timeimmortal

Captain Capitalism has the details, which are frankly shocking. “706 abortions per 1,000 births in [the U.S.] capital, Washington ie-on average 12% of pregnancies in the US end in abortion and in DC over a third.”

Convenience. That’s all this is: convenience. Abortion, in the U.S., is expensive, and procuring the procedure costs over $1,000. Birth control pills, for a year, might cost $500. Condoms probably cost about the same, over the same time frame.

But birth control pills are inconvenient; with a few notable exceptions, most need to be taken according to a rigid regimen, and who has the energy to deal with a hassle like a regular schedule? Condoms, on the other hand, aren’t usually that comfortable — “bareback” just feels better. Besides, it’s like Kleenex, right? You never quite know when that box is going to run out, and it sucks to be caught up short.

So why not just skip the pills and the condoms altogether. Screw now, abort later…no problem.

The triumph of post-Christian sexual Morality. What a world we’ve made for ourselves, eh?

Update: Welcome, WebElf readers!

…just like sometimes we do not. None of us is perfect, and some of them make legitimate points.

But, their indoctrination is not different than ours, so if we are wrong to do it by their standards, then they ought not to, as Ken rightly notes. And if pursuing the truth is a worthy ultimate aim, the aim expressed in the article of using “all the tools of science and humanity” is good, if incomplete in its application because it denies some basic parts of humanity and is not ’science’.

A short response to a few of the dumber statements concerning that summer camp for skeptics:

“It seems kind of like an accident almost, like the Big Bang that created the universe was an accident…It was a beautiful mistake or something.”

Aside from the multiple uses of subjunctive or probabilistic phrasing, the thought behind this is interesting. To think that the Big Bang (or, whatever the physicalist will call the originating moment of the universe, be it the explosion or the proximal excitement of quantum fields before the explosion or whatever first cause they posit) was an accident or a mistake indicates a few possibilities. First, that the claimant is of the opinion that, despite the flawed nature of humanity and our understanding of the universe, that somehow the origin of the universe was somehow wrong. This is very presumptuous and puts the claimant in a “god’s point of view” or an onmiscient third party position. That any human is not knowledgable of all the knowledge humanity knows let alone all that is knowable and can never fully detach oneself from the first person persepective undercuts this possibility if one is to be rational.*

Another possibility is that the claimant, in a similar fashion to the above, can distinguish random chance from other possibilities. Other than the presumption, given that, when tested, people generally can not generate truly random sequences of coin tosses (perhaps experts in statistics can) it is improbable that humans can determine whether the confluence of variables, that we theists sometimes call anthropic principles, which operate in the origin and continuation of the universe are random or not. By what methodology can we, for example, determine whether the explosive force at Planck time (which, if fractionally more or less powerful, would not have resulted in the universe) was random. I know of none, but to claim our existence a result of chance we would have to be able to have such a methodology and test it, as we can with coins, if we are to be rational.*

“but the thrust of the camp is to teach children to think skeptically about everything, including Religion and the supernatural.”

But not science or the human intellect it would seem. To be a true skeptic, whether Academic or Pyhronhic, one must doubt the truth of anything that can be doubted. A classic example is Descartes‘ First Meditation in which the agent is unable to trust the workings of his mind or her senses. The only truth that remains is that the agent exists because he exists if his thinking is true and she exists if her thinking is false because in either case the agent is thinking something. If they do become true skeptics, they, technically, would not fear anything, including stepping in front of a bus, since they can not trust their senses.

What the camp is actually doing is training them to think, at best, empirically and, more likely, scientistically. They are supposed to trust their senses and only those statements issued by the senses are to be held as true, so long as they can be tested by others. Personal experiences, such as the presence of God as He forgives, heals, unites, or feeds an agent are not acceptable because they are not testable.

Thus, the author is not well versed in the actual meanings of words as opposed to their colloquial misuse.

“People are like, ‘Oh, fossils are planted and they aren’t really real’…Well, if the whole theory of evolution is just like a ruse or a prank, we’ve done a really good job. We’re really good at pranking people.”

Ad hominem. The article later seems to pick on Catholics a little bit and Christians in general, but the Catholic magisterium and many well educated Christians across denominational lines recognize the legitimacy of evolution. That all theists are grouped together under “people” is very disingenuous of the camp leaders and the author as it places the weakest position in theism (both scripturally/theologically and scientifically) as representative.

“As soon as someone mentions faith in an argument, the argument is over,” says 15-year-old Ryan Lee, who skipped high school and is entering his junior year of college in Arizona. “Faith and the scientific method can’t be combined in the same argument.”

So, the scientist’s argument is over once he admits to his faith in the empirical process or in the veracity of his sense experience? And why does faith end an argument? Is faith always right? Does it invalidate everything else said? And does faith need to be used or merely mentioned? If I say “Socrates was a man, men are mortal, God is good, thus Socrates is mortal” is my argument unsound or invalid?

Why is a junior in college going to summer camp? And, does the fact that he is a junior mean that his statements are more sound? Does having a doctorate mean that someone is more intelligent than someone else? Or simply more prosperous and educated? If he is speaking outside of his experience and education, he is no better than anyone else.

Well, if we grant that the universe is random chance (which seems unlikely) then from where do we get our assumption that the universe is such that we can study it and yeild fruitful results? Such results are less likely to be found in a universe ruled by chance (and by chance, I do not mean the indeterminacy of, say, quantum physics in which the specific outcome of event X is unknown but its probability is known, but where indeterminacy is more broadly and deeply present — QM still has a sense of order, but not determinacy) than in an ordered universe. Can “God orders the universe” be a sound assumption in a scientific process? I think so. Thus, science and faith can coexist in an argument.

“Bupp says polls show that people who believe in reason, not God, are among the fastest growing groups in America. And this camp is designed to teach children to investigate and question everything. They study fossils, they learn about Morality without religion, they meet an expert who debunks mysteries like weeping icons and ghosts and crop circles.”

Hmmm…God in Christ is Logos - Reason - made flesh. Why do ‘rational’ people seem to think that God and reason are, and only can be, mutually exclusive? Should they be skeptical of dichotomies? If they are skeptical about everything, then yes. But, they are not skeptics, only scientistics.

Also, if ’skeptics’ are among the fastest growing groups, a) are, say, Muslims growing faster? but more importantly, b) a group growing from 10k to 20k or 100k to 200k or 1m to 2m may be growing at a rate of 100% in the time period, but if Christians were to grow at that rate, they would go from ~240m of a 300m population to 480m of a 300m population. Theists can not grow as fast because they are a supermajority of the population. But they may grow 5m members for every 1m skeptics. They are still growing bigger.

Again, do they question their senses or the scientific method?

Also, what sort of morality? Utilitarianism, which objectifies people? Kant’s deontology? But why should I follow what reason tells me or what the utlity calculus prescribes? From where does anything other than me get worth?

Yeah, weeping icons and crop circles are so the same thing. And ghosts and cropcircles are believed in by all theists. Just because a scientific explanation can be given for something does not mean that that something is not mysterious. An icon that weeps a red-purple chemical due to a reaction of parts of its composition with water does not explain why the water and the parts reacted on, say, the feast day of the figure described in the icon on which the country the figure is a patron for was brutally attacked by an enemy.

