It seems lately that blogging has been difficult not because I have had little to post about - but because I could post on so much that it is tough choosing. I have been spending much time preparing for a presentation I gave this past Tuesday, and in doing so I was able to catch up on much of the latest news regarding ESCR. As part of my presentation, I criticized the way scientists seems to be attempting to use increasingly deceptive language when describing what has previously been known as human cloning. Human cloning to therapeutic cloning to somatic cell nuclear transfer to the now preferred nuclear transfer. I await what new term awaits us when nuclear transfer fails to sway enough of the public.
Now Sean Morrison at the University of Michigan has a new name for cloned human embryos . In this speech (at about 1:18 to 1:20) he gave for Michigan Citizens for Stem Cell Research and Cures [sic] (the source of much of my blogging fodder), he twice uses the term "nuclear transfer products" to describe a cloned human embryo.
I suppose that would make most of the rest of us "copulation products", but I'd rather not go there.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
I Love My Father [Jay]
I originally posted this at my blog Really?!! Scott invited me to post it here as well. As Many of you have been kind enough to pray for me and my family during this time, I did so. God bless. JW
There is an upside to having your own blog. It means I can pretty much write whatever I want to without worrying about what others think. Most of the time I use that power to be as stupid as I feel like being but not tonight. My father is dying in an ICU unit here in Marietta, GA. No doctor has told me or my family that he is, in fact, on his death bed, but when a man lies in intensive care for nearly 3 weeks and is not physically progressing it does not take a Rhodes Scholar to see the truth. It may be tomorrow, next week, or next month, but he is dying.
Our relationship has never been perfect. He is an alcoholic and a heavy smoker, facts that are wreaking havoc on his body right now. He was an adulterer who left our family when I was nine years old and is now divorced from his third wife. During my teenage years, I was a self destructive little punk that rebelled against everything. In my twenties, my new found faith drove a mild wedge between us. In my thirties, my father was given the option of walking away from alcohol and keeping his relationship with his grandchildren or continuing to drink himself to death and be cut off. He chose the latter.
Tonight I walked into his ICU room and saw a body that is not long for this earth. More importantly, I saw my father struggling with life. A chair was sitting in the room and I pulled it next to his bed and wept for several minutes. I wept because I love my dad. I do not care what has happened between us or the years of bitter dispute that have passed. I love him and it is killing me to watch this.
It is a fact of biology that I am my father’s son. I can see we have the same oddly wrinkled and heavily lined hands. Our arms share the same shape. His face and body structure are now mine. I look like him, and sometimes when I lose my temper with my young children I hear my father’s voice booming out of me. For years I tried to shake the imprint of my father from me, either out of spite or then later out of fear of becoming him. It became clear to me as I matured that I could never stop being my father’s son.
As a Christian, it often feels like I understand certain big concepts. God’s unmerited favor for example. My mind grasps the explanation of what it means, but as with many of the truths of God that I think I understand, time and events often expose the ignorance of my heart. Tonight was one of those lessons. As I held my father’s hand, prayed and sang Rich Mullins songs, I had a hard time understanding the true differences between us. I was an adulterer in my youth. I was a drunk. I abused drugs that my father would never dream of doing. I lied to my mother and betrayed her trust. I alienated my family just as he did. As my father groaned in pain and shifted in his bed to relieve the agony of the cost that his choices are exacting from his last days, I was at a loss as to the qualitative difference between the man that is in the hospital bed and the son that sits by his side. I am no better than he.
The answer is grace. The grace of God dominates my life. And here is what I never fully understood until tonight. I might have been able to say it, but I never fully got it all the way through my whole being balls to bones as the oracle in The Matrix would say. God’s grace transforms my life because I let it. Not because I am a good man, and not as a result of proper works. It is God’s desire to love me and somewhere along the road I started to get myself out of the way and let Him. That is all the difference, but it makes all the difference in the world.
