Tag: biology

Sex And Gender

Sex And Gender

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Friday’s Column: Brent’s Bent

Brent Pollard

It used to be so simple, that question of what a man or woman is. Now the water is unnecessarily muddied. One born with the genitalia of one sex can consider themselves another gender and find societal acceptance. Yet, biology is objective. It provides evidence one cannot dispute. You either have the chromosomes making you male or female. Of course, there is an infinitesimal chance that one can be born “intersex,” possessing the reproductive organs of both males and females. But this is not a difficulty most people will face. Thus, there is no valid rationale for a separate concept of gender. 

I realize that the average person likely still uses sex and gender synonymously. Still, the Oxford English Dictionary documented the divergence of meaning from 1945.1 There, beneath the third entry for gender, the OEM cites the American Journal of Psychology, saying that gender is the “socialized obverse of sex.” In other words, it is what society perceives as male or female, independent of biology. As such, we immediately take note of the fact that gender is subjective. Societal perceptions do change from year to year and country to county.  

I often cite Elizabethan-era men as an example. Have you ever seen a portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh? He was an influential figure in the colonization of America, exploring what would become North Carolina. North Carolina’s citizens named their capital city for him. Artist Nicholas Hilliard painted the only contemporary portrait we have of Raleigh. In old U.S. Southern parlance, Raleigh appears to be a popinjay. That means he dressed ostentatiously. He sports quite the large frilly lace collar, something we would not expect the twenty-first-century man to wear. One source said that it took Raleigh one and ½ hours to dress for Queen Elizabeth’s court!2 

Even today, what constitutes “manliness” is subject to varying cultural concepts around the globe. In South Korea, for example, men are more likely to use cosmetics than men elsewhere in the world. And in Scotland, men might wear a kilt. It looks like a “skirt” to Americans, but we understand it is culturally appropriate apparel for Scottish men. It certainly does not detract from their virility, either, as we’ve likely seen kilt-wearing gentlemen at U.S. Scottish festivals toss 150-pound cabers!  

The problem with gender is that it fails to account for variety within specimens sharing the same chromosomal pairing. For example, I cite myself. I have an XY chromosomal pairing but am unlike my brother, who likewise has an XY chromosomal pairing. While he always pursued athletics, I was a homebody. Fortunately, we are not alike spiritually, but we share this variability with another pair of brothers mentioned in the Bible. If you recall, Esau was the manly hunter. However, his brother Jacob preferred the peaceful living found within the tent (Genesis 25.27). Furthermore, Jacob was a “momma’s boy.” Esau was his father’s favorite and delighted in eating the game his son hunted (Genesis 27.1-4). But was either Jacob or Esau lacking in what it meant to be male? No. And though he preferred the easy life, Jacob proved quite adept at hard work too when he needed to secure his future happiness by laboring for his wives and livestock for twenty years.  

So, depending upon whom you asked, I am more “feminine.” Yet, I know this about myself and embrace it as a part of my identity. I have never once thought that this means that I am biologically male but am gendered female. And this is not because Christian parents have brainwashed me to reject “the truth.” Instead, they allowed me to be a “free-range” child who may have, for example, played with the toys readily at my disposal, whether for boys or girls. My parents even indulged my idolization of Little Orphan Annie, buying me the record album of the movie’s soundtrack. I don’t necessarily recall wanting to be Annie, but I may well have pretended to be her in my play.  

Youth can be a confusing time, and little ones do not yet understand their biology, let alone grasp a concept like being gendered, but activists claim that children as young as two can begin showing signs of transgenderism. Likewise, these activists have successfully pressured the psychological community into renaming “gender identity disorder” as gender dysphoria, removing the stigma that it is a mental illness requiring psychotherapy.  

From my experience, I note one boy who expressed his desire to be a girl because he felt his parents treated his sisters better. For example, his sisters would receive new clothes while his parents made him get by with what he already had. Unfortunately, this disparity caused the boy to think that being female was preferable since his sisters got his craved love and attention. Fortunately, this boy grew into manhood because he overcame those juvenile conclusions. I can only imagine how he would have turned out had he been influenced by those telling him that what he felt was his incongruity with his biology, that he was gendered female.  