“As an educator, I like to teach critical thinking at a deep and erudite level, because it’s not embedded in the curriculum as much as I’d like to see,” McQuaig says. “And this provides a place for kids to talk about deep questions that many into adulthood don’t even consider and contemplate.” Are they trying to create little atheists? “Absolutely not!” McQuaig says. “We want to create little thinkers. Little thinkers that explore their own capacity and the external world, with all of the tools of science and humanity. That’s why we’re here.”

I am all for deeper and more erudite education. But when students in the age group of the camp sometimes have trouble finding the answers to questions like “what was the French reaction to the American Revolution” in a short text that reads, in part, “The French saw the advancement of liberty in America and decided to fight for it” there is, perhaps, a reason, especially with our currently mainstreamed educational practice, to have a ‘dumbed down’ curriculum.

Oh, and why is ’skepticism’ or empiricism automatically assumed as the only legitimate form of deeper and more erudite education? Questions like “What happens after death?”, “What is and why should I be good?”, “Why am I here?”, “What is the ultimate nature of the universe?”, “Who am I?” are routinely addressed, at least in my experience, in religious schools before students reach adulthood. Again, why assume science = thinking? Is not faith a “tool of humanity”?

“As soon as they read Richard Dawkins,” he counters, “I win.”

How? I could just as easily say “As soon as they read Thomas Aquinas, I win.” but it is not nearly so simple.

“If God really, really wanted us to know he existed, he’d make daily appearances: Like ‘It’s 3:15. Oh, it’s God time!’”

Well, it is all His time, but…how can one know that the gentleman who helped you pick up your groceries or the lady who offered a comforting smile on the bus was not God mimicking a human being or a human being representing god through his or her own agency? Why do some need the whiz-bangery of miraculous appearances to even begin to contemplate God’s existence?

Why be scared of not existing? As the ancient Epicureans postulated, you are not there to miss yourself after you are dead. And budding philosophers would know something is askew with the arguments they are using, if not to my detail (which may be completely wrong) or my conclusion.

* rational here means the use of human intellect and senses as prescribed by empiricists such that reason is divorced from (seemingly - I don’t think it can be seperated from) faith.

Ken adds: I didn’t really comment on what the kids said in the article, because I very much doubt that it was their own thoughts they were expressing. The example of the kid going after those who denounce fossils as some kind of ruse was, in my opinion, very clearly parroting something “an adult” told her, and was not so much exercising her (I believe it was a young girl, at any rate) own capacity for rational thought as she was deferring to a dubious authority.

Not that I think fossils are a ruse, mind. I do, however, think the adult who instructed this child in what to say had a bit of an axe to grind.

As to the rest, Chris hits the nail squarely on the head. This is supposedly a camp for skeptics and agents of ‘reason’, yet on closer analysis the teachers and participants both display neither trait.

“Fascism is applied relativism. Like all the devils promises, it delivers exactly the opposite of what is promised. Relativism promises freedom and intellectual liberty. It delivers bondage and groupthink.“

John C. Wright is in fine form in this two-part series (part 1, and part 2) in which he dismantles, almost line-by-line, a position paper by Frank R. Zindler on the source of morality in an atheistic framework.

In the end, the discussion comes down to this: within a purely secular/empirical framework, we can posit as to the various ways in which behaving in a “moral” manner might be beneficial to us, both as individuals and members of a larger, wider species. But this way of looking at things is ultimately a fallacy: that a human being possesses capacity for behaviour X and may derive benefit from it (X could here be something like altruism) in no way implies or concretely means that the human being is obligated to exercise behaviour X. There is no way to derive a moral “ought” from an empirical “is”.

Do read it all.

Update: Welcome, WebElf readers!

Kevin Myers crime? Well, as a man who spent some years living in Africa, he had the temerity to speak what he knew to be true about the problems on that troubled continent, and he did so in print:

When I went to Ethiopia* just over 20 years ago, I saw many things I never reported — such as the menacing effect of gangs of young men with Kalashnikovs everywhere, while women did all the work. In the very middle of starvation and death, men spent their time drinking the local hooch in the boonabate shebeens. Alongside the boonabates were shanty-brothels, to which drinkers would casually repair, to briefly relieve themselves in the scarred orifice of some wretched prostitute (whom God preserve and protect).

I saw all this and did not report it, nor the anger of the Irish aid workers at the sexual incontinence and fecklessness of Ethiopian men. Why? Because I wanted to write much-acclaimed, tear-jerkingly purple prose about wide-eyed, fly-infested children — not cold, unpopular and even “racist” accusations about African male culpability.

This follows from an earlier article that he penned, in which he noted still more problems:

The wide-eyed boy-child we saved, 20 years or so ago, is now a priapic, Kalashnikov-bearing hearty, siring children whenever the whim takes him.

There is, no doubt a good argument why we should prolong this predatory and dysfunctional economic, social and sexual system; but I do not know what it is. There is, on the other hand, every reason not to write a column like this.

…

Indeed, we now have almost an entire continent of sexually hyperactive indigents, with tens of millions of people who only survive because of help from the outside world.

They are now — one way or another — virtually all giving aid to or investing in Africa, whereas Africa, with its vast savannahs and its lush pastures, is giving almost nothing to anyone, apart from AIDS.

…

How much Morality is there in saving an Ethiopian child from starvation today, for it to survive to a life of brutal circumcision, poverty, hunger, violence and sexual abuse, resulting in another half-dozen such wide-eyed children, with comparably jolly little lives ahead of them? Of course, it might make you feel better, which is a prime reason for so much charity. But that is not good enough.

For self-serving generosity has been one of the curses of Africa. It has sustained political systems which would otherwise have collapsed.

And for saying as much, all of it good common sense, Mr. Myers could potentially be jailed…without benefit of trial. In Ireland, which is supposedly a free and democratic nation.

On the one hand, I expected some uproar in Ireland over my piece about Ethiopia on July 10. But there really wasn’t any. On the other, I didn’t expect an attempt to jail me by a state-sponsored body. Yet Denise Charlton, of the Immigrant Council of Ireland, has urged An Garda Siochana to investigate me under a special law, by which I could be tried and imprisoned for two years without even the benefit of a jury.

Oh, Denise, Denise, you silly, silly little girl: have you nothing better to do with your time and talents than to try to get someone jailed for saying something you dislike? So there we are. The apparatchiks of the equality industry merely have to contemplate the sector of their psyche wherein their self-righteous emotions reside: and if these are sufficiently overwrought, they decide that a hate-crime has been committed.

…

So, “a lot of Africans” are “all very offended”, are they? All of them? The poor dears. Well, if the countries on whose behalf they get so easily offended are so bloody marvellous — Sudan? Rwanda? Zimbabwe? Sierre Leone? Congo? Somalia? Eritrea? Etcetera? — why aren’t they enjoying themselves back home?

Just so.

The above are not easy words to read; I personally doubt that Mr. Myers intended for them to be easy to read. The reality of Africa — and even of the outcomes of the various aid monies that flow in to that troubled continent — is not an easy truth to hear, and I doubt there is any way to put it to paper in a palatable manner, save to gloss over the really nasty bits in favour of heart-wrenching stories about babies with bloated bellies.

