Melinda Gates and Her Misplaced Philanthropy

I came across this amazing letter at Catholic Online that was written so beautifully and with great eloquence by a 32 year old Nigerian woman named Obianuju Ekeocha.  For the last six years Ms. Ekeocha has been living and working as a biomedical scientist in Canterbury, England.  Ms. Ekeocha has many friends and family still living in her native Nigeria and was inspired to write her open letter when she learned that Melinda Gates was planning on giving $4.6 billion dollars’ worth of contraceptive devices and drugs to some of the poorest countries in the world, including Ms. Ekeocha’s native homeland.  It is Ms. Ekeocha’s fervent hope that Melinda Gates will hear her "as the voice of the African woman" and reconsider how she would be better able to help the people there.  It is my hope and prayer too.  Her letter follows :

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Growing up in a remote town in Africa, I have always known that a new life is welcomed with much mirth and joy. In fact we have a special "clarion" call (or song) in our village reserved for births and another special one for marriages.

The first day of every baby's life is celebrated by the entire village with dancing (real dancing!) and clapping and singing - a sort of "Gloria in excelsis Deo."

All I can say with certainty is that we, as a society, LOVE and welcome babies.

With all the challenges and difficulties of Africa, people complain and lament their problems openly. I have grown up in this environment and I have heard women (just as much as men) complain about all sorts of things. But I have NEVER heard a woman complain about her baby (born or unborn).

Even with substandard medical care in most places, women are valiant in pregnancy. And once the baby arrives, they gracefully and heroically rise into the maternal mode.

I trained and worked for almost five years in a medical setting in Africa, yet I never heard of the clinical term "postpartum depression" until I came to live in Europe. I never heard it because I never experienced or witnessed it, even with the relatively high birth rate around me. (I would estimate that I had at least one family member or close friend give birth every single month. So I saw at least 12 babies born in my life every year.) 

Amidst all our African afflictions and difficulties, amidst all the socioeconomic and political instabilities, our babies are always a firm symbol of hope, a promise of life, a reason to strive for the legacy of a bright future.

So a few weeks ago I stumbled upon the plan and promise of Melinda Gates to implant the seeds of her "legacy" in 69 of the poorest countries in the world (most of which are in Sub-Saharan Africa).

Her pledge is to collect pledges for almost $5 billion in order to ensure that the African woman is less fertile, less encumbered and, yes, she says, more "liberated." With her incredible wealth she wants to replace the legacy of an African woman (which is her child with the legacy of "child-free sex." 

Many of the 69 targeted countries are Catholic countries with millions of Catholic women of child-bearing age.  These Catholic women have been rightly taught by the Church that the contraceptive drug and device is inherently divisive.

Unlike what we see in the developed Western world, there is actually very high compliance with Pope Paul VI's "Humanae Vitae." For these African women, in all humility, have heard, understood and accepted the precious words of the prophetic pope. Funny how people with a much lower literacy level could clearly understand that which the average Vogue- and Cosmo-reading-high-class woman has refused to understand. I guess humility makes all the difference.

With most African women faithfully practicing and adhering to a faith (mainly Christian or in some cases Muslim), there is a high regard for sex in society, especially among the women. Sex is sacred and private.

The moment these huge amounts of contraceptive drugs and devices are injected into the roots of our society, they will undoubtedly start to erode and poison the moral sexual ethics that have been woven into our societal DNA by our faith, not unlike the erosion that befell the Western world after the 1930 Lambeth conference!  In one fell swoop and one "clean" slice, the faithful could be severed from their professed faith.

Both the frontline healthcare worker dispensing Melinda's legacy gift and the women fettered and shackled by this gift, would be separated from their religious beliefs. They would be put in a precarious position to defy their faith - all for "safe sex."

Even at a glance, anyone could see that the unlimited and easy availability of contraceptives in Africa would surely increase infidelity and sexual promiscuity as sex is presented by this multi-billion dollar project as a casual pleasure sport that can indeed come with no strings - or babies - attached. Think of the exponential spread of HIV and other STDs as men and women with abundant access to contraceptives take up multiple, concurrent sex partners.

And of course there are bound to be inconsistencies and failures in the use of these drugs and devices, so health complications could result; one of which is unintended abortion. Add also other health risks such as cancer, blood clots, etc. Where Europe and America have their well-oiled health care system, a woman in Africa with a contraception-induced blood clot does not have access to 911 or an ambulance or a paramedic. No, she dies.