At one point I realized that my father’s eyes were open and so I moved into his field of vision. There was not a flicker of recognition in his gaze. His motionless eyes did not even track to my movement. I sat back down and prayed even harder that he would wake up and that I could talk to him for a moment. A few minutes later as his eyes suddenly darted in my direction in response to a comment I had made. I stood up and moved around to the other side of his bed and back into his field of vision. He watched me all of the way around and looking into my eyes the whole way. After a moment, he dropped his gaze.
“Daddy!” I called to him. I know it is odd that a 36 year-old man with a dysfunctional relationship still calls his father daddy, but I don’t care. His eyes shot back up. “Do you know who I am?”
He ever so slightly nodded and said what passes for yes in the garbled voice that is left to him for this time. My father was before me and with all that I had been thinking about for the last hour I tried to decide what I most wanted to say. “Do you know how much I love you?” He answered yes. “I am here with you,” I told him. The corner of his mouth drew up ever so slightly into a smile. I talked to him about God and other things, but in that one moment I realized all that truly mattered.
Paul said that we all sin and fall short of the glory of God. That there is none righteous, no not one. Whatever plans or prayers I had about how my father may turn his life around they all crumbled to the ground the night of July 26th, when I heard the message on my answering machine that he had been found unconscious and unresponsive. Whatever problems I had with him in the past or unresolved issues still exist, they are meaningless now as well. He is pitiful, frail, dying, and it is all his fault. So how is he any different than the rest of us before God. We can never get what was lost to our poor decisions and choices back, but we can hold on with furious passion to the hope for our future. For me and my father, that future contains the moments that I have left with him now and the hope of eternity with him then. It is time to start getting into practice for the future relationship where all that is left in the end is faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love.
There is an upside to having your own blog. It means I can pretty much write whatever I want to without worrying about what others think. Most of the time I use that power to be as stupid as I feel like being but not tonight. My father is dying in an ICU unit here in Marietta, GA. No doctor has told me or my family that he is, in fact, on his death bed, but when a man lies in intensive care for nearly 3 weeks and is not physically progressing it does not take a Rhodes Scholar to see the truth. It may be tomorrow, next week, or next month, but he is dying.
Our relationship has never been perfect. He is an alcoholic and a heavy smoker, facts that are wreaking havoc on his body right now. He was an adulterer who left our family when I was nine years old and is now divorced from his third wife. During my teenage years, I was a self destructive little punk that rebelled against everything. In my twenties, my new found faith drove a mild wedge between us. In my thirties, my father was given the option of walking away from alcohol and keeping his relationship with his grandchildren or continuing to drink himself to death and be cut off. He chose the latter.
Tonight I walked into his ICU room and saw a body that is not long for this earth. More importantly, I saw my father struggling with life. A chair was sitting in the room and I pulled it next to his bed and wept for several minutes. I wept because I love my dad. I do not care what has happened between us or the years of bitter dispute that have passed. I love him and it is killing me to watch this.
It is a fact of biology that I am my father’s son. I can see we have the same oddly wrinkled and heavily lined hands. Our arms share the same shape. His face and body structure are now mine. I look like him, and sometimes when I lose my temper with my young children I hear my father’s voice booming out of me. For years I tried to shake the imprint of my father from me, either out of spite or then later out of fear of becoming him. It became clear to me as I matured that I could never stop being my father’s son.
As a Christian, it often feels like I understand certain big concepts. God’s unmerited favor for example. My mind grasps the explanation of what it means, but as with many of the truths of God that I think I understand, time and events often expose the ignorance of my heart. Tonight was one of those lessons. As I held my father’s hand, prayed and sang Rich Mullins songs, I had a hard time understanding the true differences between us. I was an adulterer in my youth. I was a drunk. I abused drugs that my father would never dream of doing. I lied to my mother and betrayed her trust. I alienated my family just as he did. As my father groaned in pain and shifted in his bed to relieve the agony of the cost that his choices are exacting from his last days, I was at a loss as to the qualitative difference between the man that is in the hospital bed and the son that sits by his side. I am no better than he.
