The Atheist’s Way: makes kids burn churches?

Sorry for the paucity of blog posts!

The other day I read on The Friendly Atheist and the news that there has been a recent rash of 11 church fires caused by arsonists.

This is, of course, very unfortunate. What I think is also unfortunate is the way some specific pieces of literature found in the home of the girlfriend of one of the arsonists has been handled.

Apparently much evidence was seized from the homes of the arsonists as well as the homes of anyone linked to the arsonists. One of the things seized was The Atheist's Way: Living Well Without Gods by Eric Maisel. This less than 200 page book has been the subject of news headlines everywhere: "Suspect in Texas Church Fires Reportedly Had Books on Atheism", Atheism books found in home of church fire suspect, "Atheist books indicated in charges of Arson."

Of course, my guess is that the main reason a headline might be written in this way is that it preys upon people's prejudices. Those prejudices being: Christians are good moral people and atheists are immoral, bad people. Christians (by the prejudicial definition) would never burn down a church, but atheists might. If you already think atheists are immoral, then headlines like these will only serve to reinforce your hatred and bigotry. Clearly, mentioning that an atheist book was found at the home of an arsonist is meant to lead the reader to believe that the books are linked to the aforementioned acts of arson. This is why we don't see headlines like, "Book on Cats found in home of church fire suspect" or, "Suspect in Texas church Fires Reportedly Had Bags of Ruffles."

What these headlines and most of the news stories associated with the arson do not mention is that 3 other books were also seized from linked homes.

If I were an investigator and I wanted to link a certain book to violence, I might read said books and see if any of the books advocate or promote violence.

I have a copy of The Atheist's Way, and can promise you that it does not advocate violence, arson, or anything other than upholding cherished values, and making your own ethics rather than parroting the ethics of someone else. The core of the book's moral philosophy is "expressing humanist values such as justice and fairness in a context of competing rights and interests, conflicting points of view, and complex circumstances." It advocates teaching moral philosophy to children by giving them the rare opportunity to think about ethics. I've also read about 20 books on atheism, and none of them advocate violence, arson, or the destruction of property. Ever. The only reason one might suspect that a book on atheism is linked to acts of arson can only be a matter of prejudice.

The other books, on the other hand, actually do advocate such violence. In these book, the main character – who is portrayed as someone readers should be as much like as possible, burns cities to the ground. He burns people to death. He explicitly commands that people be burned to death. The book also advocates praying that your enemies will burn to death.

If I were an investigator, I'd link the book that actually advocated setting buildings and people on fire to the arsonists rather than the book that advocates teaching children moral philosophy. 

So which book did these arsonists have three copies of? The Bible. In the bible, God burns cities, burns people, commands his followers to burn people, and advocates praying that your enemies be burned. This kind of thing just doesn't occur in an atheist book.

It makes me sad. Atheists are not bad people. They are not more likely to burn down a church than a theist. These headlines only serve to reinforce hatred towards people who are just people.

Pants on Fire

I stumbled upon this article from Bodie Hodge of Answers in Genesis from a couple months back.  It asks the classic yet seemingly simple question of whether it's ethical to lie to Nazi soldiers in order to save a hiding Jewish family.

For most of us, including the vast majority of Christians (which I'll get to in a moment), I think that this is a pretty easy answer - the simple act of lying is nowhere near as unethical as directly endangering the lives of innocent people.  Amazingly, AIG disagrees:

The most common example sent to me was envisioning the Holocaust and being placed in the position of lying to potentially protect someone’s life. Like most, if placed in such a difficult situation, it would be very difficult. In fact, I could never be sure what I would do, especially if it were a loved one.

Ah, it would be much easier to endanger the life of someone that you didn't know very well.  Good to know.

But consider for a moment that we are all already sentenced to die because we are sinners (Romans 5:12). It is going to happen regardless. If a lie helps keep someone alive for a matter of moments compared to eternity, was the lie, which is high treason against the Creator, worth it?

It would be like sitting in a cell on death row and when the guards come to take your roommate to the electric chair, you lie to the guards and say you don’t know where the person went—while your roommate is hiding under their covers on the bed. Does it really help?

So there we have it.  Knowingly causing the death of one or more innocent people is insignificant to offending God.  As he points out, scripture is pretty clear on these priorities, after all.

I don't think I need to explain in much detail what's so wrong with this worldview.  Thankfully, Hodge himself admits that such an action seems wrong to him, and that he's not at all certain what he would do if he found himself with such a choice.  I sincerely hope that he never finds himself in such a position, and that if he does, he chooses the ethical course, and discards his God's wishes entirely.

He offers some other examples:

Stephen in Acts 6–7 preached Christ, and men came against him. This culminated with a question by the high priest in Acts 7:1 who said: “Are these things so?”

At this point, Stephen could have done a “righteous lie” to save his life so that he could have many more years to preach the gospel. However, Stephen laid a long and appropriate foundation for Christ—then preached Christ. And they killed him.

Obviously, I strongly doubt that this story took place exactly as it is portrayed.  If we give it the benefit of the doubt, however, I still think that it's a pretty easy answer, especially considering that Hodge concludes that good came from Stephen's death - his martyrdom to the Christian cause.

Martyrs can be a source of great good, if a person's life is given in service to a worthy cause.  The Revolutionary War, the Civil War and abolition of slavery, various civil rights movement, etc. are all good nominees for such causes.

I don't think that making people Christian is such a cause.

To put it bluntly, Stephen lost his life for almost nothing.  Whatever positive effect could have occurred as a result of his death, I conclude that such hypothetical benefits are not greater than his worth as a person, and the lives of his family and friends.

I find it telling that Hodge specifically states that the good that would have come from Stephen lying to save his own life would come from his continued preaching and proselytizing.  There's no mention of Stephen's own worth, or the effect on his loved ones.

Also, do I even need to say it?  While we (arguably, potentially) have a right to choose to be a martyr, even in a cause of questionable worth, we clearly have no right to martyr other people to our cause.  He could have even responded to the Nazis-hunting-for-hiding-Jews example with something about the value of those lives as martyrs to the cause of rallying support for the Nazi's defeat.  He doesn't, though, he only considers the value of their lives vs. his religious doctrine.

Later in the article, even more disturbingly, he himself has to resort to lying outright about a passage in Exodus, to desperately try and prove his point that God always condemns lying, even to save innocent life (!).

In summary, Pharaoh has decreed to the Hebrew midwives that they put to death all male children that they deliver.  They disobey, and when Pharaoh asks them why the cock they've got all these newborn Hebrew cocks running around, the midwives tell him that the Hebrew women are just giving birth really, really fast, too quickly for the midwives to show up.  God wholeheartedly approves of this falsehood, and blesses the midwives for it by multiplying the Hebrew people.

Hodge claims that the midwives did not lie.  His alternate explanation of the passage is that the midwives simply told Hebrew women that their sons would be in danger unless they managed to give birth very quickly, on their own, without a midwife, and they somehow managed to do so.  Okay, okay, stop laughing.  He also suggests that the midwives just took a really long time to get to a woman in labor.  Of course, this would also mean that the midwives basically lied to Pharaoh (can anyone really claim with a straight face that deliberately dragging their feet and then claiming that Hebrew babies are like greased lightning would not be completely deceptive?).

Both possible explanations suffer from one glaring drawback, hence the clear fact that Hodge has lied about what the Bible says; the Bible passage clearly states that the midwives didn't simply show up late:  "But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the male children alive."

This leads me directly to my main point - the Bible contradicts itself on this matter (no surprise there, I suppose . . .), but we have a Christian who, I think, knows what's right, as shown by his hesitation to hand over an innocent family to be murdered.  However, he has concluded with all his rational faculties that the opposite is true - that lying to Nazis is a greater evil than letting an innocent family die.  People, both religious and nonreligious alike, are quick to point out that many people would oppose gay rights based on their own bigotry regardless of whether they had religious doctrine to fuel it.  That is absolutely not what we have in this case - Hodge has reached this grossly immoral conclusion exactly as a result of his religious doctrine.*

*Note that this last paragraph is completely philosophical in nature, and actually only represents what I sincerely hope to be the case.  It is entirely possible that Hodge is, in fact, a violently bigoted closet-Nazi anti-Semite.  I suppose we'll never know . . .

Interview with Ray Comfort: Discussion

After several days off for the holidays, we're back to discuss some of Ray Comfort's ideas that we saw in his e-interview that he was kind enough to provide for us.

The first question observed that many Christians don't recognize Ray Comfort's name, and asked if he was possibly more famous among atheists.  His reply:

Not every Christian watches TV or reads books. However, it seems that most atheists (thanks the Richard Dawkins and others) are pretty familiar with the brainless idiot known as "banana-man."

It's not just Comfort, though; if you name Lee Strobel, Josh McDowell, William Lane Craig, etc., I wouldn't be at all surprised to find a higher proportion of atheists recognizing these names than Christians.  I can't cite hard data here, so this is just speculation rather than observation, but bear with me.