And what about disposal of the medical waste? Despite advanced sewage disposal in the First-world countries, we hear that aquatic life there is still adversely affected by drugs in the system. In Africa, be rest assured that both in the biggest cities and smaller rural villages, sewage constitutes a real problem. So as $4.6 billion worth of drugs, IUDs and condoms get used, they will need safe disposal. Can someone please show us how and where will that be? On our farm lands where we get all our food? In our streams and rivers from whence comes our drinking water?

I see this $4.6 billion buying us misery. I see it buying us unfaithful husbands. I see it buying us streets devoid of the innocent chatter of children. I see it buying us disease and untimely death. I see it buying us a retirement without the tender loving care of our children.

Please Melinda, listen to the heart-felt cry of an African woman and mercifully channel your funds to pay for what we REALLY need.

We need:

- Good healthcare systems (especially prenatal, neonatal and pediatric care).

Needless to say that postpartum and neonatal deaths are alarmingly high in many Sub-Saharan African countries. This is due to the paucity of specialized medical personnel, equipment and systems. Women are not dying because they are having "too many" babies but because they are not getting even the most basic postpartum care. A childbirth or labor complication can very easily be fatal, for both mother and baby. To alleviate this problem new, well-equipped and well-staffed birthing centers with neonatal units need to be built in easily accessible parts of the poorest communities. And if Melinda Gates really insists on reducing population, she can have highly trained Natural Family Planning (NFP) instructors strategically placed in these women's healthcare facilities.  At least then there would be a natural and holistic approach.

- Food programs for young children.

This would serve a two-fold purpose if it is incorporated into free or highly subsidized nursery school programs. It would nourish and strengthen the growth of these children, who are so, so vulnerable to malnutrition, and it would also serve to encourage parents to bring their youngsters, ages 3 or 4, to nursery school. In so many parts of Africa, children miss out on nursery school education because it is expensive and considered a luxury reserved for the rich and middle class. As a result, the children miss the first few crucial years when basic math and reading are easily learned.  By the time they are considered "ready" for school, at age 7 or 8, they struggle academically. Many of them never quite catch up and so drop out after six or seven years. This is when a lot of young girls are married off as mid- to late-teenage wives who unfortunately would become the perfect recipient of the Melinda Gates comprehensive contraceptive care!

- Good higher education opportunities

Not just new school buildings or books, but carefully laid out educational programs that work - scholarships, internships at higher levels, etc. - are needed. Despite the problems and obstacles to primary and secondary education, a significant number of young girls make it into universities, polytechnics or colleges. The problem however is that, most of the schools and resources are substandard and outdated. As such, the quality of higher education is low and cannot compare to that of more privileged countries. Even though the teachers put in their very best and the students work hard, the system is inadequate and will always produce disadvantaged graduates who are not confident enough to stand with their counterparts who have studied in other parts of the world.

 - Chastity programs

Such programs in secondary schools, universities and churches would create a solid support system to form, inform and reassure our young girls and women that real love is that which is healthy and holy. Many African girls are no longer sure about moral sexual ethics thanks to the widespread influence of Western media, movies and magazines. More support should be given to programs that encourage abstinence before marriage and fidelity in marriage. This approach would go a long way to combating the spread of HIV and other STDs through the continent. And it would certainly lead to happier marriages!

- Support for micro-business opportunities for women

 The average African women is incredibly happy, hard-working and resilient. Any support both economic and through training would most probably be used well and wisely.

 - Fortify already established NGOs that are aimed at protecting women from sex-trafficking, prostitution, forced marriage, child labor, domestic violence, sex crimes, etc.

 Many of these NGOs do not have much success because they are not well-funded. Though most of them have good intentions, they lack professional input from those such as psychologists, logisticians or medical personnel needed to tackle various problems.

$4.6 billion dollars can indeed be your legacy to Africa and other poor parts of the world. But let it be a legacy that leads life, love and laughter into the world in need.

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May Mrs. Gates truly hear and be moved by Obianuju Ekeocha's letter so that she will help with her well-intentioned philanthropy where it is truly needed the most, and not in a manner that will degrade families, societies, and life for these faithful people in some of the world's poorest nations.

What Progressives Have Wrought for the Economy

It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words.  With that in mind, I thought I would share a few pictures, charts, and graphs that illustrate perfectly what a disastrous job President Obama and the progressives in congress have done with their "help" of our economy.   

With all of this highly relevant data, it seems fairly  obvious that re-electing Obama and the Democrats is not the solution to our economic problems.  And it doesn't take anywhere near a thousand words to come up with that painfully apparent conclusion.