The answer is grace. The grace of God dominates my life. And here is what I never fully understood until tonight. I might have been able to say it, but I never fully got it all the way through my whole being balls to bones as the oracle in The Matrix would say. God’s grace transforms my life because I let it. Not because I am a good man, and not as a result of proper works. It is God’s desire to love me and somewhere along the road I started to get myself out of the way and let Him. That is all the difference, but it makes all the difference in the world.
At one point I realized that my father’s eyes were open and so I moved into his field of vision. There was not a flicker of recognition in his gaze. His motionless eyes did not even track to my movement. I sat back down and prayed even harder that he would wake up and that I could talk to him for a moment. A few minutes later as his eyes suddenly darted in my direction in response to a comment I had made. I stood up and moved around to the other side of his bed and back into his field of vision. He watched me all of the way around and looking into my eyes the whole way. After a moment, he dropped his gaze.
“Daddy!” I called to him. I know it is odd that a 36 year-old man with a dysfunctional relationship still calls his father daddy, but I don’t care. His eyes shot back up. “Do you know who I am?”
He ever so slightly nodded and said what passes for yes in the garbled voice that is left to him for this time. My father was before me and with all that I had been thinking about for the last hour I tried to decide what I most wanted to say. “Do you know how much I love you?” He answered yes. “I am here with you,” I told him. The corner of his mouth drew up ever so slightly into a smile. I talked to him about God and other things, but in that one moment I realized all that truly mattered.
Paul said that we all sin and fall short of the glory of God. That there is none righteous, no not one. Whatever plans or prayers I had about how my father may turn his life around they all crumbled to the ground the night of July 26th, when I heard the message on my answering machine that he had been found unconscious and unresponsive. Whatever problems I had with him in the past or unresolved issues still exist, they are meaningless now as well. He is pitiful, frail, dying, and it is all his fault. So how is he any different than the rest of us before God. We can never get what was lost to our poor decisions and choices back, but we can hold on with furious passion to the hope for our future. For me and my father, that future contains the moments that I have left with him now and the hope of eternity with him then. It is time to start getting into practice for the future relationship where all that is left in the end is faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Correlation Does Not Equal Cause [Bob]
John R. Lott Jr., of National Review offers an interesting report (August 13, 2007, p. 18) on the common claim among abortion supporters that abortion serves to lower crime rates. The data invoked to buttress this claim is the unexpected and rapid drop in violent crime that occurred between 1991 and 2000. Their argument goes like this:
- Aborted children are, by definition, "unwanted"
- Raised in an unwanted environment, children who could have been aborted will likely become criminals
- The 1973 Roe-v-Wade decision legalized abortion
- Children born subsequent to Roe reached adulthood in the early 1990s
- Because those children were "wanted" children, they were less likely to be criminals
- Therefore, violent crime dropped upon their reaching adulthood
First, so what? Even if it can be shown that more abortions lead to less violent crime, that fact would do nothing to answer the moral question around which the pro-life argument centers. The possibility of lowering crime rates sometime in the future does nothing to justify the taking of innocent human life now.
Second, it is amazing to see the height of the arrogance displayed by the deterministic assumption that the dismal, criminal future awaiting the "unwanted" rationalizes snuffing them out before birth. This makes Tom Cruise's "Pre-Crime" unit in Minority Report look tame by comparison. At least those pre-criminals were arrested and tried by those who claimed to know the criminal's future intentions. The aborted human fetus gets no such chance.
Third, there is no indication that the "violent crime" statistics include the millions of fetuses that were also victimized by premeditated homicide. Purely an oversight, I'm sure.Those observations aside, Lott shows that the entire abortion-reduces-crime argument is a myth anyway. While there are plenty of alternative explanations ...
higher arrest and conviction rates, longer prison sentences, "broken windows" police strategies, the death penalty ... right-to-carry laws, a strong economy, or the waning of the crack-cocaine epidemic... the real answer lies in the way abortion proponents choose to manipulate the data itself. The idea that abortion reduces crime stems from a 1966 Swedish study that compared the plight of the "unwanted" children of women who were denied abortions, with "wanted" children born at the same time. While there is no doubt that environment influences behavioral outcomes, Lott notes that the authors of the original report "never investigated whether the children's 'unwantedness' caused their problems, or were simply correlated with them."
This is a common deficiency in data interpretation. While two events may seem to be correlated, the appearance of connectedness does not necessarily imply causation. It is easy to correlate data, it is quite another thing to do the hard work of determining causation.
An example of this error that comes to my mind is an infamous one in which a Navy F-14 Tomcat crashed into the Pacific Ocean on approach to an aircraft carrier, killing its (equally infamous) pilot. The press (most notably Peter Jennings) droned on about the bad fortune of the deceased pilot whose plane had crashed "because of engine failure." Yes, the F-14's engine had failed. That fact was correlated with the crash of the airplane and the death of its pilot. But what the press (and the Navy) failed to mention was what the rest of us Naval Aviators knew -- the F-14 is a two-seat airplane. The backseater of that fateful event not only survived, but was eyewitness to, and knew exactly how, the airplane's engine had failed. As it turned out, the cause of the engine failure was a pilot-induced error. The pilot had stalled the engine herself and failed at the basic aviation procedures meant to correct for such an engine failure. While the engine failure could be correlated with the crash, the actual cause was the pilot herself.
Back to the issue at hand. The aforementioned study took on a life of its own and became the cornerstone of the "abortion decreases crime" theory which later studies assumed to be true in interpreting their own data. But a closer look at the demographics in the data shows that abortion could not have been the cause of the drop in crime rates in the early 1990s. As Lott points out:
... murder rates began falling first among an older generation -- those over 26 -- born before Roe. It was only later that criminality among those born after Roe began to decline. (emphasis mine)Likewise, data from Canada shows that:
... while crime rates in both the United States and Canada began declining at the same time, the Canadian Supreme Court [did not strike] down limits on abortion nationwide until 1988.Note to data "correlators": The "unwanted" criminals were 3 years-old when violent crime started its decline north of the border.
In fact, Lott shows that rates of out-of-wedlock births and single-parent families soared after Roe for many reasons that have been documented elsewhere. Both of these have been shown to be causal factors in the likelihood of later criminal behavior. So, a closer look at the data indicates not only that the "abortion-decreases crime" theory is false, but that its exact opposite has been shown to be true. Increases in abortion actually increase crime.
Serge and Jay have been masterful in demonstrating the devious advertising, data manipulation and outright falsehoods that have been perpetrated by pro-abortion advocates. Here we have yet another example of the data collectors, interpreters and reporters making the data say whatever they want it to say.
Hey Dad, Turn Off the Radio! [Serge]
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to attend a Detroit Tiger's game with my soon to be 7 year old son and his grandfather. Comerica park is about a 2 hour drive from our home, and I expected to drive most of the way listening to my IPod as my son quietly took in some Disney movie in the backseat (the trip must be greater than an hour for us to play a movie). I must admit, I was looking forward to some time with nothing but what I wanted to listen to.
Ten minutes into the trip, my son asked for me to put a movie in for him. We quickly realized that in our rush to get out of the house, we forgot to bring a DVD. My son simply said, "Oh well Dad, I guess we are going to have to talk for the whole time." Two hours conversing with a seven year old.
It was great.
We talked about what he likes and doesn't like about being home schooled. A slowdown at a construction site turned into a discussion about what each of those trucks do, and how his Dad sometimes feels he could trade in his surgical career just to run that large backhoe. We talked about the time my Dad took me to Tiger Stadium when I was young and how we sat through a rain out and punched All Star ballots for hours. I challenged him with math problems, including how much larger Comerica Park is than Dow Diamond, where we frequently watch minor league baseball. When it began to rain for earnest, we both prayed that the game would be played, but acknowledged that there were things far more important, including the time we were sharing.
The game did get played, and we had good seats (see picture). The Tigers stunk up the place, but that really didn't matter much. The highlight of the whole trip for me was not watching the game or even riding the baseball ferris wheel. The highlight was the trip down.
