Scientism is not merely wrong, but dangerous. This is the claim I want to make to conclude our series on scientism. It probably seems like an aggressive claim; perhaps it is. But it’s also right there in the subtitle of JP Moreland’s book: Learning to Respond to a Dangerous Ideology. … Read More
The Limitations of Science in the Abortion Debate: Why You Need Philosophy
One of our not-so-secret missions at ERI is to help pro-life advocates to think well about philosophy as it relates to the abortion debate. The problem with scientism is it says that philosophy isn’t a valid way to reach truth or discover facts. According to this position, our philosophical case … Read More
Scientism: the Self-Refuting Argument that has Contaminated Abortion Dialogue
Scientism is the belief that truth, insofar as it exists, is only (or best) discovered by using the scientific method. In other words, scientism says that fields like biology, chemistry, and physics are superior ways (or the only ways) of knowing what is true and that philosophy or theology can … Read More
Arguing From Equality: The Personhood of Human Embryos
When I teach pro-life apologetics, I usually explain that there are two primary disagreements between the pro-life side and the pro-choice side and then a bunch of distracting arguments that are about other issues that do not address abortion ethics. Most pro-life people are familiar with the first primary disagreement. … Read More
Is Abortion 14 Times Safer Than Childbirth?
Editor’s Note 9/8/21: The author has added a paragraph and made minor edits under the section “Manipulated Statistics” to clarify the relationship between the CDC and RG data sets. Pregnancy and childbirth are not easy. Besides the effects on the mother’s body, her career plans, her relationships, and her identity, … Read More
“Abortion is Healthcare”: A Misogynistic Non-Argument
Did you know that if you repeat the same phrase over and over on social media, it will suddenly manifest as an articulate syllogism? You may need to use capitalization or the universal “hands clapping” emoji which converts your unfounded 👏 assertions 👏 into 👏 sound 👏 arguments that are … Read More
Overpopulation Can’t Justify Abortion
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes. It might surprise you to know that tech giants Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX) and Jack Ma (Alibaba) think the world is heading towards a population collapse. It would certainly surprise Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who gave a speech on her Instagram account earlier this year about how … Read More
Abortion and Moral Culpability
One of our best tools in conversations about abortion is Trot out a Toddler (TOAT). It’s really helpful because it communicates how we need to think about unborn humans if we admit that they’re persons. Once you accept the conclusion that the fetal human is a valuable person like us, … Read More
Refuting Pro-Choice Memes
Editor’s Note 9/8/21: More of these memes are circulating since the Texas heartbeat law went into effect on Sept. 1. We have updated the article with a few new photos and two new categories of pro-choice memes in order to bring it up to date with current events. Your social media … Read More
Personal Experiences Don’t Prove Anything
Estimated reading time: 10 minutes. Most pro-life people have at least one major goal in common: we want to see abortion become illegal. So why do we disagree so much about how we should get there? Primarily, it’s that we have different beliefs about what is effective. If we all … Read More