Two possible perspectives on this possibility.  From my perspective as an atheist, it seems to be the case that self-described "atheists" as a group are self-selecting for people who seek out other perspectives and willingly challenge even widely-held opinions.  In a culture like America, so saturated with religious and spiritual belief, people who reject religious and spiritual claims are clearly far less likely to simply "go with the flow" and accept the perspective of their culture.  This is not to say that all atheists are shining beacons of rationality, incapable of error - far from it (there are certain conspiracy theorist nutjobs I could mention, and there's always Ayn Rand . . .).  Even these individuals, though, are still more likely, as a rule, to actively familiarize themselves with differing perspectives.

Of course, the common theist has a simple response; we atheists (or any other culturally non-conformist label) are clearly quite convinced that we're wrong on some level, and we are "seeking answers" not because we want to be certain that we're not mistaken, but because we actually believe that we are mistaken.  When Ziztur and I visit different churches, on occasion we will politely inform church-goers who ask about us that we're atheists.  Far and away, the most common response we hear is that we've found ourselves in the pew because we are being "called" or "led" to search for God.  To this, all I can say is that in my own limited experience, such church services or apologetic books are no more convincing to we atheists than the "new atheist" books are to your average theist.  After many churches and many books, our atheism is, if anything, is less dispute than it ever was.

The next question was, seemingly, an extremely simple theological question; it asked Comfort to define "the Gospel."

In a nutshell--that Christ died for our sins and rose again on the third day. The word "gospel" means good news, and the gospel doesn't make sense until we see why we need it, in the same way the good news of a cure makes no sense until we understand that we have a disease. The terminal disease is sin. If it's allowed to take its course, it will not only kill us, it will justly take us to a terrible place of punishment called "Hell"--because each of us has violated God's Law (the Ten Commandments). He sees lust as adultery and hatred as murder. He is morally perfect, and that leaves us all in big trouble. The good news is that God is rich in mercy, became a human being, and took our punishment upon Himself. That means, because Jesus paid our fine and rose again from the dead, God can legally let us walk out of the courtroom. He can forgive us and let us live. Our case can be dismissed upon repentance and trust in the Savior. The good news is that any of us can have everlasting life. Read the Gospel of John for details.

Interestingly, this "Gospel story" is possibly the single largest barrier to my ever becoming a Christian (and that's saying something, considering all the other reasons I could name).  To put it simply, if I tell you that this season's particular strain of the flu could be very nasty, and that you should get vaccinated ASAP, I can explain why.  If you ask, in all innocence, "So this flu thing . . . is that bad?  Why?"  I can explain that the flu could give you headaches, muscle aches, a cough, and just generally make you feel like crap, and that a few people who are particularly susceptible can even die from it if they catch it from you.  Now, here's the important part - if you ask, "Why does the flu do that?" I could answer that it's simply a result of how the flu virus reproduces with the living cells in your body.  I could say that the flu doesn't have a mind, and that if it did, it would be wrong for the flu virus to hurt and kill people like it does.  Thus, it's easy to understand why you should get vaccinated (in theory, anyway . . .).

I should mention, first of all, that not all Christians believe in a literal hell, to their immense credit.  With or without this traditionalist theology, though, the Gospel story raises more questions than it answers.  Why does God feel the need to punish us with eternal torture simply for disbelieving in him?  Why is there such a harsh penalty for having lustful thoughts, especially when every single human being has lustful thoughts, without exception?  Even without a literal hell, are "anger" and "lustful thoughts" still sins?  Who should rationally be held responsible for lustful thoughts or anger being universal amongst human beings, us or the being(s) who created us?

Additionally, how does the death of Jesus Christ absolve us of our crimes?  I've noticed that whenever Comfort discusses our "criminal actions" as sinners, he almost always uses the analogy of a legal fine being paid for us so that our case can be thrown out of court.  I would have thought that it's obvious why this analogy isn't convincing to non-believers:  If a crime of any significant severity is committed, the court doesn't just administer a simple fine - the offender goes to prison.  If hell is an appropriate punishment for sin, then the analogy of a legal fine is grossly inaccurate (in fact, there really is no good comparison at all, because in America we don't even punish our very worst criminals by torturing them to death, which is still far more humane than the traditional concept of hell).  Perhaps the closest we can come is the death sentence, or in societies that don't even permit the death sentence on ethical grounds, perhaps life imprisonment without any possibility of parole.  Why doesn't Comfort use these punishments as an illustration of the punishment we deserve for our sin?  Why does he use the very lightest punishment that our system has for any crime, a mere fine?  It's possible for a person to pay a fine for someone else, simply because there's no good way to make sure that the guilty person pays it themselves.  A prison sentence, to say nothing of a death sentence, on the other hand, obviously must always be paid by the person who committed the crime. 

So, there's one of the single, largest questions I have about Christianity.  It seems to me that the very first principle of anything resembling justice is that you punish the person who actually committed the immoral act, and do not punish someone else in their place.  Imagine a society built around the principle that a person who commits a wrongful act cannot atone for their own wrongdoing, and the only way for justice to be served is for an innocent person to be punished ( and that the more innocent the punished person is, the more righteous and just the punishment will be).  If this society does every single other thing with their courts, prison system, and police force correctly, they are still doing nothing correctly.  They could get justice right in every single other way, and would still basically have a completely unjust society.  This Christian, Gospel idea of wrongdoers being incapable of atoning for their immoral actions and instead being redeemed by the punishment of a completely innocent person is not simply incorrect justice, it is not merely mistaken justice, it is the polar goddamned opposite of justice.

More about Ray Comfort coming soon.  Obviously, I would love for Ray to hang out here and reply to our perspective, but I totally understand that he's very, very busy, so I won't see his absence as proof that he can't answer our questions.  Of course, our standard modus operandi is to welcome any dissenting opinion, so I look forward to anyone who can shed some light on this seeming contradiction.  That last question, in particular, about Gospel justice has vexed me all my life.

3H1P: Death Penalty

3H1P is a blogging project wherein three heathens (Ziztur, Flimsy and Petter) and one pastor (Keith) answer questions posed by readers of the blog and discuss various issues related to religion, philosophy, science, etc. If you have a question that you'd like to see answered by 3H1P, ask it in the comment box. We promise we'll probably get to it. The following comment is asked by David B. Ellis, a long time reader/commenter of this blog, who apparently has 3 blogs of his own. It is answered (sort of) by Ziztur.

1. Do you advocate the death penalty? Why or why not?

    -David B. Ellis

First, let's talk about what exactly the death penalty is, in the context of United States law:

In the US, federal policy reserves capital punishment for murder, treason or espionage. Of the 38 states that allow capital punishment, it is done primarily for murder of varying severities. I don't think people should die because they've committed an act of treason or espionage, and the reasons behind why someone might commit treason or espionage may or may not be moral (think of committing treason against the Nazi party…), so I'll focus on capital punishment for murder, and ignore the other reasons for capital punishment for now.

Here are some of the common justifications for advocating the death penalty for murder:

1. The death penalty serves as a deterrent to crime.
   

Bullshit. States without the death penalty have constantly lower murder rates. Clearly people are not being deterred.

1. It improves the community by making sure that convicted criminals do not offend again.
   

Bullshit. There are other ways of doing that which do not involve killing people.

1. It provides closure to surviving victims or loved ones.
   

Bullshit. "Closure" is not a commodity that should be purchased with death. Really. If someone murdered Flimsy in his sleep, I would surely want them to die. But this is an emotional reaction and not a rational reaction.

1. And eye for an eye is just.
   

Maybe. I don't find this argument very compelling either. Without even arguing for whether or not "eye for eye" is just or not, one can point out that coupling the permanence of death the with capacity for humans to make mistakes, there is a very real possibility that we may, in the course of convicting someone and sentencing them to death, wrongly kill someone. If we take the life of someone, we've taken all that they have away from them, forever. Personally, I think that a life in prison is a worse fate than death.

1. It's expensive to keep people in prison forever. It therefore costs less to eliminate murderers from society.
   

One could argue that it's not.

So basically, I do not find the arguments for the death penalty compelling, and so I do not advocate the death penalty.

3H1P: Keith on morality of witnesses

3H1P is a blogging project wherein three heathens (Ziztur, Flimsy and Petter) and one pastor (Keith) answer questions posed by readers of the blog and discuss various issues related to religion, philosophy, science, etc. If you have a question that you'd like to see answered by 3H1P, ask it in the comment box. We promise we'll probably get to it. The following comment is asked by Lord Runolfr, a long time reader/commenter of this blog (he even wrote a guest post here, just because he felt like it). It is answered (sort of) by Keith.

I guess this is as much for Pastor Keith as anyone.

There was a very serious crime a few weeks ago, right around Halloween: a high school girl was assaulted by a gang outside of a dance. I remember hearing it discussed on a talk radio show while I was driving through Birmingham.

Leaving aside the crime itself and how the criminals should be treated, the host expressed his outrage at the fact that there were a dozen or more witnesses to the crime who did nothing about it. Their inaction left him completely flabbergasted.

If it's morally wrong for people who are witnesses to a crime to do nothing whatsoever to stop it, what about God?

If...