I'm going to be forgetting the DVD and neglecting to turn on the radio more often.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
More Michigan Stem Cell Insanity [Serge]
One of the reasons my blogging has been a bit sporadic is that I am preparing a talk regarding embryonic stem cell research and human cloning. Our Michigan Representative John Moolenaar has invited me to speak regarding this issue at a forum in Oscoda, Michigan next week. During my research, I often run across things like this published in the Detroit News that drive me nuts.
This is an article by A. Taubman regarding stem cell research in Michigan. Those outside of Michigan may not have heard the name, but Taubman is a wealthy real estate developer responsible for many malls in Michigan and across the country. Here is a quote:
According to his opinion piece, he is credible on this topic because 1) he sees a lot of doctors because he is old, 2) his doctors tell him of the difficulties of recruiting scientists in this state (I'm sure they mention this right after the old prostate exam). Taubman then goes right for the big lie:
I could go on but I've had enough. This is the state of the debate regarding this issue today. If their case is so strong, why the need to tell falsehoods?
This is an article by A. Taubman regarding stem cell research in Michigan. Those outside of Michigan may not have heard the name, but Taubman is a wealthy real estate developer responsible for many malls in Michigan and across the country. Here is a quote:
My friends in the medical community (at 83, I'm one of their best customers) tell me that it's becoming increasingly difficult to recruit young chemists and medical researchers to our universities.
According to his opinion piece, he is credible on this topic because 1) he sees a lot of doctors because he is old, 2) his doctors tell him of the difficulties of recruiting scientists in this state (I'm sure they mention this right after the old prostate exam). Taubman then goes right for the big lie:
Why? In part, because embryonic stem cell research is essentially illegal in Michigan. Our researchers are permitted to work with stem cells from the tissue of adults, children, umbilical cords and developing fetuses. But the vast majority of scientists agree that stem cells from embryos, with the ability to reproduce themselves into any one of hundreds of cells found in the human body, hold the greatest promise.Essentially illegal? That would be surprising considering that the University of Michigan has an Center for Hes Research. In fact, embryonic stem cell research is legal and ongoing in this state, as long as human embryos are not destroyed. It is unfortunate for Mr. Taubman to tell this falsehood, but it unconscionable for the editors of the Detroit News to allow this to be published. Taubman continues:
The amazing medical breakthroughs made possible by embryonic stem cell research -- with the potential to improve the quality and length of our lives -- will happen somewhere else if Michigan continues to opt out.What amazing medical breakthroughs? As of this date, there have zero clinical trials on human beings from ESCR, let alone any "breakthroughs".
I could go on but I've had enough. This is the state of the debate regarding this issue today. If their case is so strong, why the need to tell falsehoods?
Why Only Prosecute the Doctor? [Serge]
Anna Quindlen poses this question in this piece in Newsweek magazine. Quindlen tries to place the pro-lifer in a tough dilemma - if we favor jail time for a woman who has had an abortion, we are cold-hearted animals. On the other hand, if we support the idea that doctors should be punished for performing abortion but we should have mercy on the woman who seeks one, we must not really believe that the human fetus is intrinsically valuable.
In this symposium on NRO, Hadley Arkes answers this much better than I can, so I will quote him directly. However, there are a few points that I have not seen brought up before that I wish to add.
Second, there is another reason why laws against abortion may be merciful to the mother. Although the number of illegal abortions that occur would probably be less than our pro-abortion choice opponents claim, it seems clear that some would occur. In that case there is a significant chance that women who received an illegal abortion would be at risk for serious medical complications. These complications would be best treated as quickly as possible in almost every case. If the law would mandate serious punishment for women who have illegal abortions, there would be a great disincentive to seeking medical care for any complication. It is reasonable to argue that the care of those who have made the poor decision to kill their child is paramount. Also, it is reasonable to hold the physician who caused these complications to a higher standard and to hold them primarily responsible for the injury.
One question that we need to address is what is our goal in crafting laws that would make abortion illegal? I believe our goal needs to be to save the greatest number of children while having compassion of women who are in a crisis pregnancy. Focusing our energy and legal punishments on the physician is the bast way to accomplish both goals.
HT: Evangelical Outpost
In this symposium on NRO, Hadley Arkes answers this much better than I can, so I will quote him directly. However, there are a few points that I have not seen brought up before that I wish to add.
