electronics, the hobbyist
millionaire buys, you know,spends $15,000.
On today, 15 years from now,the guy on the street in a lower
(26:09):
class neighborhood is going tobe getting for $100, because
just, with time, things areperfected, things become cheaper
and that's the way this willprobably go.
And it's just, you know, reallyinteresting.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
It's exactly that, though.
It was a proof of concept andit was the breakthrough that
they were looking for in CRISPR,because they've done a lot.
You know, they've been tryingto use it in macular
degeneration and heart issuesand so forth, but this it shows
that it really does work.
So, plus two, it'll beinteresting, in light of all the
budget cuts and that kind ofstuff going on the big splash
(26:46):
you're going to see with storieslike this, because there is
going to still be money spent onresearch and the fact that you
can say we're no longer justexperimenting now with CRISPR.
We actually have proof ofconcept, it does work, and
that's going to be a big deal.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
I anticipate it's going to get a lot more
attention in the years to come.
Well, we have a few moreminutes here to talk about the
ProPublica winning a PulitzerPrize.
Jeff, can you explain thisstory to us?
Speaker 4 (27:19):
Yeah, this is the kind of thing that I think most
of us probably don't pay toomuch attention to in the first
place, which is the awarding ofthe Pulitzer Prizes.
We pretty much only payattention if it's our own local
paper or something the one thatwe read all the time or if it's
a story that matters to us.
But this one drew a lot ofattention in pro-life circles
(27:42):
because the Pulitzer was awardedto the I think it's just an
online journal ProPublica for aseries they did last year,
basically linking states withstrong pro-life laws to negative
outcomes, including death, forwomen who had complications with
(28:02):
their pregnancies.
For anybody who is very muchpro-abortion, they were great
articles because they proved thepoint these laws are really bad
for women.
The problem was that thearticles were just plain wrong.
They connected things thatweren't connected.
They cherry picked their factsand ignored the things that were
(28:25):
not conducive to their theoryor whatever, but they came to
the conclusion that they had setout to come to and that people
wanted them to come to, whichwas that these states with
pro-life laws are anti-woman.
Is that these states withpro-life laws are anti-woman?
And even though they say theycare about pregnant women and
their children.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
They're really not Otherwise they wouldn't have
these kinds of laws, one of thethings the media likes to
portray itself as, and correctme on this if I'm wrong, jeff,
but they call themselves thefourth arm, right of government.
The fourth- yeah.
Yeah, and they tend to.
First of all, you got toremember, it's a title they take
(29:03):
for themselves, so I'm alwayssuspicious of that.
But again, you know, I thinkit's important to remember that
to some degree it's advocacy.
And I've just been watching aseries on Amazon Prime on the
Civil War and Abraham Lincolnand how Lincoln leveraged
friendly media to make a casefor him to get ready to release
(29:28):
the Emancipation Proclamation,that kind of stuff.
But it was understanding themedia not so much as an
objective source of authority onall news but as a vehicle of
advocacy.
And I think what happened iswell, this happened the other
day.
I was listening to NPR and JakeTappert was on and he was
(29:50):
talking about the book heco-wrote on President Biden's
cognitive skills during the tailend of his presidency.
And it was on NPR.
Of course NPR is feeling beatup by the Trump administration
and so forth, but when he getsto the end, tapper goes.
It further exposed us in thelegacy media to credibility
(30:11):
issues.
Because, you know, theconservative media recognized
those cognitive problems werethere.
Conservative media recognizedthose cognitive problems were
there and they were reporting onit and we weren't.
And why is that?
Because media is advocacy.
It is not objective.
When I watch news, I watch fourdifferent news sources a day.
I bounce around between ABCNews, fox News, newsmax, and
(30:37):
then the one I've lately havegrown to kind of like is News
Nation and it kind of ranks ifyou ever look at those tables,
who's kind of in the middle andwhat I like about it is that
they aren't looking for everyopportunity to throw the
president under the bus but atthe same time they're not
looking for every opportunity tovenerate him.
When I was watching some of theother conservative ones, you'd
(31:00):
think the guy should have beenmade the pope.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
You know I mean the way they carried on.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Well.
That's, I think, what was goingon here.
It reminds me of what happensin Hollywood with the Academy
Awards.
You know a lot of people, youknow a big deal of the Academy
Awards.
You do realize that the Academy, the people who make and star
in the movies, they're voting ontheir own product.
This isn't this objective thing.
(31:24):
So a lot of times you knowyou'll get a movie that really
advocates, you know, for a gayposition on things, or something
like that, and then all of asudden that wins.
It doesn't even have to be thatgood of a movie, but the point
is is that they're advocatingsomething.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
That's what I think was going on here, Like we got
to, you know, get theinformation to the people.
And I mean it was just.
It was amusing to me that therewas that kind of approach to it
or just that type of, I guess,defense towards it that, oh, we
just needed to, you know, getthis information out quickly as
(32:15):
possible, because people neededto know how bad it had gotten.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
Yeah, Now the old standard for journalism in
America, which wasn't reallyfollowed universally for as long
a period as we would like.
But the old standard was it'sokay if you have a slant Certain
newspapers for sure, this wasthe Republican paper, this was
the Democratic paper, thingslike that.
(32:40):
But even if you wrote with aslant, you were supposed to make
sure that everything you wrotewas true.
Maybe you'd leave some thingsout, maybe you'd present things
in such a way to make this guylook better or that woman to
look worse, or whatever, but youat least felt an obligation to
make sure that the things youreported as fact were actually
(33:02):
fact.
That's what we're not seeingcases like this story, the one
the Pulitzer.
There are far too many peoplewho have a bias, whether they're
in journalism or politics orwherever they come across a
story, and it's just too good tocheck.
You know, oh boy, this saysjust the right thing.
(33:26):
You know, I always wanted tobelieve this was true of that
person.
So I'm going to go with thisarticle without bothering to
find out.
Okay, is that actuallyreasonable?
Is that the properinterpretation of the events?
All those kinds of things?
I'll just say this is somethingthat Christians should not only
be on the lookout for in themedia that they consume, they
(33:47):
also really need to be on thelookout for it in terms of the
media that they forward, thatthey pass on to other people.
Because as Christians, we're inthe business of truth and we
want to make sure that anythingwe're passing on, whether it's
religious or not, is somethingthat is true.
(34:07):
And if we're not confident ofthat because we know the sources
, then we should be a lot morecautious.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was always
giving credit for making thestatement.
You know that you're entitledto your opinion but you're not
entitled to your own facts, andthat actually was a phrase
coined by a newspaper.
It was an editorial written bya newspaper and it's important
to remember.
That is that everyone's got abias.
(34:37):
We have a bias, and you need tobe honest about your own bias
and call it out.
But at the same time, like eventhe way Krista explained how
they kind of you know, just kindof said well, you know, we're
trying to meet deadlines, we'retrying to get things done.
Well then, you just kind ofviolated your oath as a news
source, I think, because youstill you can't publish fiction
(35:01):
and present it like fact.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Yeah Well, thank you both.
It makes me excited for whatthe month of June will hold, as
we report on our current eventsnext month for July.
But thank you to all of ourlisteners for joining us and if
you have any questions on any ofthese, please reach out to us
at lifechallengesus.
If you enjoyed this podcast,please share it with people and
(35:26):
we look forward to having youback next time.
Bye.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Life
Challenges podcast fromChristian Life Resources.
Please consider subscribing tothis podcast, giving us a review
wherever you access it andsharing it with friends.
We're sure you have questionson today's topic or other life
issues.
Our goal is to help you throughthese tough topics and we want
(35:51):
you to know we're here to help.
You can submit your questions,as well as comments or
suggestions for future episodes,at lifechallengesus or email us
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In addition to the podcasts, weinclude other valuable
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(36:14):
For more about our parentorganization, please visit
christLifeResourcescom.
May God give you wisdom, love,strength and peace in Christ for
every life challenge.
On today's episode….
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I think you have to remember that when people are
godless, they become godthemselves, they become the
arbiters of right and wrong andwho lives and who dies.
And so this fellow, in his zeal, just determined that there
were going to be deaths, whetherit was embryo deaths, people at
the clinic and ultimatelyhimself.
And you know, antinatalism is aconcern, but the bigger concern
(00:27):
is the anti-God, the notknowing about God, not knowing
about Christ, not knowing abouteternity.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
That becomes the issue and life resources.
People today face manyopportunities and struggles when
it comes to issues of life anddeath, marriage and family,
health and science.
We're here to bring a freshbiblical perspective to these
issues and more.
Join us now for Life Challenges.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Hi and welcome back.
I'm Krista Potratz and I'm heretoday with Pastors Bob
Fleischman and Jeff Samuelson,and today we have the June
current event episode that weare bringing to you, and I am
pretty excited about thisepisode.