And make no mistake: starvation, especially of infants, is a damnable tragedy. But nothing is really being done about this by simply pouring more money into the various countries that make up Africa — in the end, what is achieved is that governments are propped up which have no business being in power in the first place. The cycle of injustice is thus free to continue.

Positive developments do occasionally occur in Africa, admittedly, but one notes that many of these are intrinsically linked with foreign missions that see Westerners come in to Africa (once more) to take an active role in e.g. the construction of bridges and water systems.

But now, apparently, a man stands to be jailed in Ireland for saying as much.

* a quick note, for those who will attempt to lay blame for all this at the feet of the colonial escapades of e.g. Britain and France: Ethiopia was never a colony.

The ambiguously-named muslimperson writes in again with a rather lengthy…uhm…outpouring in response to this article, a prior response of mine to him(?).

Let me just preface this lengthy entry with a bit of a note: it’s long, and the grammar and spelling are questionable at best. It starts well, but gets predicitably anti-Jewish by the end. Obviously, muslimperson feels that Mitra Kermani has been wronged. Because of the defamatory nature of some of what muslimperson says, I have redacted parts of the letter — a first for me. I’ve tried to minimize the impact of what has been excised, however.

Full Story of Mitra Kermani: June 3, 2008 :

This information about court of criminal and civil court order is public information you can go to criminal court and asked if this detail we say is wrong or right

This is true statements:

Mitra Kermani never arrested or charged for any death treat against any person in Canada

How do you verify your information before you copy and past from National Post

I’m actually going to stop here for a minute and remark that the stories of Mitra Kermani harassing people — at least by phone — can be verified by the fact that she harassed other bloggers who reported on her story, and did so multiple times.

Also, I observe that Mitra Kermani herself admitted to “aggressively talking to [Loblaw's]” (which is a polite way of saying she lost her cool, methinks). She also admitted to threatening one executive of the company by saying she would “cut his tail off and shoot him in the head.” She later attempted to excuse this behaviour by dismissing the phrase as “an old Iranian expression, not an actual threat,” but at the end of the day she told a man she was going to shoot him in the head.

That’s a death threat, and it’s a crime, even if she wasn’t charged for it. And muslimperson is quick to point out that she was not, in fact, criminally charged…or rather, not convicted (not that this matters).

Mitra Kermani did not convicted of criminal harassment or criminal telephone harassment after two days trial got finished on Nov 21, 2007

…

All wrong accusation…against Mitra Kermani they did not proof that

• Mitra Kermani is international terrorist
• Mitra Kermani sharped the knife and cut something while she was talking in cell phone to [someone]
• Mitra Kermani said that she plan to attack [somewhere]
• Mitra Kermani said that
• Mitra Kermani said she is going to shoot head of [someone]…

There is no verification available to justify the claim that Ms. Kermani has been labeled a “terrorist” by…anyone in a position of authority (private opinion doesn’t count here). It is odd, then, that muslimperson would demand to know how I support/justify my citation of the National Post article, when he(?) himself(?) cites, without support or justification, a claim that Ms. Kermani may have herself invented.

As to the knife, the exact claim was that it sounded like a cleaver was being beaten against a cutting board during the phone conversation. Given that Ms. Kermani’s company supplied chicken as a main product, this allegation certainly has an air of possibility about it. As to whether it is true, there is no certainty, and Ms. Kermani denies the act. But is it possible she is the liar? Of course.

As to the threat of an attack on some location, there is no verification that Ms. Kermani made the threat in the first place — this is true. Unless, of course, someone has a recording of the threat. And at any rate, even if she didn’t threaten the building, she did admit to threatening an executive of the company. I don’t actually know the details of the matter well enough to know whether any actual threat was made, or whether this is just a fanciful invention of muslimperson’s mind.

Instead Mitra brought 60 facts against [some people]…who went with [someone] to made above wrong statement to police that [someone] is liar not lawyer said…to civil court and said in…in criminal court because [someone] sent too many wrong under oath affidavit to court…

Mitra Kermani brought 14 proof documents…against [some people]..who worked for [a company] finally [some people] disappeared for first time after 3 years bring Mitra Kermani to too many courts and send new lawyer. Mitra Kermani noticed all those lawyer are Jewish…with document proof they did lied to courts and none of those label was true. [someone] now recently planed to change constitution law in Canada.

In last letter caused [someone]…to escaped was [someone] lied to civil court that Mira Kermani is convicted to criminal harassment and Mitra warn [someone] this time if she come to court she will asked court to disqualify her from work in Canada in civil cases any more. Finally [someone] did not show up.

One question: hunh?

Also, I will observe one thing: It’s those damn JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOS again. Seriously…why are Muslims always apt to blame Jews for, like, everything? The rampant anti-Semitism in the above is striking for how bald-faced it is, although I can’t say I’m surprised that muslimperson took the discourse in that direction.

Here again, a strange thing has emerged from the atrocious grammar. Whereas before, muslimperson chastised me for blindly citing a National Post article, now he(?) is making wild assertions and providing no justification (in the form of, say, a link to an article?) for them. All the above is speculation, and nothing more.

Open Jan 11, 2008 Mitra Kermani also not found any civil contempt order then why again on next civil again [someone] made new motion…

Criminal court under appeal was wonder in court of appeal now since criminal court told…the order then…could not changed it in civil court order now. This is like OJ Simpson trial that bring innocent in 8 times to win criminal in civil and unless…proof in that periods some thing happened that they asked for…while we went to two days trial and nobody come to testify civil court without trial can not made judgment only because…Misom is small. Plus [someone] said she is not agree with expansion…how come [someone] give all favour to [someone] even later [someone] send letter to [someone] said in your letter you said are not you made mistake please change it to are please.

Civil court has not jurisdiction to change criminal court order especially when that criminal court is under appeal…no ground to ban Mitra while they know there is not business with Mitra since 2005 therefore this is now civil court also went to court of appeal in Toronto but this time Mitra Kermani did asked judge in court of appeal to disqualify [some people] for misconduct and abuse and abuse of process and using Mitra not have CAPACITY to fighting with them by sending every two month more than 60 big files filed in civil court against Mitra Kermani it is unbelievable

Point of order: Loblaw’s has every right to cease business with (or “ban,” as muslimperson would have it), since they are the retailer and she is just a supplier. They have every right not to spend their money on the products she makes available, as do we all.

Moreover, since Ms. Kermani has admitted to some of the actions that Loblaw’s is accusing her of engaging in, including the utterance of a statement that she would shoot someone in the head, they have every right to seek restraining orders against her.

This is like one small companies verses big company fifth for her right took her 3 years and took her pain and she still fight for her right and freedom of talk and freedom to talk with who ever she likes to talk and in the same respect if some one like Mitra Kermani and ban…to not let that person talk to Mitra is also painful for Mitra and this corruption, fraud, conspiracy, misconduct, abuse discrimination and abuse of process against small person only like to do or made and had lots of customers

It’s pretty simple, really: if you don’t want to be told that you can’t speak to people, don’t threaten to shoot said people in the head. Why is this so difficult to understand?

This is up to customer who like to eat their food…to control saying I like to feed Muslim Jewish halal food called Alsafa halal food because they are German friend of us that is nonsense

It’s the Jews! The JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOS!