Ms. Quindlen that the law does not need to invoke the harshest penalties for the sake of teaching moral lessons. The point may be made at times with gentler measures. In the tradition of legislating on abortion, a certain distinction was made out of prudence: On the one hand there may a young, unmarried woman, who finds herself pregnant, with the father of the child not standing with her. Abandoned by the man, and detached from her family, she may feel the burden of the crisis bearing on her alone, with the prospect of life-altering changes. On the other hand, there is the man trained in surgery, the professional who knows exactly what he is doing — he knows that he is destroying a human life, either by poisoning a child or dismembering it. And in perfect coolness and detachment, and at a nice price, he makes the killing of the innocent his office-work. Certain women may indeed be guilty of a callous willingness to destroy a child for the sake of their own self-interest. But the law makes a prudent, tempered choice when it makes the abortionist the target of its censure and brings solely upon him the weight of the punishment.Two additional points here. First, there is already legal precedent for punishing physicians who perform prohibited medical procedures regardless of the culpability of his patient. I'll use myself as an example. If a patient sought me out and convinced me to perform a procedure that I am not licensed to perform, I would be criminally guilty of practicing without a license. I would more than likely need to surrender my license to practice and my also face criminal charges that can end in jail time (see examples here). The patient, even if they sought me out and convinced me to perform he procedure on them, would not be liable for any charges. As a physician, my responsibility in these matters is far greater than the patient's for the very reasons Arkes explains.
Second, there is another reason why laws against abortion may be merciful to the mother. Although the number of illegal abortions that occur would probably be less than our pro-abortion choice opponents claim, it seems clear that some would occur. In that case there is a significant chance that women who received an illegal abortion would be at risk for serious medical complications. These complications would be best treated as quickly as possible in almost every case. If the law would mandate serious punishment for women who have illegal abortions, there would be a great disincentive to seeking medical care for any complication. It is reasonable to argue that the care of those who have made the poor decision to kill their child is paramount. Also, it is reasonable to hold the physician who caused these complications to a higher standard and to hold them primarily responsible for the injury.
One question that we need to address is what is our goal in crafting laws that would make abortion illegal? I believe our goal needs to be to save the greatest number of children while having compassion of women who are in a crisis pregnancy. Focusing our energy and legal punishments on the physician is the bast way to accomplish both goals.
HT: Evangelical Outpost
Friday, August 3, 2007
Looking for Straw Men in a Mountain of Straw [Jay]
JivinJehoshaphat linked to this post by “Beket” at DailyKos. Beket, an abortionist, apparently confuses Jivin for someone who accused him of being demon possessed or at least for managing a Blog where such an accusation was leveled. I have still not seen where the demon possessed comment came from, but to associate that comment with Jivin is utterly ridiculous and deplorable in its own right. Even if a commenter leveled such a charge somewhere, it is the weakest sort of “guilt by association” argument to besmirch Jivin’s character as a result.
That said, Beket has developed an interesting defense against criticism with this post. This plodding, nearly 7,000 word rant against organized religion in general and the Catholic Church specifically is so filled with bad arguments, inaccuracies, and misunderstandings that it ought to invite easy criticism. The problem is that in order to sort them out one must be willing to endure a painful explosion of unnecessary adverbs, distracting run on sentences, and a torturous section on how he was shunned as a child in Texas for intellectually dismissing his belief in Santa Claus. It would take someone willing to publish an equally long response to address the sum total of problems. That would be unfair to those who dedicated themselves to staying awake during the workday.
Some quick issues that I would like to address. Becket is incredibly inconsistent. For example, he repeatedly excoriates religious folk for having an arrogant certainty of the nature and existence of God. Then he goes on to say things like this:
Thusly, the systems of belief and superstition known as religion were born out of the human mind and elaborated upon through many centuries of richly imaginative folklore, ritual, and art.
I've found that generally, in regard to matters beyond the mundane and practical, believers do not think, and thinkers do not believe.