The reality is that it is nurture that creates transgenderism, not nature. If not, Florida would not have had to pass a law to prevent teachers from telling their five-year-old pupils that their gender can differ from their biology! And what happened to common sense on this issue? How is it that our new Supreme Court Justice could not answer the question, “Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?”3 How is it possible that a witness before a House Congressional hearing about “abortion rights” can say, with a straight face, that men can become pregnant and have abortions?4 It seems there must be a vested interest in destroying what it means to be a man or woman to achieve a goal, likely the destruction of the traditionally structured family. For example, Black Lives Matter, which is ostensibly about campaigning against violence and systemic racism towards black people, concerns itself with trans acceptance5 and eliminating the nuclear home.6 Why? 

From the Christian worldview, it is clear. Genesis 1.27 says God made us male and female. And God assigned only a few sex-specific roles: 1) Women give birth to children and desire their husbands, and 2) Men provide spiritual leadership for the household and work (Genesis 3.16-19). However, even with these roles, there is no commentary about gender. For example, is it true that women cannot wear trousers? Can men not have long hair? Can a woman work outside the home? 

Before someone does not rightly divide the Word of Truth and seeks to claim that Moses forbade women from wearing men’s clothing and vice versa (Deuteronomy 22.5), one needs to understand the context. One rabbinical tradition suggests the prohibition is from wearing the dress of the opposite sex to prevent them from mingling with them to fornicate.7 In ancient sexually segregated societies, men and women did not intermingle. So, a libertine man might dress as a woman to infiltrate the woman’s societal sphere.   

Another rabbinical tradition states that the meaning of prohibiting women from men’s dress was to prevent women from putting on the armor of war or priestly garbs, symbols of the responsibilities given to men.8 We would also do well to note that, just as with the “squaring of the beard” (Leviticus 19.28), God’s people were not to mimic the practices of the surrounding heathen nations. For example, men worshipping Ishtar (aka Venus) would cross-dress during their pagan rituals.9 So then, God forbade using the accouterments of men and women to sin, not the practice of women wearing trousers or Scotsmen wearing skirts, I mean kilts. Men were not sinful for having Fabio’s flowing locks. And the virtuous woman of Proverbs 31 was quite the worker, even beyond her domestic responsibilities. 

In conclusion, sex is biology, the way God made you. But man uses the notion of gender to allow behaviors and preferences incongruent with the identity assigned by God. It may be that we will encounter those uncomfortable in their skin. To these, we owe compassion. Befriend them and demonstrate by your example what a man and woman are (Titus 2.1ff). Ultimately, those who are confused are won by grace, not rebuke. 

Sources Cited 

1 “Gender, N.” Gender, n. : Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Mar. 2022, www.oed.com/view/Entry/77468. 

2 “English, 18th Century (Nicholas Hilliard Tradition, 1547-1619).” Daniel Hunt Fine Art, Daniel Hunt Fine Art, 2 Oct. 2019,www.daniel-huntfineart.com/artworksmanager/2018/7/23/english-18th-century-nicholas-hilliard-tradition-1547-1619. 

3 King, Alveda. “Biden’s Supreme Court Nominee Doesn’t Define ‘Woman,’ and Devalues Them All.” Fox News, FOX News Network, 5 Apr. 2022, www.foxnews.com/opinion/biden-supreme-court-woman-ketanji-brown-jackson-alveda-king. 

4 Chasmar, Jessica. “Dem Witness Tells House Committee Men Can Get Pregnant, Have Abortions.” Fox News, FOX News Network, 18 May 2022, www.foxnews.com/politics/house-committee-witness-men-get-pregnant-have-abortions. 

5 Salzman, Sony. “From the Start, Black Lives Matter Has Been about LGBTQ Lives.” ABC News, ABC News Network, 21 June 2020, abcnews.go.com/US/start-black-lives-matter-lgbtq-lives/story?id=71320450. 

6 Wulfsohn, Joseph A. “Black Lives Matter Removes ‘What We Believe’ Website Page Calling to ‘Disrupt … Nuclear Family Structure’.” Fox News, FOX News Network, 21 Sept. 2020, www.foxnews.com/media/black-lives-matter-disrupt-nuclear-family-website. 

7 Lipka, Hilary. “The Prohibition of Cross-Dressing.” TheTorah.com, Project TABS, 2018, www.thetorah.com/article/the-prohibition-of-cross-dressing. 

8 ibid 

9 ibid   

Pixabay creative common
A Passion For Heaven

A Passion For Heaven

by preacherpollard ♥ 1 Comment

Sunday’s Column: Learning From Lehman

Cayden is a student at Western Kentucky University and is from Scottsville.