An Observation from Archbishop Chaput

We live in a culture where our marketers and entertainment media compulsively mislead us about the sustainability of youth; the indignity of old age; the avoidance of suffering; the denial of death; the nature of real beauty; the impermanence of every human love; the oppressiveness of children and family; the silliness of virtue; and the cynicism of religious faith. It’s a culture of fantasy, selfishness, sexual confusion and illness that we’ve brought upon ourselves. And we’ve done it by misusing the freedom that other — and greater — generations than our own worked for, bled for and bequeathed to our safe-keeping. 

~ Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia from “A Thread for Weaving Joy” 

A Taxing and De-"Grading" Issue

It would seem that a coalition of rabid Democrats, partisan leftists, Euro-style socialists, uber-progressives, and assorted American Marxists have all devised a brilliant plan to distract the American people’s attention and thus help their inept would-be champion, Barack Obama,  gain re-election.  You see, Obama was swept into office on the magnificent-sounding themes of “hope and change”.  What we have since discovered over the course of these last 3 ½ years though is that the magnificence promised in restoring the economy, strengthening friendships throughout the world, and even healing the earth are nothing more than empty rhetoric.  In other words, despite assurances to the contrary that if only we would pass the gargantuan stimulus package, we would see unemployment not rise above 8%. It has not been below 8% since. Obama’s policies would see jobs return, the housing market rebound, and the world overall transformed to a safer place.  Fast forward to the end of Obama’s first (and hopefully only) term and by any objective standard, President Obama’s stewardship has proven to be an utter failure.  So what is one to do when one cannot run on the ruin and destruction of one’s own record?  Well, unleash your surrogates to launch a scorched earth campaign against your opponent, of course.  If you look horrible on paper, make the other guy look even worse… even if you have to lie and fabricate non-existent issues to do so.  It is a Chicago thing, you see.

Enter the progressive coalition and their despicable and mendacious poster-boy Harry Reid.  They must distract the American people from noticing the complete failure of Obama’s executive administration if he is to stand a chance at re-election.  How best to do that is to manufacture a seemingly slanderous scandal regarding Mitt Romney and his income taxes.  The left wants to know why Romney won’t release more than two years of his past income taxes if he has nothing to hide; never mind the fact that this is all that is legally required when running for office.   In the attempt to create even the appearance of possible malfeasance on Romney’s behalf, they bemoan the fact that Romney refuses to even acknowledge their sincere requests.  Now there are plenty of legitimate issues to criticize Romney on without having to create one as foolish as this.  But, the left is desperate it would seem.

Unfortunately, despite the mendacity of the plan by the left, it is probably smart politics nonetheless.  Why even the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid came out and said that some “un-named source” that worked with Romney in the past had told Prince Harry that the reason Romney won’t release the whole last decade of his tax records is because he didn’t pay taxes for most of those years.  Of course there is no proof whatsoever… not even the name of the source to verify the veracity of it.  But that didn’t stop Harry Reid, who even had the gumption to take these unsubstantiated, un-sourced, and exceptionally-unlikely and untrue allegations and pontificate for all of the world and MSNBC to report while he was on the Senate floor.  (Side note: Harry Reid refuses to release the last decade of his taxes too, but when asked about the glaring hypocrisy, he stated that he wasn’t running for president.)

So what is poor Mitt to do? 

I think I have a solution for him. 

You see, President Obama has sealed all of his college records and transcripts so that they would not be made public.  A reasonable explanation for this has never been given by Obama.  If Obama’s grades were good and reflected his supposed brilliance, why would he not want to release them for all of America and the world to see?  If his grades were bad, why would he not release those anyway?  After all, he is President of the United States of America now and the grades he had from nearly thirty years ago are pretty much irrelevant to his job today.  Besides, Al Gore, John Kerry, and George W. Bush all were “C” students, so if he had mediocre or poor grades, he wouldn’t be without company.  But, Obama doesn’t put this issue to rest.  One has to wonder why?  What does he have to lose by disclosing those records to the public?  What is President Obama trying to hide?

I read an interesting hypothesis on this the other day that was put forth by the former Libertarian Vice Presidential nominee, Wayne Root. 

First, Mr. Root just happened to go to Columbia University and was a supposed class mate of Barack Obama (or Barry Soetoro as he was then-known).  They both were from the class of 1983.  The only problem is that Mr. Root never met Obama in all of his years there.  In fact, he never even heard of him.  Further, the Wall Street Journal reported that an investigation was done that included the calling of 400 Columbia classmates at random in 2008 and did not find one of them that had ever met Barack Obama.   Mr. Root was even a Pre-law and Political Science major, just like Obama, and yet had never heard of him.  So Mr. Root’s theory is this:

A) He (Obama) rarely ever attended class.