Perhaps the main reason religious dogma has survived and flourished through the ages of human history is that chieftains, rulers, and monarchs, both secular and sectarian, found the fear of imaginary "gods" so useful as a means of maintaining control over subjected masses of people by perpetuating myths of their own "divine" selection or guidance - exactly the manner in which, and the reason, religious belief is kept alive today.
He does sound certain that God does not exist and that the belief in God is irrational. But it is the certainty and the arrogant presumption that others ought to act according to our beliefs that bohers him most right? Let see:
No human and no human institution, religion, or philosophy is infallible, perfect, or above criticism - and nothing is more contrary to, and irreconcilable with, the fundamental ideals and principles of the United States of America than attempts to force upon others dogmatic and absolute religious beliefs and philosophies about what to think and how to behave.
So he categorically believes that it is wrong to force your beliefs on others and law ought to be crafted and protected solely from this philosophical perspective. But that is exactly the arrogant presumption that he hates in pro-lifers.
He claims that pro-lifers believe that abortion is immoral because of the presence of a soul in the unborn and that all life is God created and therefore precious. Although I agree with the latter part of that assertion, I have never read in any of Dr. Beckwith’s, Greg Koukl’s, or Scott Klusendorf’s arguments nor written in any of my own posts that the presence of the soul is material to the question of the morality of abortion. I have seen and made the argument that the substance or nature of the unborn as a human being affords the unborn protection under the law and that unnecessarily killing human beings is morally wrong. This is not stripping one group of people, women, of a right but justly including another group of people, the unborn, in the most basic and fundamental right that we already acknowledge to exist. That is the right for innocent human beings to live. The right to not have your life unnecessarily terminated.
Beket radically misunderstands the cosmological and the teleological arguments for the existence of God and misrepresents them in his post. He makes critical errors that either indicate he has not thoroughly researched this topic or is out of his element in addressing them. It is odd how people that respect the amount of study it takes to become a medical doctor and the expertise necessary to practice medicine routinely insult theologians and philosophers by wading uninvited into these fields and making a bloody mess of things as they do so.
As quickly as possible, the first cause argument is now most often championed in the form of Dr. William Lane Craig’s Kalam Cosmological argument. It says that anything that began to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore the universe has a cause. This makes Becket’s objection that the causal agent lacks a cause irrelevant as the causal being in question is by nature the necessary being of the universe and never began to exist.
The teleological argument is not based on the appearance of design in the human body, but the appearance of fine tuning in the initial conditions of the universe that are responsible for creating a life producing and sustaining environment. Perhaps he is confusing this with Behe’s irreducible complexity arguments. Either way, he does not fairly represent either idea and one must assume he is unaware of the actual arguments versus his gross misrepresentation.
He seems to believe that by teaching that people ought to wait until marriage to have consensual monogamous sex the Catholic Church is responsible for the AIDS/HIV pandemic. It hard to imagine how that is reasonable considering if the world were taking those teachings seriously many of the ills that bother Beket would be less severe. He also rails against the Catholic Church for the Inquisition and not apologizing for executing Bruno. That is helpful in the debate over abortion.
There are so many strange things in this voluminous post. It includes but is not limited to his apparent argument that human life is no more precious in creation than the life of a chimpanzee, that religion is responsible for global misery and overpopulation, the always lovely myth of a plague of back alley abortions prior to Roe v. Wade, and his biblical exegesis on abortion. There is far too much to fully address. One very odd point for me is that this courageous and bold attack on Catholicism inspired by the imagined slight from a non-Catholic blogger is posted under a pseudonym. That is very courageous indeed.
That said, Beket has developed an interesting defense against criticism with this post. This plodding, nearly 7,000 word rant against organized religion in general and the Catholic Church specifically is so filled with bad arguments, inaccuracies, and misunderstandings that it ought to invite easy criticism. The problem is that in order to sort them out one must be willing to endure a painful explosion of unnecessary adverbs, distracting run on sentences, and a torturous section on how he was shunned as a child in Texas for intellectually dismissing his belief in Santa Claus. It would take someone willing to publish an equally long response to address the sum total of problems. That would be unfair to those who dedicated themselves to staying awake during the workday.