Cayden Ross

If you’ve ever taken any kind of introductory biology or ecology class, you’ve probably heard of a few animals that display what we call migratory patterns. It’s pretty self-explanatory, but what these animals do is they live at one location for one part of the year and somewhere else for the other part of the year. For example, there are certain species of whales that inhabit the waters around Alaska. In the Alaskan summers, there’s an abundance of food for these whales to feed on, but when the harsh winter temperatures set in, these whales’ food source becomes scarce, and these whales will migrate south to waters around Hawaii, Central Mexico, and even Asia. But when the summer returns in Alaska, these whales have this instinct to return home. Another example that might hit closer to home is that we saw tons of migratory birds flying right over Kentucky, heading south for the winter within the last few weeks and months. When spring comes back around, we will see these same birds heading back north for the summer. I find it interesting that these animals have this instinct to return home, but the neat thing is that God gives us this instinct as well. Now obviously, I’m not talking about some sort of strange migratory pattern or anything of that nature. I’m speaking about a homesickness, a passion that we Christians should have for heaven.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”

This verse tells us that we are all eternal and that God created us with eternity in mind. We know that when we pass on from this life, we are going to either one of two places, but we as Christians have this desire to live in heaven with our father forever. This world just simply isn’t our home.

Let me give you this illustration…  imagine you take a fish out of water and put it on land. That fish will never be happy! It doesn’t matter if you give that fish a wad of 100-dollar bills or build it a giant home and give it a fancy car. It still won’t be happy because it doesn’t belong on land.

As Christians, our life here on Earth is similar. It doesn’t matter how much money we have, or how big our house is, or what kind of car we drive because we will never be as happy here as we will be in heaven. 

Heaven is a place that we cannot even imagine… 

1st Corinthians 2:9 says, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,

     nor the heart of man imagined,

 what God has prepared for those who love him.”

We don’t have all the answers to what our home in heaven will look like or what it will feel like, but the most important thing is that when we get there, we will be in the presence of God for eternity, and He wants each and every single one of us there.

Two Important Ways Water Is Found In the Bible

Two Important Ways Water Is Found In the Bible

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Thursday’s Column: Captain’s Blog

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Carl Pollard

The longest anyone has ever gone without air is 22 minutes. The longest anyone has ever gone without food is 74 days. But when it comes to water, our bodies can only last so long without it. Water is one of the most essential parts of the human body. It makes up two- thirds of our bodies. The common answer for how long the average person can go without water is about 3 days, but it actually varies from person to person. In strenuous conditions you can lose up to 1.5 liters of sweat an hour, but in comfortable conditions an adult man can go a week or more without water.

Andreas Mihavecz, an 18-year-old Austrian man, may have survived the longest without drinking water: Police accidentally left him in a holding cell for 18 days in 1979. It’s a fuzzy record, though, since he allegedly licked condensation off the walls of the prison. The point is this, water is essential to physical life. What does scripture have to say about water? I’d like to notice two brief ways that water is used in scripture.

Water is mentioned as a way to salvation (John 3:5; Acts 2:38). John 3:5 says, “Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” What happens if we are not born of water and the Spirit? Eternal life will not become a reality. Water itself is not what saves, but the process of obeying the holy command of God. A very well known quote is this, “My faith is not in the water, but in the One that told me to get into the water.” Water is what gives us eternal life, but only through the act of baptism.

One of the cool attributes of water is that it has the ability to take on impurities, and it
can also release them when it evaporates and becomes purified. What happens at baptism? We are lowered into water and our spiritual impurities are taken away and we come up pure.

I stumbled across an article one time that said this, “Thirst Drives Sailors to Drink Sea Water.” It was July 30th, 1945 and the Battle Cruiser USS Indianapolis was returning home from a mission. On the way back it was struck by a Japanese torpedo. Sadly this ship didn’t make it home. In fact, in just 12 minutes 300 men died and 900 were in the water.

Those in the water went on to endure 4 days and 5 nights in the water. No food, no water and under the blazing sun of the pacific. Of the 900 that went into the water, only 316 survived the lack of water and the shark attacks. One of the survivors was the chief medical officer. He recorded his experiences and said this, “There was nothing I could do, nothing I could do but give advice, bury the dead at sea, save the lifejackets, and try to keep the men from drinking the water. When the hot sun came out, and we were in this crystal clear ocean, we were so thirsty. You couldn’t believe it wasn’t good enough to drink. I had a hard time convincing the men they shouldn’t drink. The real young ones…you take away their hope, you take away their water and food, they would drink the salt water and they would go fast. I can remember striking the ones who were drinking the salt water to try to stop them. They would get dehydrated, then become maniacal. There were mass hallucinations. I was amazed how everyone would see the same thing. One man would see something, and then everyone else would see it. Even I fought the hallucinations off and on. Something always brought me back.”