I think we have a lot of funstuff to talk about here.
Interesting things in the news.
(01:26):
The first article I want tobring attention to is one that
you found, bob on this, I guessmaybe growing trend of
anti-natalism.
Can you give us a littleexplanation as to what that is?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
First of all, you pretty much get the idea that
any kind of crazy notion seemsto always be simmering out there
somewhere.
But when we had a bombing ofthe fertility clinic in Southern
California, it found out thatthe guy was called an
antinatalist, which means he'sagainst having children.
(02:03):
And I don't know if it was apendulum swing to the Elon Musk
pushing for more children, butit was basically a suicide
terrorist type event that hebombed a clinic and it looks
like they were able to save theembryos that were within the
clinic and stuff.
But it brought antinatalism tothe surface.
(02:26):
And so when you do a deep diveinto it and study it, there were
stories that had been done onit here and there in the past
but just never got attention.
Well, now it's got attentionand when I first read the story
it reminded me of the oldanti-population arguments that
we're going to outuse ourresources and so forth.
(02:48):
But with antinatalism you haveto understand their ultimate
goal is no one has children,period that in time the human
race ceases to exist.
They have a variety of kind oflike nuances to it, but like one
of the people said, you know, Idon't regret the child I have,
(03:14):
but I don't want more childrenand I don't want her to have any
children.
And of course we've beenconcerned about the whole
population explosion thing iskind of imploded now, and now
we're going to startexperiencing negative population
growth and that's going up as aconcern, and now you have a
group that's probably excitedabout it.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
Yeah, it's interesting that there seem to
be kind of two motives orstreams going through there.
One is the more environmentalkind of attitude of human beings
on this planet are a mistake,so we need fewer of them and
eventually none of them.
The other seems to be a bitmore a good word for it escapes
(03:54):
me, but they're taking more of acompassionate kind of view in
the sense of well, any child whocomes into the world is going
to have to face suffering, andthey didn't get a choice in that
, and it's just unfair for us toimpose that on anyone, that
they would come into a world anda life where they might
experience things less than joy,and therefore it's wrong for me
(04:19):
to make that decision for achild and therefore we shouldn't
be doing that anymore, which ofcourse ends up in exactly the
same place of no more children.
It's really very much a godlessworldview.
It presumes that there is nohigher power involved in
creating life really at anystage, and that means there's no
(04:42):
one who has authority over lifeand no one who gives life
meaning.
God is completely out of thepicture as far as they're
concerned, and so therefore, allpower, all agency, all
responsibility rests on you asan individual, because I'm the
one making the decisions aboutmy life, and I'm the only one
(05:02):
who can make a decision aboutwhether I bring more life into
the world.
The irony of that, of course,is that all that power and
responsibility you've taken awayfrom God, you end up putting on
yourself as a burden, becausenow, oh yeah, it's all on me.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Some of those people almost lamented that in a moment
of weakness we had a child.
You know, it was like they'recarrying it with them and yeah,
I like that analogy.
That's like seen as a burdenfor them.
It's a peculiar perspective butit's very consistent with kind
of the life ethic that's beengoing on.
(05:39):
You get to the point where youcan terminate unborn life.
You begin to, you know, evenfertility clinics and IVF and
all that kind of stuff.
You feel like you become themaster of not just your fate,
but kind of one of thecornerstones of the antinatalist
perspective is the poor childhas no voice in this.
(06:01):
You know, we somehow usurp thechild's authority by bringing
the child into existence.
It's kind of their mentalityand it becomes a little bit
circular.
Definitely godless fits intothe save the planet, the
environment type approach andassisted suicide, terminating
(06:21):
life, that's no longer worthliving.
I think it's always importantto remember on a lot of that
stuff Is that what seems, youknow, nutty?
Now Give it 10 years and thencome back and take a look.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
I think the interesting thing about the
article that you shared Was thatit was parents talking about it
, and I think they specificallygot a group of parents too that
felt this way about theirchildren and their children's
life and everything too.
Because I think sometimes, youknow, we associate okay people
(06:56):
like not wanting to have kids ornot maybe caring about the
planet as people that don't havekids or can't have kids or
something like that.
So to see a group of parentswho think, oh man, I really wish
I hadn't had a child.
Or they said, you know, in thearticle I mean the one lady said
(07:17):
, okay, it probably maybe isn'tthe worst thing in the whole
world if her daughter somedayhas children, but she would
really not ever want to be agrandparent.
We hear that and that justsounds so sad and I mean maybe
to us even kind of bizarre too.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
Yeah, and these parents in the article they talk
about how they're.
Oh, you know, I love my kids.
As much as they say that, howcan you imagine that those
children growing up, evenreaching adulthood and knowing
that their parents thought itwas a mistake that they existed
at all?
Speaker 1 (07:53):
And that their parents, too are telling them do
what you want, but man, Ireally don't want you to have
any children.
I mean, like that's kind of acrazy message too, I think.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
You know, about 40 years ago Wisconsin Public
Television had done a story onthese pregnancy counseling
centers and they came in withcameras hidden in a purse and
they came into one of ourcenters and fortunately the
counselor, everybody at thecenter was stellar.
I mean, everything was good,fortunately the counselor,
(08:26):
everybody at the center wasstellar.
I mean everything was good.
But in this PBS story thiswoman had her baby and so the
baby is bouncing on the knee ofthe grandma, the girl's mother,
and the reporter said well, nowthat you've got your
granddaughter it was agranddaughter, you know, you can
(08:53):
hold her.
Do you feel you know anydifferently about it?
No, I still think she shouldhave had an abortion and I
remember we were just all thevolunteer board at the time and
we all just kind of like lookedin amazement at it.
But that's what I thought ofwhen I was reading this article.
They act as if they care fortheir children and they want you
to think that they do, butfundamentally it was a mistake.
They didn't want to havechildren and I think maybe one
(09:16):
of the things that has to be onthe back of our minds is what
does this translate into?
If it's like I suggest and thatis what's a crazy idea today
becomes more mainstream in 10years.
We've got to ask ourselves whatdoes this start to look like in
10 years?
And first of all, I'm alwaysstunned over how they resort to
(09:37):
terrorist activities in order toaccomplish agenda.
I think you have to rememberthat when people are godless,
they become God themselves.
They become the arbiters ofright and wrong and who lives
and who dies.
And so this fellow, in his zeal, just determined that there
were going to be deaths, whetherit was embryo deaths, people at
(09:58):
the clinic and ultimatelyhimself.
And you know, antinatalism is aconcern, but the bigger concern
is the anti-God, the notknowing about God, not knowing
about Christ, not knowing abouteternity.
That becomes the issue.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Well, there is another interesting story that
has attracted, I think, a lot ofmainstream media attention too,
with a woman in Georgia who was, I guess, determined brain dead
and was pregnant that sheneeded to be on life support and
(10:38):
they had to try to save thebaby.
I think I summarized thatpretty well, but any additional
information there?
Speaker 4 (10:46):
Well, one of the news hooks for this is that there
I'm going to quote from the AParticle to make sure I get the
language right she's been onlife support for three months to
let the fetus grow enough to bedelivered a move Her family
says a hospital told them wasrequired under the state's
(11:06):
strict anti-abortion law.
And that's part of the newshook for a lot of the media that
this is because of theanti-abortion law that this is
happening, abortion law thatthis is happening.
One of the ironies, of course,is that when you get down deeper
into the story, you find outthat the family hasn't actually
asked for the mom to be takenoff of life support.
(11:30):
It's just like so what does thathave to do with anything, but
that's kind of their hook.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Yeah, I mean, I guess I too was thinking like oh okay
, is there some like legalbattle going on where the family
is trying to?
No, you know, the family wantsher to be on life support.
What they call legacy media issuch a very anti-life mindset.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
So that for them it means like next to nothing that
we're talking about an unbornchild here.
It's like some violation of aright, violation of autonomy use
of the body, of autonomy use ofthe body.
Now there's some deep roots.
You know that.
You know going back to, youknow the permission you give for
(12:23):
what can be done to your body.
You know after your death, youknow like they still like to ask
the family if you want to organdonate and that kind of stuff.
So they try to make a big dealout of the autonomy issues, the
right to privacy, all of thosekinds of things.
But really the story is youcould see how a Christian news
agency would flip this aroundwhere, for the sake of a life,
(12:46):
they're keeping a body.
You know working to bring thischild to the point that it can
live outside of the womb.
It sounds wonderful, it soundsnoble.
It has to be hard on the family.
I realize that it has to behard on the family.
I realize that.
But it's just a matter ofperspective.
And I'll tell you, especiallyin the last few years, I make it
(13:07):
a point to listen to differentkinds of media and you just see
how almost an agenda trumps thereal facts of the story.