B) His grades were not those typical of what we understand it takes to get into Harvard Law School.

C) He attended Columbia as a foreign exchange student.

D) He paid little for either undergraduate college or Harvard Law School because of foreign aid scholarships given to a poor foreign students like this kid Barry Soetoro from Indonesia.

 

Now I don’t necessarily buy this hypothesis, but it certainly does offer a plausible explanation for Obama’s reticence in exposing his college records.  Further, if Harry Reid can go and make completely unsubstantiated charges out of thin air with no proof whatsoever, then why can’t a classmate with the same major as Obama who never met the guy in all of his years at Columbia raise legitimate questions and go on a similar fishing expedition?

So back to Romney and the solution to his problem with the leftist coalition.  Romney needs to call Obama and the left’s bluff.  Romney should immediately call a full press conference and issue a statement to the nation and to Obama.  He should say that he will disclose the rest of his tax records for the preceding decade if Obama will release all of his college records.  After all, what could be so horrible in Obama’s records that he is so afraid to show them to the American people?  And if indeed there is something that bad, then perhaps it would be a good idea for America to know about it.  I think it is safe to say that not another word from Obama and the leftist coalition will be uttered regarding Romney’s tax records.  And in the unlikely case that they continue to harp on this, then Romney will have managed to jujitsu his way out of it and thus put Obama on defense instead of offense.  Like Romney told Harry Reid early on in the non-existent scandal, Obama will have to “put up, or shut up”.

Defending the Faith

I am annoyed.  It seems that I keep finding conversations, blog posts, Facebook comments, news stories, political pundit diatribes, and most alarmingly even devout members of my own faith who are manipulating Christianity to fit in with their personal viewpoints and agendas lately.  (Disclaimer:  I have been guilty of this in the past too, largely due to my own ignorance.)

I am sorry to have to tell all of you good folks, and indeed many of you are wonderful and loving people, but you are NOT the arbiter of the Christian faith.  You cannot dictate what the tenets of Christianity are.  You cannot modify Christian doctrine or eliminate those parts that are inconvenient to your way of thinking, or to justify your lifestyle.  You cannot re-interpret or modify what Christ and His Apostles meant because it will make for a stronger point in an argument for you.  You cannot decide which parts of the moral law or catechism are no longer relevant. 

If you are Catholic, you cannot modify the Nicene Creed to meet your new enlightened world view.  If you are Protestant, you cannot personally interpret scripture to tell us what you are certain Christ really meant.  If you are a secularist, you cannot morph Jesus into some less than Divine, but still all-around-good-guy-philosopher-new-age guru and still call it Christianity.

You simply do not have that right or authority.

And neither do I.

It was Christ himself, the second person of the Holy Trinity, that established His church on earth.  Christ was the one who taught what the tenets of the faith were in His culmination and fulfillment of Jewish Old Testament prophecies.  It was our Lord Christ who bequeathed the power and authority to His apostles to keep and teach that Christian faith that He established.  Indeed, in the Gospel of Matthew, Christ emphatically stated to his apostle Peter the following:

“And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."  -Matthew 16: 18-19

Christianity is a revealed religion.  It has been handed down from Christ to Peter and His apostles in an unbroken line of apostolic succession of popes over these last two millennia.  The authentic Christian faith is not open to interpretation.  Not by Arius, Luther, or Smith, and certainly not by politicians such as Obama, Bush, Romney, or Pelosi.

One has to either accept, or reject, the full Deposit of Faith as handed down from Christ through his apostles and their successors.  If that is not satisfactory, you may start your own church based on your own interpretations and beliefs, but don’t assume that it is also an authentic Christian church.

Now that is not to say that there aren’t many churches which do wonderful good deeds and have very loving and holy people within their congregations that try very hard to live their lives and faith as they THINK Christ would want them to do.  The problem is that often times these “Christian churches” practice their faith based on the erroneous interpretation of some pastor instead of what Christ actually revealed to us.

It is not for ANY of us to interpret what Christ meant.  That authority was given from God in the person of Christ to the very first pope, Peter.  That authority was given to His church in its Magisterium.  In other words, that authority to bind and loose and teach what Christ revealed to us lies with our current Pope Benedict XVI and his bishops.  This teaching authority of what constitutes Christianity resides within the Magisterium of the Church that Christ established on earth.  That authority does not reside with ANYONE ELSE, and it certainly doesn’t reside with me.   