A lot of times people think, “There is no way that this won’t save me.” How couldn’t I be saved if I’m sprinkled with water? Or if I say a prayer asking Jesus into my heart? Whatever it is, they look at salt water and think it will quench their thirst, that it will save them. But God has told us what to do, and it is up to us on whether we listen or not.

Water is also used as a metaphor describing a way to strengthen our resolve. Isaiah 43:2 says, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. And through the rivers, they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, Nor will the flame burn you.” Water here is used as an example of trials and hard times. These waters help us to lean on Christ. We can have comfort in Him. But what is the point of these trials? God can’t use us if we are filled with sin and imperfections. Through these trials and hard times we are purified and God is able to use us.

Water is essential for survival, as every living thing would die without it. Did you know that 97% of water is undrinkable? Thankfully God designed the ocean to evaporate and rain down on us as purified water. When water freezes it gets lighter and floats, saving arctic sea life from getting squished under the weight of the ice.

What does the tired athlete ask for after he performs? Water. What is the word you hear from the traveler lost in the desert? Water. What do you hear from the sick and feverish man laying in his bed? Water. What does the wounded soldier on the battlefield cry for? Water. How beautiful it is that we come to the Living Water for nourishment. We must ask ourselves, Are we quenching our spiritual thirst with the one and only true source?

INTELLIGENT DESIGN

INTELLIGENT DESIGN

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Neal Pollard

A child was sent to school one day,
By parents walking the narrow way,
The child learned many a concrete rule,
On Math and English in that school.
The history class did pretty well,
Spelling and language arts were swell,
But right before lunch, to science class,
Biology lessons one needed to pass.
Talk was made of ironclad “fact,”
“Evolution!” Of course.  The talk was packed
With tales of geology billions of years old,
And transformations a wonder to behold.
Every smart person, any rational mind
Accepts this “fact,” oh who’d be so blind,
So Neanderthalish to speak of design—
Intelligent purpose, such talk unbenign!
‘Tis a danger, the courts should never allow
A nod up to heaven or a teacher to bow
To the concept of design purposefully forged
Such poisonous food for a young mind to be gorged.
What’s next? Talk of accountability?
A Creator in heaven? Judgment? Eternity?
Outrageous that Bible thumpers insist
To include in school teaching such mythical mist.
Let’s stick to the concrete, from our father of faith
Brother Darwin’s didactics, so sacred and safe.
“Amen!” to Precambrian. Naturalism? “Preach on!”
Such humanistic glory, let God talk be gone!
We got here by purposeless, meaningless oops,
Universal precision via primordial soups.
So close up your Bible, turn off your mind,
Away with your dangerous, intelligent design.
Content yourself wholly with invertebrate grandmothers,
And bask in the beauty of babboonish brothers.
Any questions, young minds?  No?  Class is dismissed!
Go out into a world of designless abyss.

Ignore clues from systems both solar and lunar,
Or circular or vascular, far better the sooner,
The opposite of intelligent? Slow-minded and shallow
Of design? Confusion, a mess, a fog, or fallow.
How many a little mind, trusting and bright?
Are being led blindly minus logical light?
By teaching unintelligent, but doubtless by design,
To eternal unreadiness via moral decline?

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Transgender Voyeurism?

Transgender Voyeurism?

by preacherpollard ♥ 1 Comment

Neal Pollard

It’s a clash of political correctness agendas, though the latter one is extremely legitimate.  On one side, we have the recent, insane push for recognizing transgenderism—even that which is simply claimed and asserted at the apparent whim of the claimant.  On the other side is an important, needed aspect of feminism—protecting women from the sexual aggression of men. Both are fiercely championed by those of a liberal mindset, and the two came face to face in the “gender neutral” bathrooms of Whitney Hall at the University of Toronto.  Ironically, two incidents of voyeurism, where male students were “caught holding their cellphones over female students’ shower stalls and filming them as they showered” (dailywire.com), occurred in September, 2015, just as the push was heating up for men and women to choose the public bathroom of the gender they felt themselves to be. Our sitting president even defended a federal transgender directive for public school bathrooms, allowing “transgender students to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity, saying that society must protect the dignity and safety of vulnerable children” (nytimes.com, Julie Hirschfeld Davis, 5/16/16). The outlandishness of such baseless thinking had already been demonstrated well before this “guidance” issued by the Education and Justice Departments was made public this Spring.