1) You believe God exists, and

2) You believe God has the power to intervene in human affairs, and

3) God is aware of essentially everything happening on Earth, and

4) You believe that taking some kind of action to stop a horrible crime in progress is the morally correct thing to do,...

... then why consider God any sort of moral authority when He routinely allows horrible crimes to occur without taking any action?

-Lord Runolfr

Lord Runolfr,

Thanks for the good question. The short answer is this: I believe that this universe was created to provide objective witness to the power of love. If I, as a part of this world, interfere at my own risk to save another … I have helped further the purpose of this world's existence. If God, as not part of this world, interferes to stop an evil … He would actually invalidate the world's objectivity. This is why it is immoral for me to fail to stop the injustices I witness, and not immoral for God to witness injustices and not immediately intervene.

Since I'm offering a version of the argument from free will, let me dive deeper into this question by responding to one of Flimsyman's comments in the Ziztur's initial post on the morality of witness. I will respond to Flimsy from this point out, but hopefully eavesdropping will help answer your question in more detail. Thanks!

Flimsyman said:

"The most annoying thing, to me, about the problem of evil is the inevitable theist response - "free will." Seriously, I've never heard a theist respond to the problem of evil with anything other than "free will." The claim is that God must allow human beings to commit such immoral acts because if he infringed upon our free will by stopping us, moral right and wrong would lose all meaning, since we could never choose to perform an immoral act.

Two obvious responses to this theology: Firstly, it doesn't address all the voluminous "natural" evil, not caused by human action, that occurs - everything from rarities like earthquakes and erupting volcanoes to relatively common diseases and birth defects. Secondly, none of these theists believe that the government or police are removing all meaning from moral right and wrong by preventing criminals from committing crime. What . . . do people actually trust the government to intervene in such a way that our free will is preserved, yet believe that God is incapable of finding a solution himself?"

Flimsy,

I respectfully disagree with your counter to the argument that free will. First, I don't consider the danger of removing free will being that it robs morality of its meaning ... rather I consider the problem with removing free will is that this world would no longer be objective. Certainly, the interference of a deity to prevent evil would violate the objectivity of this world.

Second, your first point suggested that it does not account for "all the voluminous "natural" evil, not caused by human action, that occurs." I do not think it is possible to prove that human action could not have spawned "natural" evil over the past years and years and years of human decision (for example, global warming is considered by many to be a man-caused action ... yet could be considered a "natural" evil in a couple hundred years or sooner).

Third, law enforcement can subjectively put a stop to evil because they are participants within this universe. In no way would this disqualify the objectivity of this world.

Finally, I have never heard a Christian say that God will never deal with evil. In fact, nearly all (if not all) forms of Christianity point to a time where God will put an end to evil and usher in a new world - one that is subjectively moral in the way you suggest this world should be. In that world, there will be no death, disaster, etc. If this proves true, God's morality is intact … for surely it is not immoral to be unable to stop an injustice, and also not immoral to stop that injustice the moment one is able.

I cannot speak for other Christians, and I am also confident that the argument from free will has been thrown at you before as an excuse to not wrestle more deeply with the problem of evil in this world. However, we know each other well enough for you to know that I am legitimately persuaded that the reason that God does not interfere with specific occurrences of evil is that this world was created to provide an objective testimony to the power of love … and that I neither turn a blind eye to or remain unaware of the evils that I run into in this world. One of the reasons that I give myself to the causes I do is that I believe that we have also been given the free will to do good. Bridging gaps between theists & atheists is one of the many ways we both try to use the life we have on this earth to make the world better. Thanks for letting me partner with you guys in doing that. One thing we all agree on is that human inaction in the face of injustice, misunderstanding, or hatred is not the path for us … whether theist or atheist. And to me, that's moral. Thanks!

The Manhattan Declaration; Part 2

So the first part of this document declares boldly and without reservation that it was Christianity and Christianity alone that was responsible for abolition, civil rights, and most laughably of all, women's suffrage.  Ziztur and I discussed this last night, and she pointed out that such a statement could be technically true in one sense, that Christians have always constituted an overwhelming majority in America.  Thus, it wouldn't actually be possible for any of these events to occur unless they received at least some significant support from the Christian majority.

Of course, this doesn't say anything about whether Christianity was the force that originally championed these societal changes.  To my mind, it's clear that if abolition, civil rights, women's suffrage, gay rights, etc. are gates of progress that America passes through, then Christianity (as an overwhelming majority of the population) holds the key to each gate.  Yes, Christianity eventually unlocked each of these gates one by one, but the had to be dragged kicking and screaming to each one, complaining the whole time.

Obviously, Christians will strongly disagree with the conclusion that their religion seems to be intrinsically resistant to ethical, societal progress.  Here's my honest question:  If Christianity was such a champion of these specific ethical causes, then why did they continue to exist for almost two millennium after Jesus Christ?  In contrast, The United States of America, clearly founded as a Secular Humanist nation, began seriously considering these important issues right off the bat, and beginning to accomplish these goals in less than a century.

(/rant)

In any event, the main point of the Manhattan Declaration is three issues.  The first is abortion.  I won't ramble on about it for too long, for the simple reason that the Declaration doesn't even attempt to defend it's view.  I have nothing to argue against.

"A culture of death inevitably cheapens life in all its stages and conditions by promoting the belief that lives that are imperfect, immature or inconvenient are discardable."

Basically, the Declaration simply states, over and over again, that they "affirm" that killing people is wrong, and so abortion is too.  This is often the form that arguments against abortion take.  As an aside, I freely admit that pro-choice arguments often take a similar form - people will simply assert that abortion is a woman's reproductive right, and how dare people take that right away.  I'm not saying that such declarations, on either side of the issue, are wrong, because not everybody always speaks specifically to persuade those who disagree.  If you're pro-choice and giving a talk to a pro-choice crowd, of course you won't get into the details of why abortion isn't morally evil.  In the same way, the Manhattan Declaration doesn't exactly seem to be intended for an audience of Secular Humanists, so it's nothing wrong with it, per se . . .

Just be aware, if you're pro-life, and you are trying to persuade others of your opinion, it might seem obvious to you that abortion is murdering an innocent person, but you will never convince a pro-choice person of this simply by stating it.  I know it's hard to believe, but no, really, we pro-choice folks don't sit around talking about how it's stupid that homicide is against the law, about how murdering innocent people should be everybody's right.  We agree with you that killing innocent people is grossly immoral.  We don't agree that a fetus should rationally be considered a "person" (or some variation of this argument).

There's some other interesting bits in this first point about abortion:

"The President says that he wants to reduce the "need" for abortion - a commendable goal. But he has also pledged to make abortion more easily and widely available . . ."

I agree, yet it is exactly conservative Christians in America who are directly combating this goal by opposing contraception and science-based sex education.  Entertainingly, the Manhattan Declaration itself does exactly that, later on, in a different point.  I'll get to that in a future post.

"As predicted by many prescient persons, the cheapening of life that began with abortion has now metastasized."

This is the beginning of long rant about several different topics, starting with embryonic stem cells.  I'll just comment briefly on each one.  Regarding stem cells, if you say that a late-term fetus should rationally be considered a "person," I'll respectfully disagree.  If you say that a just-fertilized human egg should be considered a person, . . . honestly?  I'll probably question your sanity and basic powers of reason.  To claim that a clump of cells too small to see with the naked eye is so definitively a "person" that we should not use said clumps to save or improve countless innocent lives is bordering on certifiable.

"At the other end of life, an increasingly powerful movement to promote assisted suicide and "voluntary" euthanasia threatens the lives of vulnerable elderly and disabled persons."

Only if, in your view, people should not have the freedom to end their life on their own terms, even if they are in extreme pain and/or have a chronic, incurable condition.  As usual, no rational explanation for this stance is provided, nor have I ever heard one.

I'll quote the entire last paragraph, beginning with universal, humanistic morality that we can all agree with, and then degenerating into a simple restatement of previous claims:

"Our concern is not confined to our own nation.  Around the globe, we are witnessing cases of genocide and "ethnic cleansing," the failure to assist those who are suffering as innocent victims of war, the neglect and abuse of children, the exploitation of vulnerable laborers, the sexual trafficking of girls and young women, the abandonment of the aged, racial oppression and discrimination, the persecution of believers of all faiths, and the failure to take steps necessary to halt the spread of preventable diseases like AIDS.  We see these travesties as flowing from the same loss of the sense of the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of human life that drives the abortion industry and the movements for assisted suicide, euthanasia, and human cloning for biomedical research.  And so ours is, as it must be, a truly consistent ethic of love and life for all humans in all circumstances."

I would only point out that, again, conservative Christianity has been opposed to contraceptive and evidence-based sex education, which is the single greatest weapon against "preventable diseases like AIDS."  As well, no argument is given for embryonic stem-cell research and pro-choice stances on abortion and assisted suicide being equitable to sex trafficking and racial genocide.  If there's a connection there to make, by all means, make it.  Whatever you do, don't simply declare it and expect it to convince people who have already considered your perspective and rejected it.

Next time, the second main point of the Declaration, out of three:  Gay Marriage is evil!  Interestingly, this point receives more text than either of the others.