Like you said, jeff, the waythat they hook you in makes it
sound like there's this biglegal battle going on and really
the battle is taking placewithin the reporters.
(13:28):
I mean, they're the ones whowant you to feel a certain way.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
Well, one of the interesting things about the
article this is a general rulewhen you're reading something
that deals with anything kind ofcontroversial, search for
what's not mentioned.
And the thing that's notmentioned at all in this article
and it's a pretty long one isthe father of the child.
It doesn't mention whether hehad a relationship with the mom,
if they were married, if thiswas just a kind of a, you know,
(14:00):
one-time thing and there's norelationship or whatever.
And it certainly doesn'tmention his attitude towards the
child, which I think you knowpersonally as a news reader,
would be something I'd reallywant to know about.
You know, does he want thischild, you know?
Is he happy about this or is heone of those guys who's like
well, I don't want thatresponsibility.
We also never even hear fromthe doctors or the hospital
(14:24):
because privacy laws keep themfrom commenting on the case.
So the only person that we'rereally hearing from is the
woman's mother speaking for thefamily, and I'm not saying
there's anything wrong in whatshe's saying or suggesting she's
lying or anything like that,but that's very limited sourcing
, really, for knowing what'sreally going on.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Well, and I think one of the lessons there is when
you begin to read with acritical eye, you recognize that
almost every news story to tosome degree is an editorial.
It reflects the opinion of thereporter or the writer and it's
going to have the flavor ofwhere they're coming from.
And what Jeff said is abrilliant point Keep an eye out
(15:10):
what is not in there.
If you were the reporter, whatare the things you would do?
I mean, there's certain familymembers that you would be
talking to and I think thechild's father would certainly
be like front of the line andnot interviewed at all, and
probably because he held anopinion contrary to what the
(15:30):
reporter wanted.
Because the reporter is tryingto emphasize now what do I think
is going on here?
I think this is Georgia.
I think chances are pretty good.
One of those doctors involvedwith this is not comfortable
ending the life of the unbornchild and I think the doctor
says you know we've got this lawand we got to follow it.
He invokes it.
You know, if you've worked inthese kinds of environments, you
(15:54):
know that sometimes the bias ofthe people involved the
decision makers, the medicalpeople they're the ones who will
take the action, because theycould have just as well have
said she's gone, we coulddisconnect the ventilator, we
could ignore the unborn child,but they didn't.
And I don't think it's becausethey were running scared.
(16:14):
That may have been theinterpretation by a disgruntled
nurse, a disgruntled doctor, butno, I think you know.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
The fact that Georgia has one of these laws tells you
the nature of the people livingdown there, that a lot of them
feel very strongly that unbornlife is a life of interesting
things, I think when the motherwent in to or was determined
(16:43):
brain dead that the child waseight weeks old, it was not very
far along point of view too, ifthe baby can continue growing.
I mean, we don't even know too.
Would we release this episodelike if the story will still be,
(17:04):
I mean even going on?
Speaker 3 (17:05):
and stuff too.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
I mean, the hope was that they could get the baby, I
think till August at least, whenthe baby would be possibly 22
weeks old, and then do aC-section for that.
But just you know, it's justinteresting from a medical and
scientific perspective if thiswill even just work, so to speak
(17:28):
.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
I mean there were near the end of the story when
they kind of talked to otherethicists and so forth.
One of them had said removingthe woman's mechanical
ventilation or other supportwould not constitute an abortion
.
Continued treatment is notlegally required.
So in other words, that's whatI'm saying is that someone's
(17:51):
making a story here that isn'treally there.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
I was kind of wondering that too.
Yeah, it isn't really there.
I was kind of wondering thattoo.
Like I mean, you know as muchas I too, personally, am for
life and you know againstabortion, I do wonder, like if
there is just okay, it's justtheir time to go, type of thing,
like is this, you know, becausethe sad reality is that there
(18:19):
are pregnant women that passaway and so does their child,
and is this just you know, asituation like that?
Speaker 2 (18:29):
We don't know, but I think you know from a Christian
ethical perspective we don't sayyou know the exception clause.
When we talk about abortion,the goal is always to preserve
life.
The goal isn't to pick yourfavorite life or anything like
that.
You pick the life that you cansave.
So your goal is to save thelife you can.
(18:54):
They cannot save the mother'slife in this one, and you know
I've been involved in some ofthese decisions with families.