There is a biblical and biological answer to what has amazingly become an enigma and conundrum for everyone from politicians to corporations. Jesus said, “But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female” (Mark 10:6). There are external ways to both test and validate these, and are as accessible as a basic medical examination. I trust a Creator whose ability is demonstrated everywhere from the order and continuous operation of the universe to the magnificence of the earth to the intricacies of the body’s circulatory and respiratory systems to somatic cells to our DNA.

In the world’s rabid desire to reject His authority, there’s no wonder that people concoct such far-fetched, senseless ideas as we are seeing put forward at the present time. Paul traces the genesis of such ludicrous ideas, saying, “And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper…” (Rom. 1:28). Until that mindset changes, we are likely to see more issues like the push to accept transgenderism and welcome it into our public private places (like bathrooms in stores and dorms) even if they produce the kind of actions reported in Whitney Hall.  May more people simply and humbly follow the perfect guidance of God’s Word.

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On December 10, 2014, The Kaiser Permanente Center for Total Health and National Center for Transgender Equality are hosting a Community Clinician Roundtable for providers who care for transgender patients in the Washington, DC, MD, VA community. The roundtable will include physicians, nurses, therapists, attorneys, and health care staff who support this population. The Center for Total Health will convert two existing multi-stall restrooms to be Gender Neutral during the roundtable. The Center has previously made this designation for LGBTQ supportive events, and is collaborating with the Kaiser Permanente Garfield Innovation Center to pilot multi-stall gender neutral restrooms in health care facility construction moving forward

IF THESE THINGS ARE TRUE, HOW DO WE EXPLAIN THE FACTS?

IF THESE THINGS ARE TRUE, HOW DO WE EXPLAIN THE FACTS?

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Neal Pollard

  • If the theory of evolution is true, why haven’t they found any transitional fossils?  Charles Darwin, on page 413 of his tome Origin of Species, said, “Why is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely-graduated organic chain; and this is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory.” Almost 150 years of archaeological digging and an incredible volume of fossil-findings later, the objection should be even stronger!
  • If the documentary hypothesis is true, why can’t they find even one copy or fragment? The idea that later scribes and penman wrote the first five books of the Old Testament, some almost 1000 years after the time Moses lived, is widely believed among liberal religious scholars. That there are no copies or fragments of these post-Moses writers has not done much to defuse the zeal of those who teach it.  Neither is any attempt given to explain or rebut the many statements in the Pentateuch claiming that Moses wrote them (cf. Ex. 17:14; 24:4-7; 34:27; Num. 33:1-2; Dt. 31:9-11).
  • If the idea of being genetically predisposed to homosexuality is true, where is the genetic evidence of it? The study most supportive of “the gay gene,” conducted in 1991 by Baiiley and Pillard, found 52% of the pairs of identical twin brothers studied were homosexual.  A much larger sample size, in an Australian study released in 2000 by Bailey, Dunne, and Martin, found only 20% concordance in identical twin males and 24% among identical twin females. Bearman and Brucker, in 2002, found less than 10% concordance (via Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(3): 524-36; Archives of General Psychiatry, 48 (12): 1089-96; and the American Journal of Sociology, 107: 1179-1205).
  • If the idea that a “fetus” is part of the mother is true, why does that unborn one have its own unique genetic code? Not only that, but the unborn can be a different blood type, gender, race, hair color, eye color, and more.
  • If the big bang theory is true, what did it and why?  Whether it is thought to have been highly concentrated matter, energy, or combination, what force acted upon it? It was there, presumably for an eternity.  Why didn’t it “bang” before it did? Why did it bang when it did? How did mind emerge from matter? How did morality emerge from non-morality? How did an explosion or expansion form such order out of chance and chaos?
  • If it is true that making moral judgments about others’ behavior is wrong, why is that moral judgment not wrong?

None of these questions is intended to exhaustively address any of the theories or world-views they represent.  Yet, so many unquestioningly and blindly accept these premises as fact when they are far from it.  Seemingly, the last resort, if ever taken, would be to accept and follow what the Bible says.  However, that is the fundamental dividing line.  Hebrews 11:6 puts it well, that “without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”