The Magisterium, guided by the Holy Spirit, protects the Deposit of Faith from any deviation, addition, subtraction, reversal, contradiction, distortion, or destruction offered by those who wish Church teaching to be something it is not.   Again, not even the gates of the netherworld will prevail against Christ’s own Church.  The Holy Spirit will defend God’s Church and its teachings accordingly. 

When told something about Christianity by a well-meaning person, or sadly sometimes by a not-so-well-meaning person, that happens to be contradictory to what Christ has taught, it is incumbent upon Christians to politely but firmly point out the truth.  Truth about Christianity is not open to their interpretation or my interpretation of the faith, but rather it must come ultimately from Christ himself.  To make sure that we follow His truth, logic would suggest that we follow what His Magisterium teaches on his behalf.  Relying on any other person, no matter how well-meaning or holy, will only lead us astray accordingly.

Science Over Subjectivity in the Abortion Debate

America since its very founding as a nation was predicated on the belief that our rights came from a Divine Creator, and not granted by a King or governments comprised of men.  Further,  our founders believed that the primary purpose of our government was to secure, protect, and defend those rights for all Americans.  Indeed, Thomas Jefferson specifically penned in our founding document as a nation that paramount amongst  those inalienable rights were life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I shudder when I see what a tumble down the cliff we have taken in no longer protecting one of our most elemental rights since 1973 with the Supreme Court’s finding of the “right” to abortion existing in our Constitution, via their landmark Roe v. Wade decision.

The right to life is the sine qua non of all human rights; that is to say that without the existence of this right, there can be no others.

Now the pro-life versus pro-abortion divide is not over whether government should prevent the killing of innocent human life.  I think it is safe to say that nearly all Americans agree that innocent human life absolutely must be protected.  The divide exists over how to define human life; or more specifically, how government should define that human life which deserves the protection of the law against its intentional destruction.  In other words the debate regarding abortion typically comes down to when life begins.  The question at hand is at what point of development of the fetus does abortion actually constitute the killing of a human life? 

Many pro-abortion advocates argue that most pro-lifers are strongly guided or at least influenced by religious faith and subjective opinions instead of science with their unwavering stances against abortion.  They decry that pro-life advocates want to remove the choice of a woman to abort her unborn child, and thus remove her right to control over her own body.  The argument is that we don’t know at what point a life is truly its own, so rather than succumb to religion and superstition, we should not infringe upon a woman’s choice in what to do with her own body, accordingly.

I would argue that precisely the opposite is true.  It is the pro-abortion advocate that is ignoring science and using subjectivity and human opinion in their determination of when human life begins in the womb.

Most pro-life advocates support the concept that life absolutely begins at conception.  This position seems far more rooted in science and objectivity than does the pro-abortion stance.  Indeed, at the very moment of conception there is the creation of a life that is genetically complete and distinct that comes into existence.  The gender and most all physiological traits of that human are in place at that moment of conception.  Before conception, there was not a separate and distinct life; after conception, there is objectively and scientifically a unique human life that will continue to develop and change incrementally until his or her death. 

Indeed, after conception all further change will be incremental.  There will be a moment before the first fetal heart beat and the moment after it.  There will be the moment that a newborn will take its first breath of air and the moment immediately after it.  There will be the first moment a middle aged lady finds a gray hair and the first moment afterwards.    Each moment in development, maturation -- in life-- will be just one more incremental step before and after each subjective moment in a timeline. 

Trying to determine at which other point beyond conception in that incremental growth timeline of a person that human life actually begins is purely subjective, no matter what government, advocates, judges, pregnant women, or even doctors opine on the topic.  And indeed, they are all nothing but subjective opinions based on human determined criteria.  Conception is absolutely and unequivocally the most scientifically verifiable and defensible position for when life begins.  It is, therefore, at that moment of conception that life, HUMAN life, should and indeed must be afforded the protections that God has granted and our government was founded to defend.  After conception, the choosing of a point to allow the abortion of a human life is relegated to personal opinion and is simply an elevation of that subjective opinion above that of objective science.

When subjective opinion and ideology are the factors that comprise the rationale for government’s actions in their not exercising of a paramount responsibility, then all of rational government is jeopardized.