[Anyone] has freedom to deal with anybody they want but in the same respect customer has right to choose who they like to eat for specially meals not non Muslim control Muslim food and not let Muslim come up under conspiracy and illegal competition act and under human right act all is hate crime against Mitra Kermani

This is true, to be sure, but the customer doesn’t really get a say as to which products a store puts on the shelves or not. If, say, Safeway suddenly decided not to deal with Dole anymore, I’d have to suck it up and buy some other company’s pineapples (not that I buy that many pineapples, but it was an easy example). That’s really all there is to it. Too bad, so sad, pass the SunRipe.

Loblaw companies used Misom halal for 8years exclusivity like marriage can not get them hungry out and terminate them and not let them talk and negation any business called that on Aug 2005 “cool-off” period Misom stay 6 month out and not talk and we are not pay damages and they did breach contract on June 13, 2005 and say stay for 6 month cool not talk if we like you we will return your business back if you talk you go to jail.

Did the Reader catch that? Loblaw’s was partnered with Misom for 8 years exclusively…clearly, it’s like a marriage!

Only…it’s not. Business agreements are not permanent commitments of total fidelity — they are temporary agreements that periodically get renewed. Or they don’t get renewed, and one business elects to not do business with the other anymore, in favour of a different company.

Mitra Kermani is…she fight for her right

She was innovate of halal food…and she is hungry outside and others cash her business and she is faced all criminal court which wrong and civil court should force loblaw to pay defamation to Mitra as punitive damage as well.

Therefore media welcome to come and like to listen to claim of Mitra Kermani in civil court and you can go and see all files in civil court is open to media

But you can not simply copy and past wrong information from National post.

I’ve spent as much time as I can for today, O Reader, looking for information from the Ontario Superior Court — transcripts, case files, anything. As yet, I’ve found nothing.

If someone — muslimperson, perhaps? — can provide links to the relevant files, I’ll gladly entertain them. Until such time, I can do no more than observe that muslimperson’s own claims are as baseless as he(?) says the National Post’s are. And in defence of the National Post: why would the Post risk a lawsuit from a large, national grocery company with that sort of lie, and why did Mitra Kermani admit to doing some of the things that the Post article claimed she had done?

We agree nobody has right to harass anybody for breach contract but big company also should not smash small companies and get envy over them if small but smart…

Plus Woman are not right in any where not in Middle East not n Canada as long as small yes as soon as become famous men get them out with one label and slander in food male industry in Canada no respect for woman in highest end manager unless take time

I note that Canadian society has more respect for women that any Islamic society I can think of off the top of my head. That’s not to say that Canada is perfect in this regard — far from it. But compared to Mitra Kermani’s own home country of Iran, well…Canadian women do very well.

Mitra Kermani went in gifted school in Iran when she was 13 got number one in Mathematics among two million children of her age Mitra Kermani has Canadian chemical engineering degree and Mitra Kermani has so many pharmaceutical and petro gas and oil industry background and Mitra Kermani took 5 courses with A- in master degree in University of Toronto and Mitra Kermani has diploma in Muslim laws and Mitra Kermani has one year computer programmer and work for more than 18 years in industry still we must wait for get acceptance among Muslim Canadian went to so many ambassador house and lunch with their family in middle east…Mira still fight for her claim for freedom of talk and freedom of choice for Muslim customer…

Yes, yes, yes, O Reader…Ms. Kermani is all that and a bag of (halal) chips.

Equally…so what? All her various achievements entitle her to precisely nothing in terms of the business she now operates.

finally:

…

Canada said in their constituation law that Canada believe God and Muslim belive God and Muslim also belive Jesis while Jewish are not then for god sake why for Morality of this let company wake up and interfer in fate of Muslim for hate crime!!! this must get stop that is why Mitra keramni fight…for 3 years. God is the greatest and know it all. if some is bad god will punish them. stop hate for no reason. support human right and direct them to right path.

It’s the JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOS!

Okay, that’s actually starting to get a little old. But then, so are the allegationsof a conspiracy to mix Jewish kosher food with halal food from an alternative supplier. Is this poop for real?

At any rate, I did warn the Reader that the letter from muslimperson went all squirrely at the end, and that the grammar and spelling were poor. And now, at the end of it, I see that I may have understated the case. Still, perhaps we should all count ourselves enlightened, now that we know that the senseless persecution and harassment of Mitra Kermani is just the visible element in a Jewish plot to contaminate halal food with kosher products.

And if you will buy that, O Reader, you’re a fool…hold out for the offer on the bridge!

Update: Welcome, Sleepy Old Bear readers and Steynians!

The Color of Update: It’s been an interesting day on the freespeecher email list. Someone postulated that the rambling incoherence of muslimperson might, in fact, be the rambling incoherence of Mitra Kermani herself. It’s a theory with some merit, if not exactly testable.

“I am not a fan of self-indulgence. I have contempt for those who yield sovereignty of their reason to their appetites.”

Shivers, I tell you, O Reader. Shivers.

The actual discussion centers on Morality, and whether moral rules concern only those things which are external (i.e. actions and consequences thereof) or internal things as well (thoughts, desires). The Christian response is that morality necessarily deals with both the internal and the external — as Wright himself points out, “hatred is immoral as murder, lust as immoral as adultery.”

His opposite in the discussion asserts that internal morality does not exist. This would seem to be a contravention of the basic human capability to reason out a conclusion based on observable evidence, even if only from within his or her own life: ask any married person who has seen a particularly attractive member of the opposite gender and had a most vivid fantasy about a chance dalliance, or ask any person who has ever been enraged what sort of calculated physical cruelty he or she had imagined on the person that had made him or her so cross.

Of course, in our debased society, men and women often find it too much of a trial to resist physical, external temptations, and the thought of outward morality alone is an almost unspeakable burden. To suggest that one’s internal state should be similarly regulated is, to them, entirely too much to ask. “I can’t help what I think or feel,” the argument may go.

It’s a bollocks argument, of course…but it has a surprising grip on the thoughts of many people.

“Are there temptations men cannot resist? Perhaps so. Men are weak. Are we excused from the duty to resist temptation merely because temptation often wins? Oh, Hercules! Are we allowed to throw down sword and shield and flee the battle merely because the Persian outnumber us, and their horns and flags and brave plumes daunt us? Is it not nobler, whether victory or defeat awaits, to close ranks, ready the spear, and rally to the standard to which we are pledged? Cowardice is unbecoming both in battles of the flesh, and of the spirit.”

The term “die trying” is crude and not entirely accurate, but it will suffice as a descriptor of the proper approach to mounting a moral resistance against temptation. That we may — or that we most likely will — fail is no reason to allow the temptation to have its day; to the very last moment, the moral person must rail against his or her being drawn in to sin.

Gastric bypasses. Stomach stapling, as I gather the procedure is also known — a last-ditch treatment for obesity, to stave off a heart attack or stroke.

Being married to a nurse, I occasionally get to hear about this kind of procedure, and I gather that it really is intended to be last-ditch. The long-term survival prospects aren’t exactly stellar, nor are the odds of the surgery really doing all that much to help a person*. It does, I gather, occasionally work as intended, but not often.

Still, as more and more people in society are becoming obese, such procedures are expected to be commonplace. Britain has seen a 41% rise in the number of bypasses done in the last year, at an average cost of 7,000 pounds per operation.