It's pretty, pretty rare thatyou're in one of these type of
situations and I've beeninvolved with one or two of
these, you know, in the lastfour decades.
But it's pretty rare that themother has died.
(19:15):
But they want to sustain herlife to protect the child, and
the fact that they could do itis pretty remarkable in and of
itself.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yeah, Well, moving along, here we have another
article that was found from theWashington Post, and this one
was talking about, I believe,how they used CRISPR to make a
drug for a child, and, jeff, doyou want to maybe describe a
(19:45):
little bit of that?
Speaker 4 (19:47):
Well, the headline they put on it was how the Race
to Invent a Drug for One SickBaby Made Medical History.
And it focuses on a baby, kjMuldoon, and he was born in
Philadelphia and as soon as hewas born they discovered.
Well, shortly after he was born, they discovered that he had an
extremely rare and severegenetic disorder, which I'm not
(20:11):
going to try pronouncing, theyjust call it CPS1.
And so they said, okay, whatare we going to do?
Because in most cases, childrenwith this, they don't survive
past infancy.
But science, medical science,has advanced to such an extent
now that they saw an opportunityhere, an opportunity to put to
(20:33):
work all these things thatthey've learned about genetic
technology and CRISPR, whichthey use to kind of rewrite
genes on the fly, and all thisstuff.
And they said, well, maybe wecan create a drug that will
maybe not completely heal thechild but will fix him enough so
(20:55):
that he can have a more normallife.
And I'm sure, from the parent'spoint of view, it took a long
time, but it was remarkable.
It was within the space ofmonths that they got this thing
done.
They gave it to the little boyand he's improved dramatically,
you know, of course it remainsto be seen whether this is going
(21:19):
to last.
You know whether it's going tobe a permanent change.
You know whether there areother things that are going to
come along down the pike water.
But it's just amazing and youknow, if I had written the
article I would have had troubleleaving out, thank God.
Or you know, praise the Lordfor this, or you know, praise
the Lord for this.
But it's just quite amazingwhat they are able to do with
(21:40):
this technology, which in somany cases it's tempting to look
at it and just see the dangersof it.
But here it is being done forsomething really amazingly good.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
You know, part of the challenge of CRISPR is you need
to identify exactly what'shappening, what's going on in
DNA and which of thecombinations are being affected
directly.
And it is not simple.
I mean, if you remember that ittook years to map out the human
genome that they have to findin all of that very, very long
(22:12):
sequence of molecules.
They have to find in thereexactly where they do it.
And that's problem number one.
When you read the New EnglandJournal of Medical article on
this, that was problem numberone is to correctly identify,
because oftentimes when you'vegot a problem, there's more at
work than just that problem, andso but that was kind of like
(22:34):
incredible event number one wasthat they were able to really
focus in on it.
Then, with CRISPR, they're ableto go in and actually do a
repair, and I think you're goingto find stories about this
person, this child, 20 yearsfrom now.
I mean, I think that they hitit and because part of the
fantastic part of the story isthat they were able to do it,
(22:58):
for it only affects I believeone out of every 1.3 million
births a year are affected bythis and yet they were able to
find it there and they feel thatthe technique they used to
identify the problem area wasthe big deal that can be used
now in other areas.
And now this is all great news,and I'd like, like Jeff said
(23:23):
someplace in the article, wewould have written thank God.
But the flip side is, leave itto sinful people to take a
really, really cool and goodthing and really, really mess it
up.
And so imagine now that you'vegot this ability, and so it's
only a matter of time before yourefine it.
And I'll put in my little plugfor AI.
(23:44):
I think AI is going to beincredibly helpful for finding
more cures like this in otherareas.
But watch, and so you know, ifyou remember the old, old TV
series, the Six Million Dollarman, you know we can make him
better, we can make him stronger, we can make him faster.
That's almost more temptationthan any of us can handle.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
I mean, it's just a little tweak, just a little
stood out for me is that, asawesome as this was, there was,
it seemed, to me at least, likean underlying pessimism with it
or just like this like, oh, wedid this all for one sick child,
we used all these labor hourslike just for this one child.
(24:34):
It didn't necessarily come outand say it in a very negative
way in the article, but it justwas something that I kind of was
kind of picked up or rubbed mea little bit the wrong way.
Speaker 4 (24:47):
Yeah, it's natural to read this and ask well, how
much was this one baby's lifeworth?
To a certain extent, asChristians, we say we say, well,
you can't put a price tag on it.
But there's also the practicalmatter of stewardship.
