The story is from last December:

"Moths drink the tears of sleeping birds"
A species of moth drinks tears from the eyes of sleeping birds using a fearsome proboscis shaped like a harpoon, scientists have revealed. … The team does not yet know whether the insect spits out an anaesthetic to dull the irritation. They also want to investigate whether, like their counterparts elsewhere, the Madagascan tear-drinkers are all males who get most of their nutrition from the tears.

Now, I'm not opposed to evolution per se, as IMHO theistic evolution is at least a possibility, even though there are numerous problems with macroevolution (for example, abiogenesis (generation of life from non-life), the fossil record, the evolution of sex, and evolutionary morality). But if macroevolution is true (few would contest microevolution) then I would tend to think that whatever explanation could be given for how these tear-drinking moths evolved would have to amount to a miracle. It is at least, as one blog commented, "weird", although I truly fail to see how "only evolution could produce" this phenomenon; unless a person's worldview considered evolution the only option, that is.

If a respected British medical school has its way, British doctors will be routinely killing babies born with serious disabilities. The Times of London reported in a page one story this weekend on the shocking proposal from Britain's respected Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology. The College has called on doctors to consider permitting infanticide in the case of seriously disabled newborn babies. According to the paper, geneticists and medical ethicists supported the proposal – as did the mother of a severely disabled child – while a prominent children's doctor described it as "social engineering." (Source: NewsMax)

The issue is, of course, who decides who lives and dies under such a proposal? What qualifies as "severely disabled"? Steve Wagner of STR gives his thoughts on the issue here: Ob/Gyns in England Want Debate about Killing Newborns. As one commenter notes, "I'm curious who gets to decide what an appropriate level of "pain, distress, and discomfort" is necessary to make a baby a candidate for killing. What if the family is just poor? There's a certain level of distress and discomfort that come from that."

I was thinking of this issue and that comment as I read the following news story today, found on Google News Canada's front page:

A 16-year-old girl is facing a charge of second-degree murder as well as six other criminal charges after her newborn boy's body was found in a wood north of Montreal. The girl gave birth to the baby over the weekend at the home of her mother's boyfriend in Ste-Sophie, about 50 km north of Montreal. (Source: Ottawa Sun)

Under the proposal of legalized infanticide, would the above act be considered a crime? The idea that inconvenient babies should be killed is immoral and should not be tolerated; here is an issue in which tolerance is not acceptable.

Further reading: Greg Koukl's articles regarding abortion

Lee Strobel gives his answer the question: "Do You Think Intelligent Design Should Be Taught in School?" See the video linked below for his answer. I think it's reasonable:

Video: Do You Think Intelligent Design Should Be Taught in School? (1:33)

This is one of several videos based on Strobel's book Case for a Creator on his site. All are fairly short and viewable online. I'd prefer he'd put them up on YouTube or something so that people could post them on their own sites. Oh well. Still interesting stuff, as well as the rest of Strobel's site.

The Cosmological Argument (also known as the Kalam Argument) goes something like this:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.

This is a deductive argument, so if we agree that the two premises (1 & 2) are true, then the conclusion (3) is also true. (Which also implies God as the cause for the universe's existence.)

Let's grant that (1) is true; it seems intuitively true that things do not come into existence without a cause. Premise (2) is the major cause for debate. Did the universe begin to exist? Two main arguments support this premise.

First, the philosophical argument. This argument acknowledges that an "actual infinite" cannot exist within the confines of our universe. This refers to both an infinite collection of things and an infinite series of time. While a conceptual infinite may exist (say, within the theoretical world of mathematics, ie "in the mind") a real infinite thing cannot exist in reality. We might observe or conceptualize a potential infinite, that is, something which is approaching infinity, but never actually reaches it. However, actual infinites do not exist in our universe. (Somewhat similar to Zeno's Paradox.) The existence of an actual infinite in our universe would lead to logical absurdities. (See William Lane Craig's "The Existence of God and the Beginning of the Universe" for an indepth examination of this point.)

Objection: "But wait!" some may say, "Christians believe they will live forever with God! Sounds like infinite time to me." While it is true that Christians believe we will spend eternity with God, this still never is an infinite amount of time, since measurement of time between two points will necessarily be finite. Peter Kreeft explains: "Christians believe that their life with God will never end. That means it will never form an actually completed infinite series. In more technical language: an endless future is potentially but never actually infinite. This means that although the future will never cease to expand and increase, still its actual extent will always be finite. But that can only be true if all of created reality had a beginning." (Kreeft, 20 Arguments)

A second reason to accept premise (2) as being true is that scientific evidence points towards the universe having existed a finite amount of time, with a so-called "Big Bang" approximately 15 billion years ago. (For more on this subject, which is too indepth to get into here in a simple blog post, see The Case for a Creator at Probe.org … essentially a summary of some of the content in Lee Strobel's excellent Case for a Creator book.)

If we accept both premise (1) and premise (2), then we have reasonable reason to believe God exists, as God (as the entity which is behind our universe, being both infinite and great in every way that our universe is not) would be that cause behind the universe. Note that the common objection "Who made God?" either misreads the argument as proposed above (it only necessitates that what begins to exist has a cause, therefore God which has always existed does not need a "cause") or forgets that God (if God exists) requires no cause. This is not special pleading for God; remember that there are both philosophical and scientific reasons why the universe cannot have always existed, whereas neither apply to God.

Go deeper with related readings:

• Streaming Video: Science shows the universe began to exist – Lee Strobel explains scientific evidence for the universe's creation
• The Kalam Cosmological Argument: An Overview – Well written but easy to understand article explaining the Kalam argument in more depth
• The Cosmological Argument: Refuting Common Objections – Refutes nine common objections to the Cosmological/Kalam argument