It’s on the rise here in Canada too, although I don’t know by what percentage.

The problem is: surgeries like this are, more often than not, like rearranging deck chairs on…well, you know which ship, O Reader. Treatment is one thing, but a problem like obesity has more and deeper causes that are, frankly, not always addressed, nor always rectified:

I worry that not enough is being done to make sure people don’t gain the weight back. See, a lot of people think the surgery is a miracle cure. It’s not. I have talked to dozens of people who have had it done, only to go back to their old habits and gain all the weight back. This is not a good use of public money. I realize that obesity is a serious issue (my fat ass reminds me of that every day!), but I would rather see the price of green peppers go down before I would want to see so much being spent on a cosmetic surgery that may not solve the long-term problem. Progressives are always on about “root causes”, and this is one area where I agree with them. You cannot change a lifetime of habit in a 3 hour surgery. A person has to be in the right headspace in order to lose weight. Sometimes it takes a health scare. Sometimes it’s a nasty comment from a trusted loved-one. Sometimes it is a positive, like wanting to be more fertile and start a family.

But like going into detox for that last time, you need to have hit your bottom (no fat pun intended) before you can lose the weight. The NHS is spending a lot of money on the symptom, not the disease.

This is something Grace and I talk about every once in a while. The plain fact is, a lot of people who go in for this and other forms of surgery related to complications from obesity do not change their own lifestyles, which are the real cause of the problem in the wake of the surgery. If a person’s liver fails because the last time they didn’t eat at McDonald’s was sometime in the 90s, they expect a new one. And when they get a new one, they finish the post-surgical healing time and go right back to the Big Macs.

(Basically, it’s the culture entitlement at work again, with the usual lack of understanding that rights are tempered and accompanied by responsibilities. People have the inalienable right to eat at McDonald’s, and when something fails in their own body they demand, as though they are owed, corrective treatment. God forbid it cross their minds to amend their own destructive habits to prevent a re-occurrence of the failure!)

To be fair, some people do transform their lifestyles, and they deserve to be commended for that; this is especially true from within a Christian understanding of the world, since we should rejoice every time someone turns his or her life around, in same way that God rejoices over every sinner who repents.

But I agree with my wife when she observes that responsive treatments like this are, ultimately, a losing battle. As long as people in places like Canada and England know that the government will foot the bill when their body craps out, there’s no real incentive for them to change…especially when that same government mandates and enforces a human rights regime that basically encourages people to feel entitled to…well, everything.

What ultimately needs to happen, and this is hinted at in the excerpt above (i.e. “green peppers”), is that health care services need to focus more on preventative medicine, instead of just on responsive medicine. Surgery is all well and good, but we could do more and better to fight obesity if we focused on responding to people at risk of becoming obese, and getting them to change their lifestyles accordingly. Yes, programmes of this nature would still have quite a cost associated with them, but in the long term they would probably save quite a lot of dollars if they were, in fact, succecssful to any meaningful degree.

A person really “cannot change a lifetime of habit in a 3 hour surgery,” and our health care systems need to be able to address this reality. At present, as I understand it, patients in for bypass surgery do receive counselling, and (correct me if I’m wrong, O Reader) have to have demonstrated the ability to lose a certain quantity of weight on their own prior to undergoing the surgery itself. That said, somewhere along the line that person did begin down a path that led them to become obese, and one gets the sense that more could have been done for them earlier on to perhaps prevent them ever becoming so morbidly overweight as to require drastic surgery in the first place.

The elephant in the room is a pair of questions: what could be done, and how do we get people to take it seriously. And this brings us back to our culture of entitlement, because while such a thing persists it may well be nigh-impossible to put in place programmes that work to prevent morbid obesity by way of counselling, teaching, and exercise.

In a way, the prevalence of gastric bypass surgery, and obesity as well, is just one more testament to the way in which our rights-obsessed, responsibility-free, post-Christian society is ultimately destroying itself.

It might be entirely predictable of me to point out that modern atheism bears a goodly deal of the blame for this self-destructive trend in society, as surely as it bears the blame for other such trends (e.g. demographics). But I observe that I’m not the only one who thinks so…and the sane Hitchens brother has quite the thing to say about another trend with the same root causes.

I did mention Atheism at the beginning. For that is at the root of all this. Once people don’t acknowledge any moral authority outside themselves, they can choose which rules to take seriously and which not to entirely according to their own feelings at any time. They will generally do this on the basis of what suits them. It begins with little things, and moves on to the great. We are now at the stage where it is moving on quite fast.

One of the key features of atheism is that atheists themselves are unable to grasp this point. We’re just as good as religious people, they respond, if not better. Maybe so. Religious people who understand their creeds know perfectly well that they’re no better than anyone else. That’s not the issue. What is?.

It is this. What do you really mean by ‘good’? Why (for example) is fidelity better than adultery, patience better than impatience? Watch people who are nice to you in the office, as they drive, in a hurry, in frantic traffic, and you may see another side of them. ‘Road rage’, where we are unrestrained by fears about how we will look to those we live and work with, is an interesting measure of what we are really like. Cars are a powerful moral lie-detector.

The connection might not seem immediately intuitive, but it is there, and it has a great deal to do with both individual liberty and the distinctions drawn between what are considered private matters, and what are considered public matters.

What we eat, most people would agree, is a private matter. What, where, and how fast we drive can be similarly classified, but in the case of a car it is easier to observe that what can at first be viewed as a private matter can very rapidly become a public matter, if in fact we drive too fast or too recklessly. What we eat can similarly become a public matter, if we are reckless about it as well. This is perhaps not as true in places like America, given that one pays for one’s health care there, but it certainly is true in places like Canada and England, where the government generally foots the bill. Obesity — which, psychological considerations aside, arises out of too much consumption — and the expensive surgical treatments for it are an example of how the private issue of what we eat becomes a public issue; basically: we have eaten too much, and are now a burden on the public purse.

Drugs? Take them. Sex? Have it now and to hell with the consequences. Abortion’s easy now. Manners? Who cares. Patience? What’s that? Parents? Ignore them as soon as you can, and especially once you’ve got to university thanks to their money and effort. Teachers? What do they know? Rules? They’re for other people. Religion? It’s a wicked fraud designed to keep us down. This belief is itself a moral code, but one which is entirely based on the desires of the person involved — and which is destined to cause growing problems as more and more unfettered egos bump into each other.

The same attitude could probably be observed, I suspect, in response to the above suggestion that medicine become more preventative in nature — this is the illustration of the elephant, so to speak. For as surely as our society believes that rosaries should be kept far away from ovaries, we believe every bit as much that nobody is allowed to tell us to put the cheeseburger down in favour of a green vegetable…even if that is exactly what we need to do.

It might seem strange for a “freespeecher” to be thinking in this manner, but let us come back to what was said above, O Reader. Let us look again at the issue of where the private exercise of rights becomes a public issue. With freedom of speech, that line ostensibly exists at the exact point where the articulation of an idea or viewpoint becomes incitement to violence. We have laws against that sort of thing (and rightly so).