Some quick issues that I would like to address. Becket is incredibly inconsistent. For example, he repeatedly excoriates religious folk for having an arrogant certainty of the nature and existence of God. Then he goes on to say things like this:
Thusly, the systems of belief and superstition known as religion were born out of the human mind and elaborated upon through many centuries of richly imaginative folklore, ritual, and art.
I've found that generally, in regard to matters beyond the mundane and practical, believers do not think, and thinkers do not believe.
Perhaps the main reason religious dogma has survived and flourished through the ages of human history is that chieftains, rulers, and monarchs, both secular and sectarian, found the fear of imaginary "gods" so useful as a means of maintaining control over subjected masses of people by perpetuating myths of their own "divine" selection or guidance - exactly the manner in which, and the reason, religious belief is kept alive today.
He does sound certain that God does not exist and that the belief in God is irrational. But it is the certainty and the arrogant presumption that others ought to act according to our beliefs that bohers him most right? Let see:
No human and no human institution, religion, or philosophy is infallible, perfect, or above criticism - and nothing is more contrary to, and irreconcilable with, the fundamental ideals and principles of the United States of America than attempts to force upon others dogmatic and absolute religious beliefs and philosophies about what to think and how to behave.
So he categorically believes that it is wrong to force your beliefs on others and law ought to be crafted and protected solely from this philosophical perspective. But that is exactly the arrogant presumption that he hates in pro-lifers.
He claims that pro-lifers believe that abortion is immoral because of the presence of a soul in the unborn and that all life is God created and therefore precious. Although I agree with the latter part of that assertion, I have never read in any of Dr. Beckwith’s, Greg Koukl’s, or Scott Klusendorf’s arguments nor written in any of my own posts that the presence of the soul is material to the question of the morality of abortion. I have seen and made the argument that the substance or nature of the unborn as a human being affords the unborn protection under the law and that unnecessarily killing human beings is morally wrong. This is not stripping one group of people, women, of a right but justly including another group of people, the unborn, in the most basic and fundamental right that we already acknowledge to exist. That is the right for innocent human beings to live. The right to not have your life unnecessarily terminated.
Beket radically misunderstands the cosmological and the teleological arguments for the existence of God and misrepresents them in his post. He makes critical errors that either indicate he has not thoroughly researched this topic or is out of his element in addressing them. It is odd how people that respect the amount of study it takes to become a medical doctor and the expertise necessary to practice medicine routinely insult theologians and philosophers by wading uninvited into these fields and making a bloody mess of things as they do so.
As quickly as possible, the first cause argument is now most often championed in the form of Dr. William Lane Craig’s Kalam Cosmological argument. It says that anything that began to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore the universe has a cause. This makes Becket’s objection that the causal agent lacks a cause irrelevant as the causal being in question is by nature the necessary being of the universe and never began to exist.
The teleological argument is not based on the appearance of design in the human body, but the appearance of fine tuning in the initial conditions of the universe that are responsible for creating a life producing and sustaining environment. Perhaps he is confusing this with Behe’s irreducible complexity arguments. Either way, he does not fairly represent either idea and one must assume he is unaware of the actual arguments versus his gross misrepresentation.
He seems to believe that by teaching that people ought to wait until marriage to have consensual monogamous sex the Catholic Church is responsible for the AIDS/HIV pandemic. It hard to imagine how that is reasonable considering if the world were taking those teachings seriously many of the ills that bother Beket would be less severe. He also rails against the Catholic Church for the Inquisition and not apologizing for executing Bruno. That is helpful in the debate over abortion.
There are so many strange things in this voluminous post. It includes but is not limited to his apparent argument that human life is no more precious in creation than the life of a chimpanzee, that religion is responsible for global misery and overpopulation, the always lovely myth of a plague of back alley abortions prior to Roe v. Wade, and his biblical exegesis on abortion. There is far too much to fully address. One very odd point for me is that this courageous and bold attack on Catholicism inspired by the imagined slight from a non-Catholic blogger is posted under a pseudonym. That is very courageous indeed.
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