The Manhattan Declaration; Part 1

So, here we have, conveniently codified, the antithesis of all that Secular Humanism represents.  This link was given to us by a Christian reader and commenter.  Let's take a look.

"Christians are heirs of a 2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God's word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering."

There's a lot of revisionism in this thing.  It starts with slavery:

"It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery . . ."

This is always hilarious.  There were some Christians who fought against slavery, of course, but it was certainly not an exclusively Christian principle.  Likewise, there were many, many Christian organizations and churches that explicitly fought to preserve slavery.  These things are simple, unambiguous matters of history.  From Wikipedia:

[Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God...it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation...it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts - Jefferson Davis, President, Confederate States of America

Every hope of the existence of church and state, and of civilization itself, hangs upon our arduous effort to defeat the doctrine of Negro suffrage - Robert Dabney, a prominent 19th century Southern Presbyterian pastor
... the right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example - Richard Furman, President, South Carolina Baptist Convention

Of course, these prominent Christian leaders are entirely correct; one could be absolutely buried in Biblical scripture explicitly condoning slavery.  The document continues:

"The great civil rights crusades of the 1950s and 60s were led by Christians claiming the Scriptures and asserting the glory of the image of God in every human being regardless of race, religion, age or class."


Funny . . .  Why then did Martin Luther King Jr. so vehemently criticize the white churches of his day for their opposition to civil rights?

"And in America, Christian women stood at the vanguard of the suffrage movement."

 This is laugh-out-loud wrong.  As with the above issues of slavery and opposition to civil rights, virtually all opposition to women's suffrage came from conservative Christians.  The Bible is even more transparently sexist than in it's condoning of slavery, and that's saying something.  Is it any coincidence that conservative Christian groups today still rail against "Feminism" as a force of evil?

Ziztur has pointed out many times before - in twenty years, fifty years, a hundred years, or more, however many generations it takes, eventually people will overwhelmingly look back on opposition to gay rights and gay marriage as barbaric and morally primitive, exactly as we look at issues like slavery today.  When that happens, there's no doubt that Christians will claim that it was Christianity that championed gay rights.

I can't help but notice, this document specifically mentions that "Christian women stood at the vanguard of the suffrage movement."  In the same way, Christians often point to Dr. King as a Christian minister and the icon of civil rights.  Um, does it really need to be said?  Of course women supported suffrage, even some Christian women, and of course African-Americans, even Christians and ministers, opposed segregation!  Isn't it obvious that when we ask whether Christianity and/or Christian churches generally supported or opposed women's suffrage/abolition/civil rights/etc., we should look not at the few Christians who were part of the oppressed demographic, that we should look instead at the Christians who were part of the oppressing majority?  The question is not whether black Christians opposed abolition or civil rights, but whether white churches opposed them.  Similarly, we should ask not whether there were a few Christian women who supported women's suffrage, but whether a majority of male Christian leaders did so.  Hint:  They didn't, in either case.

Today, there are a very few, scattered, infrequent Christian leaders actively supporting gay marriage, and of course there are gay Christians who support gay marriage, but they are far overshadowed by religious leaders and laypersons who oppose it.  This is especially true among evangelicals, and, likewise, especially true among those who attend church at least weekly.  From 2009 Pew Research data:

The consensus is clear - Christianity does not support same sex marriage.  Let's all keep this in mind a century or so down the road.  More from the Manhattan Declaration later.

Life does not begin at conception

One of the primary claims of the anti-abortion brigade is that “life begins at conception”, and because it is wrong to take a life, therefore it is wrong to abort a fetus (and perhaps wrong even to prevent a zygote from implanting by use of a UTI). However, this claim is not merely wrong, but ludicrously wrong.

Let me make an aside here. If you are of a religious bent, and if you believe in the existance of a soul, and if you believe that this soul is created, implanted, magicked into being, or otherwise attached to a developing human at some particular point in development, then of course that provides a logical point whereafter abortion may be seen as a crime against said soul. I think you are dead wrong about the existance of souls, but granted that premise, this objection to anti-abortionism does not apply to you. To you, all I have to say is this: Remember that your arguments are inherently non-secular and cannot carry force in a secular judicial system; and please remember that your arguments hold no force with those of us who are not religious.

---

With that out of the way, let’s restate the obvoius: Life does not begin at conception. Conception, in us sexually reproducing animals, consists of the fusion of gametes—the sperm fertilises the ovum. But, and this should be painfully obvious to everyone, the gametes are alive. You are the product of a living spermatozoon and a living ovum. Fertilisation did not mark the creation of life, only the fusion of two living cells into a single living cell.

This fusion is certainly a defining moment in your life. Barring mutation so unlikely that I expect it can be discounted, and excepting rare conditions like chimerism and mosaicism, it is the last event that defines your genetic makeup, when the chromosomes you inherit from your parents merge. It is, in a very real sense, a defining moment. It is not, however, the defining moment, because there are many. Even after fusion, not every zygote goes on to successfully implant, and early pregnancies often terminate spontaneously. The biologist Lewis Wolpert famously said that “It is not birth, marriage, or death, but gastrulation which is truly the most important time in your life”.

But before conception, a startling number of things had to happen in order to make you who you are. Before the fertilisation event was to matter at all, the specifics of meiosis in the germ line of each of your parents played as big a role in determining your genetic specifics as did the fertilisation itself: Meiosis, the process where a germ line cell divides into (haploid) gametes with half the chromosomal complement of a normal cell, is when the genetic contribution of each parent is determined. And of course any number of things had to happen very specifically in order to make you who you are, on this basis: Your parents had to have sex at just the right time when the spermatozoon and ovum each carrying half of your genes were alive and active. If they’d waited until next month, things would have been different…

But this is only the beginning (or the end, depending on your view). Those haploid cells, after all, were alive, each of them a living cell from one of your parents, whence they were produced by meiosis from diploid germ line cells. Each of those cells was the unlikely product of very specific meiosis, reproductive timing, and fertilisation by the (most likely four) people who were their parents…and the same goes for all of their parents…and that lineage goes back, centuries, millennia, millions of years, hundreds of millions of years. You are the product of a lineage of living cells that stretches back to the very dawn of sexual reproduction. Looking back further, you’re still the product of living cells, though the processes are different and lateral gene transfer makes the family tree a bit harder to draw…but ultimately, you are the scion of a family of cells—living cell to living cell to living cell—reaching back some 3.6 billion years—3,600,000,000 years—at a ballpark estimate.

That is when life began, and that is, in a sense, when your life began, too: It started then, and it hasn’t died since. Every single intermediary between you and the first primordial, primitive, living cell that serves as ancestor to all life on earth was alive. It started then, and in a sense, you’re just a heavily modified offshoot—3,600,000,000 years down the living line.

I find this an awesome fact to contemplate.

What, then, is so magical about conception? Nothing, really. It’s a defining moment in making you who you are, but it’s really just one of billions upon billions of defining moments. Causing the death of a zygote does exactly as much in preventing a particular potential person from coming about as does causing the death of a spermatozoon (e.g. by masturbating, by ejaculating outside a woman, by using a condom, or by doing nothing and letting the spermatozoon die and get reabsorbed into the body); as does wasting the life of an ovum (by menstruating, in the luteal or ischemic phase). But removing the possibility of a specific human being is even more ubiquitous; after all, every human alive represents millions of potential people lost, as the ones produced by the spermatozoa who lost the race would undoubtedly have been different.

---

My own opinions on abortion are not very well-defined. I am, of course, pro-choice, but since I’ve never been in a position where I’ve had to make a hard choice, I’ve never needed to figure out exactly what I think the hard lines are. What I do think, however, is that it is in no way wrong to destroy human tissue, while it is definitely wrong to destroy a moral human person.

The question, then, is what constitutes moral personhood. I will not pretend to have a clearcut answer. If I had to sit down and develop one, it would combine concepts like having thoughts, dreams, hopes, fears, and desires; taking part in emotional relationships (a reciprocal relationship); interacting (in some way) with people; acting as a moral agent, rather than merely being acted upon as a ‘moral object’.

It seems abundantly clear to me that no lump of human tissue can possibly meet my criteria unless it has a mind, which requires a working brain. After the brain works in some sense, I believe there is a window, a grey area, where I would in all likelihood agree that abortion may very well be morally acceptable—but this is beside the point I wish to make here, which is that until brain activity begins, I regard it as “no context”: Abortion prior to this is absolutely acceptable. (This may be around week 25 or so of a pregnancy; research shows that sustained EEG activity first appears in bursts around week 20, become sustained around week 22, and bilaterally synchronous around weeks 26–27.)

---

Once the position is taken that an early abortion does not, in fact, destroy a moral person, we are back to the notion of destroying “potential” persons. The problem is that we destroy potential persons all the time, no matter what we do. If we have sex, we destroy lots of potential persons (since most of the potential ones will never be, even if we do have children); whenever we don’t have sex even though we could, we are passively murdering potential persons, because we aren’t making children at all.

Modern biotechnology allows us to stretch this argument to a reductio ad absurdum without leaving the realm of the possible. In recent experiments (documented in some very nice articles in Nature), scientists have induced pluripotency in mouse cells and produced viable mice (fully viable, as some of them went on to reproduce). While cloning humans is likely to be much more difficult than cloning mice even on purely technical considerations, and it may well be impossible right now, it seems obvious that the technology is if not in our grasp, then certainly close to it, to produce viable humans from induced pluripotent stem cells. Taking things just a bit further, it may become possible to extract genetic material and inject it into pluripotent cells and so produce clones from any cell with intact genetic material.

Once the technology exists for doing this, the loss of any viable genetic material is, in a sense, the destruction of a potential human life. Scratching your head, cutting your hair or your nails, losing scrapings of epithelial material from your mouth, bleeding…every such act will prevent humans from being who might otherwise have been.

Unless you are willing to condemn this as murder, then any argument that boils down to “You are destroying potential life!” loses all force.

Faith Infiltration: Cross Pointe Church

After spotting this racy billboard on the side of Highway 55 North in St. Louis, Flimsy and I decided that we had to infiltrate the Cross Pointe Church. For those of you just joining us, Flimsy and I regularly "infiltrate" local churches and post our thoughts and feelings on the services from the perspective of atheists. To see other Faith Infiltrations, click the "Faith Infiltration" label at the bottom of this post

Cross Pointe is a little hole in the wall non-denominational church situated on a strip mall between a produce store and a coffee shop. It is such a hole in the wall that when we tried to visit it the first time, we were unable to locate it – after driving up and down the street, we finally found it about 10 minutes after the service began by parking somewhere and looking on foot. Armed with this information, we found it easily the week after. It is not the typical church that you see rising from the homes and business as you drive toward it.

Once inside, it is pretty clear that this church is a former business – it used to be a moving and storage place. This church is not about fanfare, comfy seats or state-of-the-art décor. The ceiling features the original white painted embossed tin tiles, and the floors are a mixture of bare concrete and original hardwood. The flooring is dulled and deeply marred by countless foot traffic and age – some places where the floor needed repairs were taped over to avoid creating a trip hazard.

There is a welcome area where people sat in comfy chairs and sipped coffee, and a simple sanctuary entirely devoid of religious iconography (and windows). In place of stained glass depictions of Jesus and cross centerpieces is a wall lined with flags of every country and a large mural at the front of the St. Louis cityscape, with the arch as a prominent feature.

Inside the sanctuary, the lights were dimmed candles are lit. This place is edgy: at the front a young worship team led the congregation in songs with drums that lack the characteristic churchy clear drum shield, a guitar and a keyboard. Lit candles perched atop waist-high wrought iron candle holders, which were draped loosely with stainless steel chains. Bits of office cubicle sections walled off the exposed furnace. Little baskets at the end of each row of chairs housed Bibles. The chairs are the kind you might find at a city restaurant. It is a church stripped of anything save the bare essentials.

When we first entered the church, we were greeted by a gentleman who asked us what had brought us to their church. We told them that the billboard had sparked our interest, and the gentlemen responded, saying something to the effect of, "Yes, that's a pretty racy billboard. I wonder what kind of message it sends across – either we're really bold or someone hates us." We entered the sanctuary to find it filled with about 50 people or so, with an average age of mid to late twenties.

The worship team played four songs while displaying the lyrics on a rear-projection screen at the front of the sanctuary:

1. A very uplifting song, the primary message of which was "the earth is filled with the glory of the lord".
   
2. An uplifting song, the primary message of which was "the lord is good to me".
   
3. A slow, soulful song, the primary message of which was, "The lord is a fire of love for us".
   
4. A slow, melodic song called "Sweetly Broken", the lyrics of which can be found here.
   

There were some very interesting lyrics I took note of:

To the cross I look

To the cross I cling

Of its suffering I do drink

Of its work I do sing

I have heard of people saying things like this before: "I do the work of the cross". I must admit, my literal mind has a hard time making sense of this. The cross in an inanimate object said to have been used to crucify Jesus. A cross cannot suffer. Is "cross" generally analogous to Jesus taking on the sin of the world? What does "doing the work of the cross" mean? Perhaps a commenter out there can explain to this heathen how a cross can suffer and how one can do the work of the cross.

Other interesting lyrics from the same song:

At the cross You

You beckon me

Draw me gently

To my knees and I am

Lost for words so

Lost in love

I am sweetly broken, Holy surrender

These lyrics reminded Flimsy of how a submissive sometimes feels in a dom/sub relationship during a BDSM* scene.

After the opening song, the congregation watched a video about the upcoming college Christian conference in St. Louis, Urbana '09. After the video, a young woman stood at the front and asked if anyone would be willing to volunteer to fill communion cups for the thousands of people who would be taking communion on New Year's Eve during the conference.

The woman left, and I turned my attention to a stool in the center of the front of the church, upon which sat a bottle of yellow Gatorade. I thought, "Yellow. Gatorade. I guess the speaker needs more than just water up there." The campus pastor appeared from stage left, and almost immediately explained the purpose of the Gatorade: it was not simply there for him to drink, it was a tool for his message.

The campus pastor (Kurt) was a young guy sporting a long ponytail, a black beard, and dressed simply in a pair of worn jeans and a t-shirt. As he paced the stage, the floorboards beneath him creaked, but not so much that it was a distraction. He explained that in sports, in order to be a professional, you must have (among other things) proper nutrition, proper training, rest and hydration. The slogan of Gatorade is "is it in you?" and the line can apply not just to the capacity of an individual to be a professional sports player, but also the capacity of an individual to be a good Christian. It is important, he said, to put the right things into one's life while keeping the wrong things out of one's life.

Kurt referenced Mark 7-14 (apparently Mark 7 had been used in last week's sermon, and this week's sermon was intended to finish up the story of Mark 7-14). Mark 7 is an allegory for people setting aside god's commandments by inventing their own traditions and not realizing that what a man "does" (evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly) is what makes him unclean, rather than his lack of religious tradition.

In Mark 7, Jesus' disciples do not quite understand his message, and he explains it again. Kurt said that this was meant to show the reader that even though it may be tough to ask a seemingly dumb question, it would be worth it in the end to not be afraid to ask anyway. A question on his mind is, "Why does religion even appeal to people if there are so many rules?" The answer is that these rules are there not because people are supposed to necessarily follow all of them, but they are there to show people that the law cannot actually be kept. The standard is so high that even ultra-faithful individuals (such as the Pharisees) fall cripplingly short of following it. Furthermore, we should absolutely not judge other people by their shortcomings, because doing so only serves to make ourselves feel better about ourselves by pointing out the flaws in others.

At this, Kurt's voice cracked, and I could hear the intense emotions he felt in his voice as he explained that in the past he had cheapened Jesus' death by minimizing his own sins and wrongly seeing himself as better than other people. It was fairly clear that he considered himself to be a wretched person without Jesus.

Kurt brought the congregation full circle, back to his Gatorade. He said that even though people put the proper things into themselves, they – like those who never become pro athletes – will never be good enough. He can't meet the high standard of becoming a pro athlete and so too, people "cannot just have a little Jesus" or "a little religion" and expect to be saved. None of us are good enough based solely on the things we put into us – we can only be good enough because of Jesus' sacrifice to humanity.

Like every Faith Infiltration, this review is not meant to be extensive or complete – one visit to a church is really only enough to get a general impression of things. I have heard speakers say that Christians should not be judgmental before, but this way of presenting this concept seemed to be especially powerful. I also found the concept of "god's law" being given to show we cannot keep it an interesting one. I wish other churches could understand this – specifically, understand this to the extent that they do not try to use political power or legislation to oppress the rights of individuals to break "god's law".

I don't, however, think the idea that one is a worthless miserable human being simply for being alive is a healthy idea. To me, if you behave unethically, then you are a miserable human being. If you behave more or less ethically, then you are a more or less worthwhile human being. If you behave ethically nearly all of the time, then you're a pretty worthwhile human being. If you are always at the peak of ethical behavior, then you are a rare gem indeed. This standard is based on something meaningful – I am not comparing the largeness of numbers by comparing them to infinity – I am comparing them by comparing them to other numbers. If I judge the ability of five-year-olds to paint by comparing painting abilities to other five-year-olds, I can say something much more meaningful about their abilities than if I compare them to Alyssa Monks (whose paintings look so real they are often mistaken for digital photographs). If we only compare ourselves to perfection, then we can only be seen as worthless. I don't think it would be helpful to tell five-year-olds that they are expected to be Alyssa Monks. But the point is not to improve their painting skill – the point is to make them surrender to their own shortcomings.

At the very least, I was pleased that I did not hear yet another sermon condemning atheists and secular humanists for ruining the world. There was a distinct lack of "us vs. them" mentality so common to other churches.

After the service ended, we spoke to a few people at the church, let them know who we are and gave them business card. They invited us to come back to LifeGroup – which is a weekly small group meeting and bible study. We're considering it, but we don't want to fly in and hijack someone's small group, so we're a little hesitant. They seem like nice people.

*I am not mocking this song. I have great respect for BDSM and the people who can practice it safely, sanely and consensually.

Faith Infiltration: Vedanta Society (Hindu)

For this week’s Faith Infiltration, Flimsy and I visited a Hindu temple, the Vedanta Society of Saint Louis. The temple was modest: it was more or less a large house that had been turned into a worship center. When we arrived, various people milled about, most of them white and middle-aged, even though Hindu is typically thought of as an Indian religion. We were definitely the youngest people there that I saw of a small group of about 30 worshipers.

The most intriguing aspect of the church was the large lending library of books, which contained a jumble of books on various religions including Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc. Of course, there were no books on religious skepticism, but there were a few applied science books. After we introduced ourselves as visitors, we were told that the monks were on summer vacation, and so thus the service would be in the form of a message given by another monk that had been recorded on videotape.

Hinduism is sort of like an eastern version of Unitarian Universalism in that there is no particular dogma or creed. It does have a common thread of philosophical concepts, practices and cultural traditions, though.

Basically, Hinduism is the practice of obtaining a better present and future life through one’s moral actions. People who follow Hinduism believe in karma, that good and bad actions return to you in a balance. They also believe in reincarnation and living in coexistence with other religions.

People often misunderstand the Hindu worship of many gods as polytheism, but Hinduism actually teaches that all of these individual gods are part of a single god. From this website on teaching children about Hinduism:

“Hinduism is a religion of freedom. In the recommendations for Hindu way of living, there is absolute freedom for understanding the nature of God, forms of god and worship and the goal of life. Those who accept the teachings of the Vedas as the basis of dharma, follow the rule of conduct as instructed therein, believe in one Supreme God Brahma, consider life to be sacred, practice non-violence (Ahimsa), and believe in the rebirth of a soul (reincarnation), are Hindus.

“Also, those who see godliness in mother, father,teacher, and all guests and believe in the holiness of the river Ganges which is considered to be Lord Brahma's blessing to the world, are Hindus. Those who believe in the holiness of cows which are considered as Lord Krishna's loving companions and the providers of mother-like nourishing milk for infants, are Hindus. And those who believe in the Bhagavad-Gita, and the Gayatri Mantra, the supreme and powerfully divine chant, are Hindus.

“Besides visiting deities in temples, a Hindu maintains a shrine in the home for regular worship. Home worship is common on a social basis and also when family and friends worship together. Hindus also respect all elders and believe in giving to charities. Above all, Hindus love all religions of the world. Living as a member of the "world family" and praying for the welfare of the entire human race are the ways of Hindu life.

During the video we watched, the speaker talked about how the existence of god cannot be proved or disproved, and urged those listening to him not to try to find the truth of god in the words of other people or in other holy books, but from within the self. He said that one should pick and choose what sounds right to them, but not do this in a way that undermines science or physical reality.

He stressed the importance of understanding religious stories in the context of reality, and as an example he mentioned the story of Jesus using one fish to feed a whole village, and said that maybe it is not that Jesus made more fish, but that people forgot their hunger in his presence. In this way, he was seeking a somewhat non-miraculous explanation for miracles and finding spirituality in science, which is obviously something I can agree with.

Even though the speaker told his audience not to seek god in the words of other people, he also said that when one reads, one should take the words of a holy person more seriously than a scholar or someone who has written a modern paperback. I don’t know how one would know that a modern paperback writer is not a holy person though. Who decides who is a holy person and who is not?

Interestingly, the speaker had several somewhat negative things to say about Christianity. First, he told a story of a man who was at a train station, trying to find the correct train to get on. In attempting to find the correct train, he was entering every train he could find, asking people there if this was the correct train. Finally, someone pointed to a train and told him that it was the proper train for him. Upon boarding the train, he sat next to a pastor who attempted to convert him to Christianity. The man decided that this was the wrong train as well, and left. His point seemed to be that people can’t tell you which the correct religion is for you. He also told his audience that heaven and hell were mere abstractions of our consciousness.

The speaker also talked to his audience about doing good deeds while here on earth so that those good deeds will accompany you into the next life. Even though I don’t believe in god, I feel that this is a perfectly ethical religious teaching. Your good deeds should matter far more than how much faith you have in a god or creed.

bone marrow transplant = adult stem cells

Here is another article, courtesy of the Christian Research Institute's Twitter feed. (I am a glutton for punishment)

Scientists at Children’s Hospital in Oakland, California, are discovering a potential cure for leukemia and sickle-cell disease. How? By using blood stem cells from the placentas of women who have had Caesarian deliveries.

But researchers at the hospital are frustrated. State agencies have made multi-million-dollar grants available for embryo-destructive research, but money is scarce for its ethically sound counterpart, adult stem cell research.

Really? Not according to CNN. Please provide evidence that embryonic stem cells are ethically unsound.

In the Contra Costa Times, lead Children’s Hospital researcher Frans Kuypers says, “No one has been cured by an embryonic stem cell. We are able to cure folks with [adult] stem cells.”

Normally I don’t dive into ad hominem attacks, but this is pure insanity and betrays either a misunderstanding of the differences and similarities between adult and embryonic stem cells or a deliberate deception. Allow me, a complete layman when it comes to stem cells, to explain:

There are two classes of stem cells: multipotent and pluripotent. Pluripotent stem cells can give rise to any type of cell in the body except those needed to support and develop a fetus in the womb. Multipotent stem cells can give rise to a limited number of different types of cells.
Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent. Adult stem cells are multipotent. What this means is that while adult stem cell X may only be able to give rise to blood cells, an embryonic stem cell can give rise to blood and any other type of cell.

Adult stem cells have been being used for over four decades to cure disease in the form of bone marrow transplants. So of course people have been cured with adult stem cells. They’ve been researched for far longer than embryonic stem cells.

Embryonic stem cells have vastly more potential than adult-derived stem cells because they are pluripotent. What has been done for adult derived stem cells could potentially be done for embryonic stem cells, but on a much larger scale. Unfortunately, scientists have only been researching embryonic stem cells since 1998, all under heavy legal restrictions. Comparing the gains made by adult stem cells to the gains made by embryonic stem cells is akin to comparing the advanced problem-solving abilities of a two year old to that of a thirty year old.

 So why isn’t adult stem cell research receiving more funding? Josephine Quintavalle, director of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, says “What you get from [the adult stem cell] approach is a patient-specific cure. There's no middleman . . . and there's no drug company that's going to get rich as a result of it.”

Why would a treatment with embryonic stem cells be less “patient-specific” than treatment with adult stem cells? Can the author provide evidence of the lack of funding of adult stem cell research as I have provided evidence showing that adult stem cell research received lots of funding?

If by “middleman” he means the companies who currently own the stem cell lines, then opening up embryonic stem cell research funding would eliminate or reduce this middleman, as those companies who have grandfathered in stem cell lines from before federal funding was banned would no longer be the sole holders of stem cell lines, as other companies could receive funding to develop new lines.

As far as the “get rich” comment… if no one has been cured using embryonic stem cells, how can a company “get rich” from them?

But, she explains, a lot of the pressure for stem-cell research is to find products that they can sell, as opposed to a treatment they can do to cure you.

Evidence please.  So what the author is saying is that embryonic stem cells don’t cure people and aren’t patient-specific, but drug companies think they can get rich off of them by marketing a product that sells rather than cures, due (in part) to this mysterious middleman. Got it. Provide evidence for this assertion.

Quintavalle is just one of many experts from both sides of the debate interviewed in the new documentary, Lines that Divide, produced by the Center for Bioethics and Culture. http://www.cbc-network.org/

Ah ha! Here is one point of this article – buy or see this documentary. I’ve e-mailed them and asked for a review copy.

In the documentary you’ll hear first-hand testimonies from people whose lives have been saved through adult stem cell research. Like Barry Goudy, who suffered with multiple sclerosis. Since undergoing adult stem cell replacement therapy, he’s been free from MS for five years.

“adult stem cell replacement therapy” - AKA a bone marrow transplant – has been conducted in uncontrolled trials for people with MS. No controlled trials have been completed, though there are some underway. Here is how it works: MS is an autoimmune disease in which an individual’s immune system attacks the myelin sheath surrounding their nerves. This causes symptoms as nerves do not function properly when the myelin is destroyed or damaged. Bone marrow is extracted from a participant with MS. The participant’s immune system is destroyed with chemotherapy. Then, the participant’s own bone marrow cells are put back in, effectively letting the participant with MS grow a new immune system. There is no proof that it works.

They reboot your immune system,” he explains. “I live a normal life. I coach hockey, I play racquetball, I golf.” Without the adult stem cell transplant, Goudy would probably be in a wheelchair.

The plural of anecdote is anecdotes, not data (Thanks quackcast). Also, it really annoys me when writers say things like, “if X did not happen, he’d be in a wheelchair’. Being in a wheelchair is better than being stuck in bed without a wheelchair.

Twenty-two-year-old Corrina Archuleta also shares her dramatic recovery from a flesh-eating auto-immune disorder. Her family was making her funeral arrangements before adult stem cell therapy saved her life.

So… she had a bone marrow transplant? I wonder why the authors don’t mention that bone marrow transplants can cure leukemia and other autoimmune disorders. A blood marrow transplant is a transplant of stem cells. Why don’t the authors of this article or the writers of this documentary call it a “bone marrow transplant”? Most people understand what that is. My guess is that if they stop calling it “bone marrow transplant” and call it “adult stem cell transplants” then they can politicize it.

The film also covers why even traditionally pro-choice advocates are speaking out against embryo-destructive stem cell research. In order to extract enough eggs for embryonic stem cell research, a woman’s ovaries are hyper-stimulated so that she will produce a dozen or more eggs at a time.

But doctors know that ovarian hyper-stimulation syndrome and the drugs themselves have caused blood clotting, stroke, and even death. The former chief medical officer of the FDA warms that potential egg donors “need to be aware that this is not a procedure that is without risk.” Even the risk of death.

Bone marrow transplants are not without risk, either.

The vast majority of embryonic stem cells are leftovers from thousands of unused embryos from in vitro fertilization clinics. A simple solution to this problem might be to limit the ability of women to donate eggs to a stem cell clinic unless they are part of a fertility procedure. This is not an argument against stem cell research but an argument against fertility procedures.

That’s not what you are seeing in the media. What you do see, however, are celebrities and politicians gushing over the potential for embryo-destructive stem cell research. Even while lives are being saved today by adult stem cell therapy.

Well yes, because embryonic stem cell research does have lots of potential, whereas the potential of adult stem cells has been realized (at least in part) for 40+ years.

We need to be informed in order to help shape the public debate-and encourage our leaders to fund proven, morally unproblematic adult stem cell research.

That’s why I urge you to get a hold of the film Lines that Divide.

Wait, what was that about profits? I don't want scientists to research procedures that have already been proven effective. I want research to fund potentially effective treatments using science-based methodology.

Animal medical studies

Awhile ago, our commenters went crazy in this post on vegetarianism, and several interesting sub-themes emerged. One of these was medical studies or research on animals.

There are those who argue that studies on animals may not be indicitive of results obstained for humans, given the differences in anatomy and genetics. Other people argued that animal modesl were predictive of results obtained in humans.

Are animal tests predictive of human tests? To what degree? Can we justify torturing animals in the name of science? what constitutes torture, anyway? I'm interested in hearing what you guyes think.

On Christian Intolerance.

You can probably suspect that I believe tolerance is a virtue, something we should strive for as a culture, community, world, and so forth.

Of course, being tolerant can sometimes mean not tolerating intolerance. This, of course, is what happens when I decry thus and such group of people who decry homosexuals, or atheists, or whoever.

 I like to think that most religious folk, especially those in the majority religion of my country (that’s Christianity, of course) also believe tolerance is a virtue, even if they on occasion can be found to be intolerant while at the same time believing that tolerance is a virtue.

There is a certain subset of Christianity that disagrees. When asked if tolerance is a virtue, their answer is actually, "NO." Take, for example, the writings of William Watkins over at the Christian Research Institute.

Virtue — the word sounds almost outdated. When I hear it, I think of such qualities as faith, hope, love, courage, justice, wisdom, fidelity, integrity, and moderation. I’m reminded of men and women who remain faithful to their marriage vows in the face of sexual temptations and strenuous trials, parents who sacrifice personal dreams so their children will have a better start at life, and employees who take a stand for what’s right rather than for what’s expedient.

What about freedom, reason, the ability to change, open-mindedness, skepticism? I am reminded of scientists who change their minds in the face of evidence contrary to their own established beliefs, women and men who are completely honest and open with each other in relationships and so do not violate each others trust (trust is far more important than monogamy), and yes-parents who sacrifice and employees who do what’s right.

Faith is not a virtue. Faith is that which remains the same despite contrary evidence. Faith is “sticking to your guns” even when the world demands you pack them up.

Today, however, we rarely hear about such virtuous people. Instead, we’re presented with contemporary role models such as Marla Maples and Donald Trump, who use sexual license to destroy one marriage and create an illicit one. Obviously our society exalts the "virtues" of sexual freedom and the pursuit of self-centered happiness at any cost.

Really? I hear about them all the time. The author is possibly a victim of confirmation bias. I barely know who Marla Maples and Donald Trump are, and I don’t know anyone who considers them role models! I’d like to know who sees these two people as role models.  Perhaps the author is looking in all the wrong places? It is amazing what some Christians see when they look out into the “secular” world. Some of them sound positively terrified of us.

Safe, sane, and consensual sexual freedom is a virtue! As far as self-centered happiness, it depends on who you talk to. Some people might have this type of morality, but I would disagree that ‘our society’ exalts either sexual freedom or self-centered happiness. Do you have anything other than anecdotal proof that this is the way society operates?

Then, of course, there’s Jack Kevorkian, the infamous "Dr. Death." This heralded civil rights advocate for dignity in dying has assisted in the suicides of almost 25 people, many of whom were not terminally, nor even seriously, ill. According to Kevorkian, the degree of a person’s illness does not matter when it comes to making the death decision. Rather, Kevorkian explains, "the highest principle in medical ethics — in any kind of ethics — is personal autonomy, self-determination. What counts is what the patient wants and judges to be a benefit or a value in his or her own life." In other words, the greatest virtue is whatever I decide is best for me.

Kevorkian is a single individual and does not speak for the rest of society, just like the folks at Westboro Baptist Church do not speak for Christianity. If I held up the Westboro Church as an example of how depraved Christianity has become over the years, I would not have a valid argument. Similarly, the actions of one man do not speak for society.

Given that, Kevorkian is right. In ethics, autonomy is very important. But autonomy does not mean, “whatever I decide is best for me”. Autonomy is the capacity of a rational individual to make an informed, un-coerced decision and is used as the basis for determining moral respectability for one's actions. The writer of this article is, once again, trying to boil down humanist ethics into selfishness, which it is not.

This new moral code is playing well in America. We love self-indulgence and self-rule. So what if we kill our elderly and our depressed and our sick in obedience to the new virtues? What counts is what we want. To each his own.

This is not a new moral code. The idea of autonomy has been around since the ancient Greeks.

Where are we killing the elderly, sick and depressed? Could you please cite some evidence that more elderly, sick or depressed people are being killed in this society then back in the good old days of the 50’s and 60’s? Last I checked, the lifespan of an individual has moved from about 50 years in 1950 to 80+ years in 2009. If our society was so depraved that we didn't care about others, one would not expect the average lifespan to go up so dramatically. Can you prove that tolerance is having a negative effect on society using some actual data? No, you can't, because we're living longer, healthier lives with less crime than we were before.

Such new cultural "virtues" pervade nearly every aspect of our society, just as the old virtues did. And just as the virtue of self-sacrificial love bound together the older Christian virtues, so the "virtue" of tolerance is wed to the new secular "virtues" in an unholy alliance.

It certainly is unholy, and I thank rational thinking for that. But secular humanist ethics includes self-sacrificial love, so I can only assume the motivation of the author to overlook this is to vilify secularism to make his point. Tolerance of others to enjoy the freedom to be themselves provided they do not harm others is an example of self-sacrificial love. Moving on…

The tolerant person, so we’re told, is broad-minded — open to other beliefs, truth claims, moral convictions, and lifestyles. He or she makes room for others to do as they wish, even if their behavior contradicts or even mocks his own. He believes in "live and let live."

You do not have the right to not be mocked. Christians have been mocking and vilifying atheists for centuries. If you expect to push your system of thought onto others, expect some criticism. I think it is a virtue to be able to do so without whining that you are being mocked. I make room for Christians to do as they wish, so long as they do not undermine science or infringe upon my rights, and their behavior contradicts and mocks my own frequently.

During the ‘50s and ‘60s, being tolerant meant putting up with a slow salesclerk, restraining the desire to laugh at someone’s bizarre dress, or holding one’s tongue when a person made a harmless but erroneous comment. Being tolerant never meant condoning immoral behavior, letting harmful beliefs go unchallenged, or permitting a person’s dangerous lifestyle to influence, much less be taught, to others. In those days we may have disagreed about what is true, but few challenged the bedrock conviction that "true" is the opposite of "false," and that truth does not tolerate untruth. We believed then that some beliefs and lifestyles promoted the common good while others undermined it.

We believe these things now! We may have disagreed about what is true, and we are disagreeing about what is true now – namely, if any given behavior is immoral, harmful or dangerous. The statistics are not on your side. Crime, for example, has gone down considerably, to the point at which we are now experiencing crime rates equivalent of that in the 50’s.

Immoral behavior should not be condoned, I agree. the problem is that I define what is immoral differently than what the author defines as immoral. Harmful beliefs should absolutely be challenged. Dangerous lifestyles should not be taught to others. I do not know which specific behaviors, beliefs and lifestyles this particular author is decrying, as he does not state them. This is a pity. Before we can claim any given behavior is immoral, harmful or dangerous, we need to prove that it is immoral, harmful or dangerous. Simply claiming that it is, and that this gives you license to condemn it begs the question.

I think it is immoral to not give gays the same rights to marriage as heterosexuals

The author (I think) thinks it is immoral to give gays the same rights.
Who is right? Who is being intolerant? This is the disagreement about what is true we are having.

Those of us who still believe these things are considered bigots, judgmental prudes, or moral fundamentalists by the new "tolerant" regime. Never mind that the new tolerance has led to the destruction of more than 30 million babies in America’s abortuaries. Never mind that the new broad-mindedness concerning promiscuous and homosexual sex is perhaps the leading cause of the spread of HIV — one of the most deadly and elusive viruses yet known to humankind. Never mind that the new openness to "alternative lifestyles" is bringing about legislation that gives civil-rights status to immorality.

I can understand why people dislike abortion, so I’ll leave that one alone. HIV is not elusive, and the lifespan of an HIV positive individual is rising every day. A prevalent disease or death-causing agent does not make the cause of that disease immoral. About 17 thousand people die of HIV in the US every year. About 650 thousand people die of heart disease every year. The behaviors that lead to heart disease (overeating is a prime example) are not immoral.

We must stop this insanity. The new tolerance is not a virtue but a vice. We must expose it for what it is and replace it with the truth.

Okay. If tolerance is a vice, then I suppose I can stop being tolerant of your silly immoral mythology. I can stop being tolerant of your condemnation of gays and sec which does not fit your narrow paradigm of what is permissible and what is not. I can stop being tolerant of your immoral jackhammer to science. I can stop being tolerant of your claims of moral superiority, your attempts to block people from having civil rights, your attempts to inject your mythology into science classrooms. If you insist you do not have to tolerate us, where is the onus for us to tolerate you?

You see what I did there? All I have to do is label any given action as immoral, and suddenly I don't have to tolerate it anymore.

All truth is exclusive — it excludes what is false as it affirms what is true. After all, if it’s true that the capitol of the United States is Washington, D.C., then it’s false that the U.S. capitol is any other city on earth. That truth excludes innumerable cities.

An objective truth is not the same as a moral truth. This is one of the reasons it is much easier to argue about morality than the capitol of the United States. We can use objective reasoning, logic and rational thinking to come to an objective conclusion about morality, but another individual may use a different system of reasoning to come to a different conclusion. It is evident that this happens in society all the time.

Jesus was the incarnation of truth and compassion. He healed the needy, blessed children, and forgave sins. He even saved a woman apparently caught in adultery from being stoned to death (John 8:1-11).

And yet, He openly condemned hypocrisy and avarice. He threw businesspeople and their wares out of the temple because of their sacrilege (John 2:12-16). He called some of the religious leaders of His day "son[s] of hell," "fools," "blind guides," "whitewashed tombs," and "vipers" (Matt. 23:15-20).

Hypocrisy is a vice, I totally agree.

Jesus was not the epitome of tolerance, and yet He came during the era of Roman tolerance. The Romans conquered lands militarily but allowed conquered peoples to keep their customs and religious convictions intact. This policy of tolerance led to Jesus’ death. Since the Pax Romana ("peace of Rome") wouldn’t allow Jesus to upset the people under Roman rule, the tolerant Roman government tried, beat, and brutally executed an innocent man in the name of maintaining peace.

That sounds very intolerant of them, given that the Jews executed Jesus because they were convinced (due to their religion) that he was being immoral by blaspheming.  The Roman government executed Jesus because they believed he was committing heresy. This is not tolerance. This is death due to intolerance, or perhaps the tolerance of intolerance. This seriously weakens the author’s point.

Whom will we emulate — the tolerant in our midst or the Lord over us all? Like ancient Rome, America needs Christians to stand up for what Christ did, not to capitulate to the new "virtue" of tolerance. What America needs are more prophets — imitators of Christ — who will reach out to the lost with compassion, while proclaiming the truth and living the virtues incarnated by the Savior. Prophets may not be honored in their own country, but no country will last long without heeding their wisdom. 

You are equating the individuals in this society who advocate for gay rights with the Romans, who conquered lands and “allowed” people to keep religious convictions intact, and allowed the Jews to condemn Jesus for the crime of blasphemy?  Again, this is a society which tolerates other’s being intolerant, which is exactly the society you want.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 2.3

I hope you guys enjoyed the Guest Ray a Day yesterday, but now we're back to the analysis of the Truth About Origins Seminar!

Dr. Harrub first conquered the cosmological arguments by explaining to his audience that there are three+ explanations for the origins of the universe. The three main explanations are:

1. The universe was eternal and has always existed.
2. The Universe created itself ex-nillio
3. The universe is not eternal and had some beginning

After he said this, he switched inexplicably over to morality (either that, or my notes switched inexplicably over to morality, my memory is starting to get a little fizzy 2-weeks out, but my notes indicate that this is a random switch) and told his audience that morality can come from only two sources:

1. his god
2. man

The problem with morality coming from men, he said, was than men sometimes see two different moral problems and come to different conclusions. As an example he uses the fact that it was at one point perfectly legal according to law during the Nazi Regime to kill Jews, and that lots of people thought it was okay to kill Jews because it wasn't illegal to kill Jews. Therefore, the only conclusion must be that people adapt his god's unchanging morals. That way, we know that whatever his god commands or approves of is good.

Do I have to explain why this is not only hypocritical but makes no sense?

It's already quite obvious that individuals can look at moral problems and come to different conclusions. If the problem with morality is that people can come to different conclusions about morality, simply claiming that this isn't what really happens does nothing to solve the problem.

Using the killing of Jews as an example of "man" getting morality wrong is a silly example, because I can come up with literally hundreds of counter-examples in the Bible itself. It offends my sense of morality and ethics that Dr. Harrub can use Jewish Nazi killings as an example of where humankind has erred in it's moral thinking, but unblinkingly tell me that his god did not err in his moral thinking when his god ordered babies and women to be murdered (among other things).

Further, even a casual glance at the history of religion will show you that religious morality - and specifically his religious morality - does change over time.

I find the anthropological argument (argument from morality) to be both pitiful and somewhat hateful, even if only indirectly hateful. Typically, creationists will make an argument something like this:

Evolution says "survival of the fittest", but being altruistic or sacrificing your good for the good of others contradicts "survival of the fittest", therefore we can't get our morality from evolutionary processes, we must get it from somewhere else.

The thing anti-evolutionists fail to realize is that evolutionary processes are far, far more complex than "survival of the fittest", which is an incomplete and misleading understanding of natural selection.  First, because "survival of the fittest" in an evolutionary sense does not apply to individuals, but to groups of individuals. It seems obvious that groups of individuals will survive much easier and more effectively if they cooperate with one-another.  The fittest individuals are not the only ones who survive and reproduce - less fit individuals reproduce all the time, so evolution would be better characterized by "survival of the fit enough group" or "survival of the better adapted to the environment". Since the environment includes a group of like species, morality can easily be a byproduct of the environment of living in a group. Of course, when you boil down something as complex as natural selection into one four word sound byte, one is bound to misunderstand or oversimplify it.

It should be obvious that things like teamwork contribute to success, but when creationists talk about evolution and boil it down to "survival of the fittest" and then characterize it as pure selfishness, and then decide that belief in evolution will lead people to be selfish, they are creating a concoction of misunderstanding. They ignore the evolutionary benefits of things like kin selection and altruism.

Morality and ethics are central to my worldview and are extremely important to me, and I absolutely have come to the conclusion that I owe my existence to natural causes. I don't need some god to tell me not to kill people or steal things.

Of course, evolution can help explain but cannot prove morality. Justifying my particular moral and ethical values requires critical thinking and intellectual work. It's more difficult to justify my morality and ethics then just saying, "because god knows what's right", but it is certainly worth the effort.

Moving on, Dr. Harrub talked about the teological argument, or the argument for design. He gave his audience the standard line about every building having a builder and every painting having a painter and every designed thing having a designer. He gave a very, very long list of ways in which the universe is "fine tuned" for human life - such as gravity being just so, the oxygen levels being just so, etc. It must have sounded impressive but I am not impressed. I've blogged about this "creation having a creator" business here.

Saying that the universe was fine-tuned for humans is like saying a river was fine tuned for a particular drop of water from a rainstorm to flow through it.  Or, it's like saying my face was fine-tuned for my glasses. In other words, it is not that the universe is fine tuned for humans, it is that humans are fine tuned (by the mechanisms of natural selection) for the universe. We fit into the parameters of the universe, not the other way around. Assuming the universe is fine-tuned for us is putting the cart before the horse. This seems pretty obvious given the amount of time the universe existed before earth and humans existed.  Besides, if the universe is so fine-tuned for humans, why is it that we can only use one immeasurably tiny speck of it?

Dr. Harrub moved on to talk briefly about NASA and it's search for water on other planets, claiming that the purpose of searching for water on other planets is to prove the Bible wrong.

Um.. huh? Dr. H is sounding more and more like a conspiracy theorist. Apparently the presence of water on other planets is sufficient to disprove the Bible, and NASA is spending billions of dollars searching for water with this goal in mind. Are you kidding? I mean... Seriously? I don't even know how to respond to this.

Dr. H switched gears again and talked about how the sun is just perfectly far away and at the perfect temperature to give us seasons and such, so this can't all be a product of evolution, can it?

No. Evolution has nothing to do with cosmology.