Where does that line exist regarding the issue of what we eat? Does it exist at all? Should it exist, if it currently does not? How might we effect such a thing in real life? One possible answer is that receiving treatment is contingent upon meeting a set of criteria both pre- and post-surgery, although what the penalty would be for breaking such an agreement post-surgery would be, I do now know (a gastric bypass can’t really be undone, after all). The idea of a user-pay system for obesity treatments is a tempting thought, but given that even in the U.S. obesity is on the rise, the effectiveness of that idea is called into question. Denial of treatment to those who did not seek counselling earlier on in their obesity is a possibility, although that raises other issues.

Social upheaval would probably achieve the best results, but it would be rather unrealistic to expect such a thing to occur.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Man admits to having sex with over 1,000…………

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…cars.

Cars! Automobiles.

Edward Smith, who lives with his current “girlfriend” – a white Volkswagen Beetle named Vanilla, insisted that he was not “sick” and had no desire to change his ways.

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“I’m a romantic. I write poetry about cars, I sing to them and talk to them just like a girlfriend. I know what’s in my heart and I have no desire to change.”

He added: “I’m not sick and I don’t want to hurt anyone, cars are just my preference.”

Mr Smith, 57, first had sex with a car at the age of 15, and claims he has never been attracted to women or men.

It’s one of those things that, on one hand, one doesn’t want to think about. He “had sex with a car,” did he? The mind is tempted to ask how; something kicks in to prevent the reflex from completing. It’s just not worth knowing.

He sings and talks to his cars, just like to a real girlfriend. But he’s not sick, O Reader…no, most definitely not.

As I note in the title, I suppose this was inevitable too, and really…I can’t say I’m surprised. Our post-Christian sexual Morality, with its laissez faire attitude toward pretty much any act of sexual invention one can conjure up, more or less ensured that at some point someone would attempt to make currusexuality acceptable in the mainstream.

Grace and I sat down to watch the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica last night. Being that we don’t get Space Channel as part of our cable package, the arrangement that we have in place involves me getting my younger brother to tape the episodes for us (which reminds me: I need to lend him the second season of Deep Space Nine at some point).

Guess What’s Coming to Dinner was, I thought, just a great episode. It wasn’t as theologically deep as the previous episode, but it was a nice return to the methodical, paced, straightforward and tense drama that has been such a hallmark of the show. It moved rapidly, fluidly, from scene to scene, and kept a good pace.

Some observations I took away from the episode follow.

>> The Final Five

The Colonials now know that the Final Five are in the fleet, that it was the Raiders that discovered this fact, and that it was their discovery — and subsequent refusal to fight — that was the impetus behind the Cylon retreat from the Ionian Nebula. Colonel Tigh doesn’t appear to have made the connection between this revelation and what Samuel Anders had to say about the events of the nebula battle.

>> Justice and morality

Once again, the tension is there between human and Cylon concepts of justice and Morality, and the Cylons in particular seem to be struggling mightily to move away from “eye for an eye” justice. Intially, the stage is set with basically back-to-back scenes of first the humans (Laura Roslin, Saul Tigh, and William Adama) plotting to in effect double-cross their newfound Cylon allies by withholding the Final Five once they are revealed, then of the Cylons planning to hold the human crew aboard the basestar hostage until the Final Five are turned over. Both plans hinge on re-activating the Number Threes.

Natalie goes back on the plan, though. While her initial argument was that while the Cylons may have changed, the humans haven’t, her follow-up argument is basically that it is more important that the Cylons have changed, and that this reality needs to be demonstrated. Again, the message is clear: the cycle of tit-for-tat has to end in order for both races to progress.

(This is interesting for another reason: assuming my prediction is right about the series being, essentially, eschatological in nature, and given my guessing that the end of the show hinges, in part, on the idea of breaking the cycle of history that has so far driven the backstory of the show, coult it perhaps be the case that the attempt by the Cylons to break out of the cycle of blood for blood and betrayal for betrayal is a hint of things to come?)

This shift appears in another place. Natalie, perhaps correctly guessing at Roslin’s apparent bloody-mindedness where Cylons are concerned, initially offers the possibility of an attack on the Resurrection Hub as a method by which humanity might get some vengeance. But it is made clear later that she doesn’t actually believe this: for Natalie, the issue is not one of revenge, but of development and meaning. Her speech to the Quorum of Twelve reflects this:

In our civil war, we’ve seen death. We watched our people die. Gone forever. As terrible as it was, beyond the reach of the Resurrection Ships, something began to change. We could feel a sense of time. As if each moment held its own significance. We began to realize that for our existence to hold any value it must end. To live meaningful lives we must die, and not return. The one human flaw, that you spend your lifetimes distressing over — mortality — is the one thing…well, it’s the one thing that makes you whole.

It’s almost as if she’s moved past the whole issue of fighting the civil war at this point; her desire seems to be for the Cylons to, in her words, become “whole.” She desires that her brothers and sisters be able to live “meaningful lives,” and she realizes that another cycle must be broken for this to happen: the cycle of Cylon resurrection.

>> Kara Thrace and her special destiny

It really does sound like the name of a bad cover band, doesn’t it?

At any rate, Starbuck’s destiny begins to move in a potentially different direction with this episode, and both Grace and I sat up a bit straighter during the rather well-edited sequence of Natalie giving her speech to the Quorum. Inter-cut with that sequence are a series of momentary flashbacks that Kara Thrace (watching the speech from a few feet away) has of the Cylon Hybrid professing to her that she is the “harbinger of death” who will “lead them all to their end.”

I think Grace realized it first, actually. “I thought of that too,” she remarked, meaning the possible implication that Starbuck would be the “harbinger of death” for the Cylons. I kind of talked about the idea when discussing the previous episode, Faith: rumours concerning what will transpire later on in the season suggest that the Colonials will attempt to destroy the Cylon Resurrection Hub, without which no Cylon will be able to resurrect even if a Resurrection Ship is present. I’m beginning to wonder if perhaps the repeated warnings that Kara Thrace is the harbinger of the apocalypse might be an indication that if the Colonials follow her, she will lead the Cylons to their end, if not humanity.

>> Hera

Little Hera Agathon basically is the last act of the episode, and while she only gets a few minutes of screen time (and even fewer lines of dialogue), she is back in a big way after being essentially ignored since the previous season. From her cryptic, spooky “Bye bye!” that she says to Sharon Agathon after the latter awakes from another opera house dream, to the scribbler full of sixes (and Sixes!), the fact that Hera is significant in a way that Nicholas Tyrol is not is very evident.

>> The Hybrid and the President

Starting with Razor, and now with the events of this episode, little hints are beginning to develop that the Hybrids may have their own agenda that is at cross-purposes with the intentions of the Cylons and the humans. Laura Roslin’s decision to visit the Hybrid on the basestar, in the wake of Starbuck revealing that the Hybrid has intimate knowledge of the content of Roslin’s visions, is foolhardy at best, and demonstrates an almost hubristic impulsiveness that may well be her undoing.

I have no idea what the Hybrid’s motives might be in abducting the President, if in fact that was “her” intent (Possible spoiler: episode summaries released to various television guides specifically mention that the Hybrid has abducted Roslin). I expect it ties in to the bit about the “dying leader” coming to know the “truth of the opera house,” although that’s hardly a certainty either.