Now it may not seem intuitive or obvious to equate a newly conceived zygote with a twenty year old man, but from an objective scientific perspective, both are unique and individual creations of life.  If left to take their natural courses, both will continue to mature, learn, love, and have the opportunities to reach their potentials for good or ill that they so desire.  Aborting that unborn child, that zygote, is every bit the same as killing that twenty year old man in the fact that both lives are taken and prevented from ever further reaching that potential for which those lives were intended.  Making a decision to abort that child based on some nuanced idea of viability or other subjective factor is absolutely wrong.  I would far rather trust my stance on the abortion debate to be based on intellectually defensible science, accordingly.

An Argument for God: The World as an Interacting Whole

I happened to hear about a fantastic book that I immediately ran out and purchased which is written by two brilliant professors who teach philosophy of religion at Boston College.  (Peter J. Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli)  The book is entitled “Handbook of Catholic Apologetics”.  I have a long way to go still in my reading of it, but have thus far been thoroughly engrossed by their well-written and strongly presented arguments throughout the book.  In the second chapter of the book, the authors give twenty different arguments for the existence of God.  They are all very well-reasoned and logical in their presentation.  I thought I would share one of these gems with my few readers accordingly to see what you all thought about their logic.  Enjoy:

Norris Clarke, who taught metaphysic and philosophy of religion for many years at Fordham, has presented in The One and the Many an intriguing version of the design argument.  We present it here, slightly abridged and revised, for your reflection.

Starting Point.  This world is given to us as a dynamic, ordered system of many active component elements. Their natures (natural properties) are ordered to interact with each other in stable, reciprocal relationships that we call physical laws.  For example, every hydrogen atom in our universe is ordered to combine with every oxygen atom in the proportion of 2:1 (which implies that every oxygen atom is reciprocally ordered to combine with every hydrogen atom in the proportion of 1:2).  So it is with the chemical valences of all of the basic elements.  So too all particles with mass are ordered to move toward every other according to the fixed proportions of the law of gravity.

In such an interconnected, interlocking, dynamic system, the active nature of each component is defined by its relation with others and so presupposes the others for its own intelligibility and ability to act.  Contemporary science reveals to us that our world-system is not merely an aggregate of many separate, unrelated laws but rather a tightly interlocking whole, where relationship to the whole structures and determines the parts.  The parts can no longer be understood apart from the whole; its influence permeates them all. 

Argument.  In any such system as the above, (like our world) no component part or active element can be self-sufficient or self-explanatory.  For any part presupposes all the other parts—the whole system already in place – to match its own relational properties. It can’t act unless the others are there to interact reciprocally with it.  Any one part could be self-sufficient only if it were the cause of the whole rest of the system – which is impossible, since no part can act except in collaboration with the others. 

Nor can the system as a whole explain its own existence, since it is made up of the component parts and is not a separate being, on its own, independent of them.  So neither the parts nor the whole are self-sufficient; neither can explain the actual existence of this dynamically interactive system.

Three Conclusions

1.       Since the parts make sense only within the whole, and neither the whole nor the parts can explain their own existence, then such a system as our world requires a unifying efficient cause to posit it in existence as a unified whole.

2.       Any such cause must be an intelligent cause, one that brings the system into being according to a unifying idea.  For the unity of the whole – and of each one of the overarching, cosmic-wide, physical laws uniting elements under themselves – is what determines and correlates the parts.  Hence, it must be somehow actually present as an effective organizing factor.  But the unity, the wholeness, of the whole transcends any one part and therefore cannot be contained in any one part.  To be actually present all at once as a whole, this unity can only be the unity of an organizing unifying idea.  For only an idea can hold together many different elements at once without destroying or fusing their distinctness.  That is almost the definition of an idea.  Since the actual parts are spread out over space and time, the only way they can be together at once as an intelligible unity is within an idea.  Hence the system of the world as a whole must live first within the unity of an idea.  Now, a real idea cannot actually exist and be effectively operative save in a real mind, which has the creative power to bring such a system into real existence.  Hence the sufficient reason for our ordered world-system must ultimately be a creative ordering Mind.  A cosmic-wide order requires a cosmic-wide Orderer, which can only be a Mind.

3.       Such an ordering Mind must be independent of the system itself, that is, transcendent –not dependent on the system for its own existence and operation.  For if it were dependent on – or part of – the system, it would have to presuppose the latter as already existing in order to operate and would thus have to both precede and follow itself.  But this is absurd.  Hence it must exist and be able to operate prior to and independent of the system.  Thus our material universe necessarily requires, as the sufficient reason for its actual existence as an operating whole, a Transcendent Creative Mind.

And that transcendent creative mind is God.