It's, like you know, spendingmillions upon millions of
dollars.
It is interesting thatsomewhere in toward the end of
(25:09):
the article there was um just astatement of from one of the
doctors or scientists involveslike yeah, you know, we, we
can't put a price tag on this,which is a way of saying it's so
astronomically high we can'teven try to pin it down.
Um, yeah, if you got to ask, wecan't help you.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
Um, and you know it's .
It's just you know so much, youknow, and you say, well, yeah,
that's just way out of line withwith the benefit that you're,
you're getting here, you know,because that money could be used
to help so many other people.
But, of course, from thescientific point of view, you
prove the concept with this onecase and that means you've got,
(25:48):
you know, the building blocksfor the rest of the cases.
And as with so many other typesof technology, you know, we see
it even, just you know, withplain electronics, the hobbyist
millionaire buys, you know,spends $15,000.
On today, 15 years from now,the guy on the street in a lower
(26:09):
class neighborhood is going tobe getting for $100, because
just, with time, things areperfected, things become cheaper
and that's the way this willprobably go.
And it's just, you know, reallyinteresting.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
It's exactly that, though.
It was a proof of concept andit was the breakthrough that
they were looking for in CRISPR,because they've done a lot.
You know, they've been tryingto use it in macular
degeneration and heart issuesand so forth, but this it shows
that it really does work.
So, plus two, it'll beinteresting, in light of all the
budget cuts and that kind ofstuff going on the big splash
(26:46):
you're going to see with storieslike this, because there is
going to still be money spent onresearch and the fact that you
can say we're no longer justexperimenting now with CRISPR.
We actually have proof ofconcept, it does work, and
that's going to be a big deal.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
I anticipate it's going to get a lot more
attention in the years to come.
Well, we have a few moreminutes here to talk about the
ProPublica winning a PulitzerPrize.
Jeff, can you explain thisstory to us?
Speaker 4 (27:19):
Yeah, this is the kind of thing that I think most
of us probably don't pay toomuch attention to in the first
place, which is the awarding ofthe Pulitzer Prizes.
We pretty much only payattention if it's our own local
paper or something the one thatwe read all the time or if it's
a story that matters to us.
But this one drew a lot ofattention in pro-life circles
(27:42):
because the Pulitzer was awardedto the I think it's just an
online journal ProPublica for aseries they did last year,
basically linking states withstrong pro-life laws to negative
outcomes, including death, forwomen who had complications with
(28:02):
their pregnancies.
For anybody who is very muchpro-abortion, they were great
articles because they proved thepoint these laws are really bad
for women.
The problem was that thearticles were just plain wrong.
They connected things thatweren't connected.
They cherry picked their factsand ignored the things that were
(28:25):
not conducive to their theoryor whatever, but they came to
the conclusion that they had setout to come to and that people
wanted them to come to, whichwas that these states with
pro-life laws are anti-woman.
Is that these states withpro-life laws are anti-woman?
And even though they say theycare about pregnant women and
their children.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
They're really not Otherwise they wouldn't have
these kinds of laws, one of thethings the media likes to
portray itself as, and correctme on this if I'm wrong, jeff,
but they call themselves thefourth arm, right of government.
The fourth- yeah.
Yeah, and they tend to.
First of all, you got toremember, it's a title they take
(29:03):
for themselves, so I'm alwayssuspicious of that.
But again, you know, I thinkit's important to remember that
to some degree it's advocacy.
And I've just been watching aseries on Amazon Prime on the
Civil War and Abraham Lincolnand how Lincoln leveraged
friendly media to make a casefor him to get ready to release
(29:28):
the Emancipation Proclamation,that kind of stuff.
But it was understanding themedia not so much as an
objective source of authority onall news but as a vehicle of
advocacy.
And I think what happened iswell, this happened the other
day.
I was listening to NPR and JakeTappert was on and he was
(29:50):
talking about the book heco-wrote on President Biden's
cognitive skills during the tailend of his presidency.
And it was on NPR.
Of course NPR is feeling beatup by the Trump administration
and so forth, but when he getsto the end, tapper goes.
It further exposed us in thelegacy media to credibility
(30:11):
issues.
Because, you know, theconservative media recognized
those cognitive problems werethere.
Conservative media recognizedthose cognitive problems were
there and they were reporting onit and we weren't.
And why is that?
Because media is advocacy.
It is not objective.
When I watch news, I watch fourdifferent news sources a day.
I bounce around between ABCNews, fox News, newsmax, and
(30:37):
then the one I've lately havegrown to kind of like is News
Nation and it kind of ranks ifyou ever look at those tables,
who's kind of in the middle andwhat I like about it is that
they aren't looking for everyopportunity to throw the
president under the bus but atthe same time they're not
looking for every opportunity tovenerate him.
When I was watching some of theother conservative ones, you'd
(31:00):
think the guy should have beenmade the pope.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
You know I mean the way they carried on.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Well.
That's, I think, what was goingon here.
It reminds me of what happensin Hollywood with the Academy
Awards.
You know a lot of people, youknow a big deal of the Academy
Awards.
You do realize that the Academy, the people who make and star
in the movies, they're voting ontheir own product.
This isn't this objective thing.
(31:24):
So a lot of times you knowyou'll get a movie that really
advocates, you know, for a gayposition on things, or something
like that, and then all of asudden that wins.
It doesn't even have to be thatgood of a movie, but the point
is is that they're advocatingsomething.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
That's what I think was going on here, Like we got
to, you know, get theinformation to the people.
And I mean it was just.
It was amusing to me that therewas that kind of approach to it
or just that type of, I guess,defense towards it that, oh, we
just needed to, you know, getthis information out quickly as
(32:15):
possible, because people neededto know how bad it had gotten.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
Yeah, Now the old standard for journalism in
America, which wasn't reallyfollowed universally for as long
a period as we would like.
But the old standard was it'sokay if you have a slant Certain
newspapers for sure, this wasthe Republican paper, this was
the Democratic paper, thingslike that.
(32:40):
But even if you wrote with aslant, you were supposed to make
sure that everything you wrotewas true.
Maybe you'd leave some thingsout, maybe you'd present things
in such a way to make this guylook better or that woman to
look worse, or whatever, but youat least felt an obligation to
make sure that the things youreported as fact were actually
(33:02):
fact.
That's what we're not seeingcases like this story, the one
the Pulitzer.
There are far too many peoplewho have a bias, whether they're
in journalism or politics orwherever they come across a
story, and it's just too good tocheck.
You know, oh boy, this saysjust the right thing.
(33:26):
You know, I always wanted tobelieve this was true of that
person.
So I'm going to go with thisarticle without bothering to
find out.
Okay, is that actuallyreasonable?
Is that the properinterpretation of the events?
All those kinds of things?
I'll just say this is somethingthat Christians should not only
be on the lookout for in themedia that they consume, they
(33:47):
also really need to be on thelookout for it in terms of the
media that they forward, thatthey pass on to other people.
Because as Christians, we're inthe business of truth and we
want to make sure that anythingwe're passing on, whether it's
religious or not, is somethingthat is true.
(34:07):
And if we're not confident ofthat because we know the sources
, then we should be a lot morecautious.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was always
giving credit for making thestatement.
You know that you're entitledto your opinion but you're not
entitled to your own facts, andthat actually was a phrase
coined by a newspaper.
It was an editorial written bya newspaper and it's important
to remember.
That is that everyone's got abias.
(34:37):
We have a bias, and you need tobe honest about your own bias
and call it out.
But at the same time, like eventhe way Krista explained how
they kind of you know, just kindof said well, you know, we're
trying to meet deadlines, we'retrying to get things done.
Well then, you just kind ofviolated your oath as a news
source, I think, because youstill you can't publish fiction
(35:01):
and present it like fact.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Yeah Well, thank you both.
It makes me excited for whatthe month of June will hold, as
we report on our current eventsnext month for July.
But thank you to all of ourlisteners for joining us and if
you have any questions on any ofthese, please reach out to us
at lifechallengesus.
If you enjoyed this podcast,please share it with people and
(35:26):
we look forward to having youback next time.
Bye.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Life
Challenges podcast fromChristian Life Resources.
Please consider subscribing tothis podcast, giving us a review
wherever you access it andsharing it with friends.
We're sure you have questionson today's topic or other life
issues.
Our goal is to help you throughthese tough topics and we want
(35:51):
you to know we're here to help.
You can submit your questions,as well as comments or
suggestions for future episodes,at lifechallengesus or email us
at podcast atchristianliferesourcescom.
In addition to the podcasts, weinclude other valuable
information at lifechallengesus,so be sure to check it out.
(36:14):
For more about our parentorganization, please visit
christLifeResourcescom.
May God give you wisdom, love,strength and peace in Christ for
every life challenge.
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