Explaining Noah's Ark to Atheists...with Algebra
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As a writer, an important part of my craft lies in being able to distinguish between heroes and villains. Heroes and villains share many traits in common. They both lead people. They may share goals and desires. They may even be motivated by the same things. In many ways, the villain mirrors the hero, showing him or her the dangers of choosing the wrong path.
In order to distinguish between the hero and the villain in the story, one must first distinguish between right and wrong and good and evil. Human nature makes everyone talented at justifying evil and choosing the wrong thing for all the right reasons.
The true hero’s journey doesn’t lie in conquering the evil outside of themselves as much as it lies in conquering the evil within themselves. That’s what makes the hero’s journey so compelling and so universal to all of humanity: it’s a struggle common to us all. These hero’s journey stories remind us that the innocent pay the highest price when the hero gets it wrong.
Right leads to growth in love and thus the flourishing of life. Wrong leads to arrogance and to death. In this light, good becomes defined as that willingness to sacrifice one’s own life to ensure the right thing gets done for all of humanity. Evil, in contrast, becomes defined as the willingness to sacrifice other people’s lives in order to promote selfish desires, aims, and motivations.
That’s what makes Jesus Christ the ultimate hero of humanity’s story. At a time when all of humanity stood against Him, He chose to lay down His life for all human beings in order that they might grow in love and life might flourish. It’s what makes Satan the ultimate villain of humanity’s story. He chose to reject God’s call to become our hero and instead sacrifices our lives in order to satisfy his own desires.
IVF treats a developing child as a commodity to be bought or sold, created or destroyed, or "donated" at the whim of the parent. Less than 7% of embryos created result in a live birth. The rest remain frozen, are donated to either science or some other couple, or are terminated as "unworthy" of life.
Children are not objects to be bought, sold, traded, or created at whim. They are gifts from God to be treasured, cherished, respected, and loved.
IVF, or in vitro fertilization, seeks to imitate the moment of the incarnation, when God rendered a virgin pregnant without her need for sexual intercourse. It substitutes science for God and makes false gods of the intellect of men.
Rather than children being conceived in loving acts between a man and a woman as God intended, they become conceived in the cold, sterile environment of a laboratory. These scientists then inspect their creations to see if they deem them worthy of life and kill off all those they believe unworthy. Life and death become dealt, not by God, but by man.
They create without concern for the fate of those they create, freezing the “excess.” They send these little children to a sleep that may never end, and all for the pleasure of those who do not want to wait on God’s timing for their child. They commodify humanity. They render the sacred action of creation into a mundane transaction to be completed for the right price.
Most faithful Catholics are clear about the evil in abortion. They understand that it is wrong to sacrifice a child’s life on the altar of Mammon in order to ensure a better economic future or to save their own. They find IVF less clear.
Any time we take a power that God gave us to serve His purposes and use it to serve our own, we engage in witchcraft. We pervert the good things that God gave us and turn them to evil ends.
God gave us great power in making us capable of cooperating with Him to bring new life into the world. IVF perverts that good and turns them toward evil ends, engaging in witchcraft to create new life to satisfy selfish aims.
We’ve not yet touched on the dangers IVF treatments cause the women who undergo them. Here’s what an article from NBC News stated:
“When going through an IVF cycle, the lining of the uterus sees higher levels of estrogen, which creates a nontypical environment,” Williams said. “If you put the embryos back in that environment, there’s a higher risk of complications. It’s better not to transfer right away. It’s better for there to be a new, healthier lining.”
It’s putting mothers and the babies at risk to do these things. I know a woman who came close to death in her pursuit of IVF treatment. Not only did it fail to produce a child for her, she will never be able to conceive naturally because she chose to go this route.
Homosexual unions can never rightly be called marriage because marriage reflects a relationship that lends itself toward producing children. Even infertile heterosexual couples can engage in legitimate marriages, provided they did not choose to be infertile, by raising up parentless children or modeling for children around them what authentic love looks like. In this way, they contribute to the next generation’s formation.
IVF lends itself toward confusion on this issue, allowing homosexual couples to masquerade as fruitful and produce children. However, it’s not the homosexual union that produces the fruit, but the unnatural intervention of science.
It encourages another evil – surrogacy – which commodifies a woman’s womb and treats her as little more than a vessel for someone else’s use. That’s the real Handmaid’s Tale in action. These infants conceived through surrogacy find themselves ripped away from the only environment they’ve known their entire little lives, leaving them frightened and insecure. It’s cruel.
“Has not the one God made you? You belong to him in body and spirit. And what does the one God seek? Godly offspring. So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful to the wife of your youth.” – Malachi 2:15
God created the sexual union between man and woman in order to produce Godly offspring. That’s it’s purpose. He wanted each child to be given a model of love to use when growing up so they would know how to love in turn.
He holds parents accountable for their children’s salvation, giving us the duty to ensure that they receive the guidance and support they need to know, love, and obey God.
These children conceived in IVF receive neither baptism nor catechesis nor are they given the chance to make the difference in the world God intended for them to make. This puts their tiny souls at risk.
We know no means other than baptism by which a soul might be saved, for it is the only mechanism Christ mentions in Scripture, except to trust them to the mercy of God. However, parents cannot presume on that mercy. Our responsibility remains to see to it our children – every single one of them – are baptized into the body of Christ.
Egg donation and sperm donation render people parents without any control over what becomes of their children, and IVF relies on both. Once the gametes leave the body, the Christian loses all control over what gets done with them. That’s why it’s important to safeguard these gifts from God.
“Embryos generated through assisted reproductive technologies (ART) are deemed surplus when, for some reason, they are not used for reproductive purposes (Svendsen and Koch 2008; Haimes and Taylor 2011); instead, they are then disposed of or, where this is allowed by a country’s ART regulation, may be donated for a variety of research purposes.” - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3714553/
These children are often donated to science and used in terrible experiments as if they mean nothing and are nothing. Even when parents don’t choose to donate them, they become de facto experiments in how long a human can be frozen and still be able to be implanted and brought to a natural birth.
This defies the dignity that every human being deserves. It sacrifices human life on the altar of humanity’s desire for knowledge of how the world works rather than asking God for the guidance we seek.
I’m not immune or indifferent to the pain a woman who wants a child goes through when she’s unable to conceive. I’m not immune or indifferent to the pain a man feels when he’s unable to bring new life to his wife.
I empathize with it because I’ve experienced it for nearly twenty-six years of my life. God blessed me with a son at 19, but though I yearned for more children, He gave me none.
People encouraged me to pursue fertility treatments or go through IVF, but I wanted a child on God’s terms, not on man’s. I chose to trust in God’s plan for my life. That hunger for a child opened my heart to other people’s children and, when I found myself able to do so, led me to open my doors to them and embrace those children who found themselves hungering for love.
So, when I speak about IVF being evil, it’s not that I think it’s evil to hunger for a child. God instilled in humanity the desire to be a parent to encourage us to take the risks required to bring forth each new generation.
It’s a great good to desire to partner with God when bringing new life into the world. But IVF perverts that good desire, usurps God’s role in the creation of life, and turns it toward selfish ends. It becomes a great evil. Here is what Pope Benedict XVI stated on that matter.
Award-winning international speaker and author, Brandy M. Miller is a Catholic revert. Raised in a culturally Catholic home, she left the faith at 16 in search of the truth and returned 12 years later when she found it right where she left it. Today, she is convinced that the Catholic Church is the cure to society's ills and is eager to help share the Gospel truth to those who have ears to hear it. When she isn't writing for or about the Catholic Church, she offers her writing talents to Catholics who would like help sharing their witnesses of Christ's work in their lives.