>> Predictions, various and sundry

1) I still think Karl Agathon — Helo — is the final Cylon, especially in light of the attention (and the nature thereof) given to Hera in this episode.

2) I still think the identity of the final Cylon is in some way tied up with Cylon reproduction, especially in light of what is shaping up to be a major mission to destroy the ability of all Cylons, everywhere, to resurrect. If in fact the Cylons are to survive as a species, in the wake of the Hub’s destruction (which is by no means a certainty, although it probably will happen), then they will need to be able to reproduce.

3) I’m almost certain, now, that Cally Tyrol is not the final Cylon, especially if the unboxing of the Number Threes is to coincide with the destruction of the Resurrection Hub. It would be hard for the Threes to reveal the identity of the last Cylon if, in fact, there was no means by which that last Cylon could be introduced back into the narrative.

Although, having said that, I suppose there might be a certain dramatic validity to the revelation that one of the Final Five is permanently gone.

4) There’s a lot of nervousness in Anders, and I’m still fairly certain that he’ll end up being “outed” first. His nervousness was played up a lot in this episode, and if the Threes do not out him at once I’m almost certain he’ll do something to out himself.

5) I still think Adama will not end the series an atheist.

6) An interesting situation has developed with the abduction of Roslin by the rebel Hybrid. Firstly, Roslin herself is in the end stages of her cancer; that far from the Galactica and its doctor, she may end up in very dire straits in the coming episodes. Indeed, it’s certainly possible that she won’t make it back to the fleet alive. Another issue that crops up is the issue of the attack on the Hub itself; will Galactica make the attempt on her own, with what Vipers and pilots remain?

7) Did anyone else notice that the camera lingered on a very nervous-looking Leoben Conoy after he told Natalie to stall for time while he dealt with the Centurions? Obviously, the Hybrid’s actions change everything, but I wonder if perhaps he’ll end up getting killed off permanently — especially since we know that the Leoben that Kara interrogated way back in Flesh and Bone did manage to resurrect, and yet nevertheless told Kara that her destiny would be to send his soul off to God.

Dinesh D’Souza talks about his debate with atheist Peter Singer, who is an advocate for what could be called “post-term abortion” and, bizarrely, animal rights. Singer’s arguments in favour of abortion and the legalization of infanticide are infused with comparisons between the unborn (or the newborn) human and different animals at similar stages of development. Working from the conclusion that, “at any stage of pregnancy,” the “calf, the pig, and the much-derided chicken come out well ahead of the fetus,” Singer demonstrates what D’Souza terms an exploration of “the consequences of living in a truly secular society, devoid not only of the Christian God but also of Christian Morality.”

And indeed, I would argue that Singer’s various assertions are certainly, shall we say, logical outcomes of atheist thought, especially as applied to morality. If, after all, the human being is just another animal driven primarily by instinct, then things like abortion and infanticide aren’t rights, nor should they be illegal — they’re just facts of being, about as strange in humans as they are in other species that are sometimes known to eat or kill their young in certain circumstances.

And indeed, as both D’Souza and Singer point out, some human societies — certain African animist tribes, for example — practice that reality, occasionally killing unwanted children.

One could go into a lengthy discussion of how Singer’s reasoning is also self-destructive, since it bestows on the religious majority the “right” to remove, by any means necessary, the irreligious element within its midst free from legal or moral consequence. It is fortunate for Singer, then, that he is ultimately incorrect.

But I’m not going to elaborate on that point, because something else struck me today which I would prefer to remark upon. As noted, Singer and D’Souza mention that certain African tribes — who adhere to primitive, animistic religions — engage in child-murder and infanticide on occasion. One is led to believe that the ancient (pagan) Spartans also engaged in such practice.

And indeed, in modern times, while most atheists do not slaughter their own children when some perceived “need” for it arises (save in cases of abortion, of course), the same cannot be said, it seems, for many who follow the Islamic faith. And yes, I know that honour killings are supposed to be a cultural thing, not a religious thing. Heck, a day after this story was printed, the same newspaper (the Guardian) ran a story denying the link between Islam and honour killing.

And yet:

Two weeks after The Observer revealed the shocking story of Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, murdered because of her infatuation with a British solider in Basra, southern Iraq, her father is defiant. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city’s Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death.

Abdel-Qader, 46, a government employee, was initially arrested but released after two hours. Astonishingly, he said, police congratulated him on what he had done. ‘They are men and know what honour is,’ he said.

Rand, who was studying English at Basra University, was deemed to have brought shame on her family after becoming infatuated with a British soldier, 22, known only as Paul.

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‘Death was the least she deserved,’ said Abdel-Qader. ‘I don’t regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his Religion,’ he said.

Now let’s do a little compare-and-contrast, shall we?

Here’s Peter Singer:

“My colleague Helga Kuhse and I suggest that a period of twenty-eight days after birth might be allowed before an infant is accepted as having the same right to life as others.”

Here’s Abdel-Qader Ali, father of the murdered girl:

‘If I had realised then what she would become, I would have killed her the instant her mother delivered her.’

Do I perceive an agreement between the ideals of these two men, at least in passing?

I know that Christianity has its share of example of followers of the religion who have done horrible things. But equally, I observe that nowhere in mainstream Christian thought is the topic of when child-murder is and is not permissible ever brought up; murder, in all its forms, is as immoral now as it was in Jesus‘ time, and for good reason.

And I can’t help but think that the further one gets from Christ, the more tolerable the idea of allowing murder, even the murder of one’s own child, becomes. For all his barbarity, Abdel-Qader Ali murdered his daughter in response to a perceived transgression. For Peter Singer, no motivation would need to be stated, and no transgression required, to justify the act.

Robagne writes in with a question about Morality in relation to the theory of evolution. I can only assume he’s referring to one of the articles in my ongoing discussion with Nicholas, but I’m not going to speculate as to a specific one; his question stands alone, on its own merits, quite handily.

Agreed, Dawkins is too harsh for my liking…

I would like to ask however — what is the problem of one who believes in evolution to also believe in morals, even in God?

Evolutionary theory, like any other scientific theory is simply asserting that the universe is operating according to laws of universal application.

For me, it is amazing to think that God, in his supreme wisdom, can create life and humankind simply through the enaction of universal laws.

I have no problem in believing that while humankind has humble origins (i.e. we were once the beasts of the fields) we have now evolved into something capable of receiving God’s moralizing teachings.

The good Reader should know that I have no problem “believing” in evolution — in fact, I very readily accept the theory, in the understanding that truth (i.e. that humanity evolved) cannot contradict truth (i.e. that God created humanity and, indeed, all the Universe and its contents).

So to answer the first of Robagne’s questions is fairly straightforward: there is no problem for one to believe in both evolution and morals, nor is there a problem for one to believe in evolution and God. Your good blogger certainly believes in all three!

Robagne is exactly right in observing that evolutionary theory, like all other scientific theories, exists merely to explain the operation of the universe according to a set of (more or less) empirically determinable laws. It and other theories do not — can not — have a metaphysical component, and tell us nothing about whether any external factor influenced or influences (in the sense of an ongoing act) the function of the Universe. They can not — and do not, save when abused by those with an agenda — tell us about God, His nature, or His existence.

And indeed, God has created this magnificent Universe in which we live in part through the “enaction of universal laws.” But then, it is good that there are fixed laws, because such frameworks are necessary that another gift of God’s — the gift of free will — might be fully realized. Moreover, it is very like God to do things in this way, since His whole intent has been to approach humanity in a very incarnational, very personal way. Indeed, we see this in how he enacts his plan for our salvation through the Church.

Nicholas writes in with an additional question, a follow-up to his last.

Sorry, Ken, my question wasn’t clear. There are many possible natural reasons why humans do good deeds. For example, some altruism may be built in (in humans and other social animals) because altruism can help you, or your close kin, survive long enough to reproduce. And, if your parents often praised you for being kind (as kind parents do, partly out of self-interest) you may get into the habit of being kind. And sometimes people do good because they believe they will get a reward in Heaven. (That can occur, of course, independently of whether heaven exists. And it raises a whole other debate about whether acts motivated by a belief in heaven are good, or self-interested.)

My question is, can you give examples of good deeds that cannot be attributed to any such natural causes, but only to what you call sanctifying grace?

I would posit that the act of genuine forgiveness — and its being regarded as a good thing — cannot always be attributed to natural causes, for the simple reason that forgiveness in its most genuine form does not involve “forgive, but do not forget.” It is more complete than that, requiring us to both grant that we absolve the person who has wronged us and that we will not in any way hold it against them; in any future dealings with them, we will not anticipate the possibility of a repeated transgression.

I think the reasons this is counter-intuitive to nature should be obvious: the instinct to survive should motivate a person to either never forgive a transgression or to forgive the transgression but to treat the transgressor with hesitance in any future encounters. Complete forgiveness means allowing oneself to again become totally open, and thus vulnerable, to the other, and to a repeat offence.

And yet, people offer forgiveness in this way quite often. Not always, of course, but often. And to do so, I think, puts a human being far outside of his or her nature. A nun, shot in the back, falls to Earth uttering her last words: “I forgive, I forgive.” A Pope makes a point of visiting in prison the man who attempted to murder him, and offers him his complete forgiveness. A man, nailed to a Cross, begs that the crowd of his murderers be forgiven, for they did not know then the full magnitude of their actions. That’s about as contrary to “natural causes” as one can get.

But Nicholas raises an interesting question of his own, O Reader. He lists many beneficial acts — good acts — that people do, and then asks for a demonstration of good deeds that cannot be attributed to natural causes, as though God could and would only choose to manifest His desire that we be moral in the inspiration of those acts which are contrary to, or at least outside, nature. Is it not equally reasonable that the author of all creation would choose to make His desire that we be moral innate to our nature? That is, is it not reasonable to suggest that the reason that human beings are altruistic, and the reason that altruism can be an advantage to survival in a species of social animal) is because it is God has made altruism to be moral, and desires that we live morally in this (and other) fashions?

He addresses the issue of the “personhood” of the unborn in response to a question asking about what distinctions exist, if any, between what is a “person” and what is a “human.”

It is not a legal question. Until just recently, the law held abortion to be illegal, and the overturning of those laws were not based on legal precedent.

It is not a biological question. What defines a homo sapiens to a biologist is genetic material, i.e. descent. There is no question that even a single-celled organism is living, and that, if it comes from a bisexual race, it has a mother and a father. The word ‘embryo’ refers to the stage of development of an organism of a species: for example, an unborn fox kit passed through an embryo stage of development. No biologist would argue that an unborn fox was not a member of the species “fox”.

It is absurd to classify an unborn homo sapiens and “not a member of any species” on the grounds of a lack of observable phenotype characteristics. No biologist classifies a bald man as ‘not a mammal’ on the grounds that he does not suckle his young, being a male, and is not hairy, being bald.

It is not a moral question. No one makes caring for a diseased or underdeveloped loved one dependent on that loved one’s ability to pass an IQ test or show some form specifically human behavior. If your husband has a stroke, and loses the human capacity for reasoning in his cortex, he becomes your dependent; he does not become your property or your livestock. When he dies, you still call a mortician, not a butcher.

So what it the question of personhood?

Personhood is an excuse. If one wishes to work one’s will upon the weak and helpless, one first removes their humanity in thought. Call the Jews sons of Pigs. Call the Negroes sub-human. Call the worthless old folk bread gobblers or vegetables. Called the unborn any name by what they are: human offspring. Babies.

He’s hardly the first to observe this, and he certainly won’t be the last. Ultimately, though, many of the arguments in favour of abortion reduce to this basic issue: denying the protection and rights afforded by a legal categorization to a segment of humanity — in this case, the unborn.

Oh, there are obvious practical and semantic differences between the current abortion regimes and, say, the plight of blacks in the U.S. prior to, and even after, the American Civil War. But the underlying logic is more or less the same: those things are not “people” and so can be mistreated/disposed of on a whim.

That’s what this debate is really about: at what point is it/should it be legal to kill a human being in any capacity other than an act of self-defence*?

* and lest anyone think I’ve just opened up a loophole, let me further observe that taking a life in self-defence requires, first and foremost, that the person against which we are defending ourselves be making a conscious, knowing effort to take our life. That is not a category which can be applied to any unborn child.

Interesting commentary from the Anchoress:

…thanks to the noble environmentalists, we’re not allowed to drill for the huge beds of oil we own; because we’re not allowed to drill and refine our own resources, our heating and fuel bills are skyrocketing, our grocery bills are rising and - most troublingly - we may be facing Food shortages…and still mucking up Gaia, to boot.

Doesn’t sound so noble to me. And so much for our “oilman” president freeing us from dependence on other countries. He did that about as well as Bill Clinton before him.

…

Yeah, it’s bad policy. But I’m wondering if it is also immoral?

I’m sure that sounds extreme, and I don’t mean to. It also sounds very Roman Catholic, but I can’t help that; it seems to me that there is a morality question here — is it ever right to burn food for energy when people are hungry?

Taking a line through the idea of things being used for the purposes intended, one might call burning for food both “disordered” and (when doing so threatens humanity) “intrinsically evil.”

It’s certainly not news anymore to observe that food costs world-wide are rising. Even Wal-Mart is beginning to ration sales of rice (although their per-customer limit is still an indefensible 200 pounds!). Now, the world food market will respond in the way it always does — it will find new food production options, such as utilizing both GMO and organic options. Farmers will not leave as much of their land fallow in a year. Perhaps governments will step in, in some cases, to prevent urban growth from consuming areas of arable land. There are numerous corrective pressures, in other words, that will exert themselves. And were the only issue that of balancing food production against population growth, those pressures would be sufficient.

But now we add in the craze over biofuels, and suddenly one is left to wonder. If so much corn and rice is being used up to produce an alternative fuel source for Westerners — and then at the expense of the well-being and lives of people in the Third World (who cannot absorb the rising cost of food at all, unlike most people in North America and Europe) — can the use of biofuels be called moral? One tends not to think so. Indeed, when one factors in the observation that biofuels, in addition to causing massive shortages in stocks of staple foods (grains, specifically), are also more polluting to refine than is crude oil, the use of ethanol and other “bio” alternatives at the pump becomes almost indefensible.

John C. Wright has further commentary on the issue, and he doesn’t mince words — in his view, current biofuel schemes are staggeringly immoral, and can only be ruinous.