It is not quite clear if you meant to respond to me or to Mike here. If you did mean me, a few quick replies. We now have over 10,000 international social science studies demonstrating that family structure does overwhelming matter, especially for the well-being of children. Nothing comes close to the married heterosexual family unit when it comes to superior outcomes for children, and for couples, for individuals and society. In that sense it is not at all narrow, harsh or simplistic to argue for the two-parent family cemented by marriage.

Christians of all people should go along with God’s ideal for humanity, not various trendy social experiments. All this is not to suggest of course that other family structures do not need help. Single-parents, through no fault of their own, need all the help and assistance we can provide. But there is a huge difference between less than ideal family structures being accidently forced upon us (eg, through the death or desertion of a spouse) and the deliberate bringing into existence of such family structures (eg., deliberate single-parenting, lesbians or singles using IVF to have children, same-sex coupling, and so on).

So on both the social science level, and on the biblical level, Christians of all people should not be ashamed in the least to uphold the ideal of the two-parent family.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

Last night I was watching a documentry on the history of The Bloods and the Crips. Throughout this entire documentry the common theme that kept coming in for me was the lack of fathers in these guys lives. There was a moment where a hardenned member of the bloods who had prior spoke of the ability to push through the moral issue of murder began to break down as he talked about always wondering why his father never loved him and why he wasnt there for him. He spoke of being raised by other gang members on the streets and he was never tauhght about how to be a man.

There were striking statistics in this LA community. 80% of all the families were without a father and you see these mothers that are helpless to control their sons and daughters. I found it very interesting and thought I would share.

God bless you Bill

Benjamin Soleim

By law children in Amercia must have at least (at least) 20 vaccinations of drugs and chemicals before they are six months old. That’s a bit like doing a rebore and piston change on your car about 3 weeks after purchase to ensure its health. It does more harm than good. America despite all these vaccines now stands at number two in the so-called civilised world as having the highest infant mortality rate ever. With all those vaccines the children should be the healthiest but most vaccines are produced using green monkey’s or others and we can’t escape their DNA. So do we have a mark of the real beast of sorts? This alone has taken away the governance and power of both parents and as a result the death rate and maybe other afflictions is catastrophic.

The feminists have abortion on demand it’s their choice they say. If they are incapable of a more simple choice in the first place why do they deserve the choice of life and death over the child in the second? Fathers who contribute to a pregnancy should also consider their responsibilities or use protection or better still abstain but that would be hypocritical of me. However having said that even if a father is willing to take on the support of a child which in effect is at least 50% his he doesn’t get that choice. The child he has fathered can be murdered and he will lose a son or daughter without any recourse to his opinions or choice.

Give the man those very same choices and the cry would reverberate around the world. We as males are being outgunned and may very well be outlawed. It doesn’t take a Rhodes Scholar to see the evidence of too much power on one side of the gender bar and the resultant paganism developing in the chidlren. Remember it only takes one generation to make a pagan nation. As a side issue Why do we not have a minister for mens interests? Now that could be an option worth fighting for and might just bring some of these problems to light and balance the scales a little better.

Unlike us the evil one continues his work 24/7. Each new law granting so-called freedoms without restraint is a perpetual war against those that want to maintain some moral fabric in this world. In the scheme of things it is just a skirmish but as time goes by some of us accept it and each new generation thinks it’s normal. The man holds the seed of the next generation but to some we have just become a source. It is time we also fought for equality and to do that we need some political force to rein in the rampant feminist agenda.

Dennis Newland

A reminder that this post is on the evidence for the importance of fathers, not the biblical view of male-female relationships and questions of headship, or the age of the earth. Thus I want to get us back on track here.

Hoewever, since this is my website, and I am its moderator, I will exercise some editorial privilege here and offer a final word on some of these matters.

I contine to be concerned about Mike’s assertions and rhetoric. The furphy about literalism is of course just that – a furphy. No one worth his salt here denies the importance of interpreting scripture not only in its historical-grammatical setting, but also in its cultural and literary setting as well. Of course allowances always must be made for different genres, the use of metaphorical language, and so on. So this is just a red herring.

But I find time and time again that those who question a much more important issue – the authority of Scripture – are the ones to throw around lines about “literalism” and the like. This is not about hermeneutics so much as a more vital issue: Is the Bible authoritative in all that it has to say about matters of faith and practice or is it not? That is the crucial issue here.

With Mike’s various throw-away lines about literalism, outdated culture, and so on, I find much to be concerned about here in terms of whether Scripture is being taken seriously. But that is another debate and we will have to leave it at that.

So, I exercise my editorial rights by declaring that all further comments must be on the original post’s subject matter. Those who don’t like that are free to start their own websites and deal with all the headaches of moderation and editorial control!

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

And what incontrovertible evidence would that be? I would suggest that you read some of the articles on the Creation Magazine site before calling all evidence to the contrary of Genesis account of creation “incontrovertible”. Much of the ‘findings’ of modern science that you must be taking as ‘fact’ is based on assumptions, and history has proven that the more that we come to truly know as absolute fact, the more that science teaches us, the more it comes to prove the veracity of the Biblical history – it’s just that much of what we currently know is only partial or simply incorrect, just as concepts in the past which seemed to ‘prove’ the bible untrustworthy were later shown to be incorrect and built upon a lack of scientific understanding.

For someone who doesn’t like his doctrinal approach to be questioned and defends it by asking us not to ‘lecture’ you, you seem particularly dogmatic about your own views, which seem quite liberal, and would go against mainstream Christian doctrine in a number of areas.

Oh, and not to be picky, but I’m more than a bit confused by the last sentence. I thought that Jesus made it clear that His followers were *not* going to be esteemed by the world, in fact persecuted shunned and outcast, and secondly I never realised that we needed to prove God’s existence or the rightness of His word – I thought it was pretty plain that His Ways are higher and we are sort of expected to take both come to Him on the basis of faith, and also take His Word on faith. It sounds to me that unless it fits with your guidelines of what you can rationally believe then it isn’t so.

ps. quoting sections as you have from Deuteronomy & Proverbs to use as points about literal bible interpretation is questionable at the best of times given standard exegesis.

Garth Penglase

Unfortunately Mike has been deceived into believing there exists “incontrovertible” evidence that contradicts the biblical creation account. The reality is that because such events are past events, empirical science can neither prove nor disprove them. I have to also ask “how can Christianity regain its once high esteem in the world” when it is seen to be unwilling to take the Bible at face value and instead adopts convoluted and compromised explanations of origins?

Ewan McDonald, Victoria.

I thought you made your position pretty clear when you expressed concern about my previous response to Mansel and implied that I had “simply dismissed” the passages from Paul. If you weren’t promoting biblical literalism I would have expected some comment also about Mansel’s and John’s views.

Anyway, to get back on topic, I still believe that an authoritarian approach to marriage cannot be justified by deference to Paul. And my life experience informs me that marriages work best, and kids are less likely to be rebellious and violence-prone, where the partners share equal responsibility for parenting and homemaking.

Mike Robertson

But given that you are saying much the same as what I have been saying – that we need to understand the historical and cultural background as part of our exegesis and hermeneutics – why is that when I say this it comes across as being “personally lectured to”, yet it somehow does not when you say it? Indeed, I did not even declare my hand here as to how I stand on the issue.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch