As I start typing this, the clock has ticked over to 8:30pm, Saturday the 28th of March here in New Zealand. It’s been dubbed “Earth Hour,” and ignorant hippies around the world are switching off lights, TVs and other fun things because they think that by doing so they are helping the planet. They’re not. Someone told them it would help, and like other stupid ignorant hippies of our day, they just believed it and they are now taking part in this ridiculous token gesture to make them feel better about themselves.
Turning off lights for an hour and sitting around singing songs by candlelight is not helping the planet. As a matter of fact, it hurts the planet. The overall amount of carbon produced by a lightbulb is much lower than the amount of carbon produced by a burning candle. What’s more, a while back authorities urged people not to take part in a similar action, referred to as a “black out” in moral support of the All Blacks (my American friends, that’s our national rugby team). This is because when thousands of people all turn lights and appliances back on at the same time, it can cause power cuts as the grid can’t handle the sudden surge. This is to say nothing of the mumbo jumbo that passes for “global warming science” that motivates a lot of these smelly greenies in their efforts in the first place.
Tonight, we have turned all our lights on for the hour. We have chosen this time to run our dishwasher and wash our clothes. The family is watching TV and I am using my computer to write this blog entry.
Cross over to our side. Join the sane world.
Head on over to the “Anti Earth Hour” blog for more doses of sanity.
While you’re at it, sign “Mr Linky” over at MandM’s blog.
In a recent podcast episode, “Stop Being a Christian and Start Being a Person,” one of the things I talked about is that we Christians should not assume that because a scholarly endeavour is overtly Christian, it will be good. I also stressed that we should be prepared to recognise the gifts and goodness manifested in scholarship regardless of who presents it.
I wanted to start by reminding the reader that this is my position in case this blog entry tempts you to think that I’m someone who just likes to bash any work that is not Christian and that I’m just biased in favour of arguments presented by Christians. I try not to be. However, reading an article today by Paul Kurtz I once again, as I so often do, got the sinking feeling that there is just no hope – none at all – of some committed opponents of religious belief ever understanding (or perhaps acknowledging) some big, obvious and simple distinctions in philosophy.
It has been all over news sites for a little while now (e.g. see here). President Barack Hussein Obama has – according to the headlines at least – lifted a ban on stem cell research.
I raised an eyebrow a couple of days ago when I sat down to watch the 6 o’clock news and was greeted with the announcement that “New Zealand Doctors will carry out operations using stem cells” (see here for a newspaper report on this). The only reason I was initially surprised is that I had unconsciously bought into the trick (perpetuated by the headlines) that has been used: Get people to think that stem cell research = embryonic stem cell research, so that every time people point out that “stem cells” have incredibly useful properties, the impression is reinforced that embryonic stem cell research is the only way to make use of those properties. As it turns out, New Zealand doctors aren’t doing anything with embryonic stem cells. They are going to carry out procedures on patients with paralysis using stem cells taken from the adult patients’ own bodies.
Which brings me back to the start of this blog entry. Barack Obama has not lifted a ban on stem cell research. He hasn’t. There is not and was not a ban on stem cell research. Stem cell research is a promising scientific endeavour that promises much to people with debilitating conditions, and I support it fully. There was a ban, put in place by G W Bush, on stem cell research using human embryos. Adult stem cell research has been an active frontier in groundbreaking research for some years now, and will continue to be so for many years to come. The scientific and medical advances seen there are simply phenomenal. The example in New Zealand that I referred to earlier is just one demonstration of this. The properties that stem cells have that make them so great are the same properties that embryonic stem cells have. The more we know about adult stem cells, the more this is confirmed.
It has been known for about 30 years that stem cells are present in the tissue of the adult, but it was assumed that they could only form cells of a particular tissue. That is, reprogramming them was considered impossible. In recent years, however, pluripotent stem cells were discovered in various human tissues–in the spinal cord, in the brain, in the mesenchyme (connective tissue) of various organs, and in the blood of the umbilical cord. These pluripotent stem cells are capable of forming several cell types–principally blood, muscle, and nerve cells. It has been possible to recognize, select, and develop them to the point that they form mature cell types with the help of growth factors and regulating proteins.
What proponents of embryonic stem cell research are striving for is not simply the ability to use stem cells and help people (although I’m sure they want this). What they are doing is making the issue about whether it’s acceptable to destroy embryos. That is the issue, because even without destroying embryos, we can do stem cell research. Think of it this way: Just imagine that I advocated killing black people and taking their stem, cells. People say to me, “black people? Why kill them? If we want stem cells for medical treatment, we can just get them from the patients themselves.” I reply: “Don’t you care about people with parkinson’s disease? Stop standing in the way of science. We need to kill black people if this is going to work.” It wouldn’t take long before people realised that I didn’t simply want the right to use stem cells. I wanted to legitimise the killing of black people by appealing to a certain goal, a goal that you know full well I could reach without killing black people.
So the issue is not about conservatives standing in the way of science, which is the innuendo present in local news coverage of Obama’s actions. The intentional impression has been that until Obama’s decision, there was no hope of using stem cell therapy to help people with diseases like Parkinson’s, or people with spinal damage. Folk like Michael J. Fox appeared on TV leading people to think that only now has such technology been allowed to be unshackled. Not so. It’s all smoke and mirrors, concealing the real change.
The other issue, of course, is that killing black people for their stem cells would still be wrong even if there was no other way to get stem cells. Imagine shooting a black man dead, syringing out his stem cells, injecting them into yourself and being healed, only to be applauded by a crowd of onlookers with cheers of “Oh boy, who could disagree with stem cell research NOW?” This point was made brilliantly in a South Park episode called “Krazy Kripples.” Observe:
Hey all. I’m putting together the next podcast series, which at this stage will consist of three episodes. The theme will be philosophy of mind, and it’s going to go something like this: Episode one will be the introduction and overview of the subject as a subject in philosophy. I’ll look at the major categories of philosophy of mind on a continuum of strong dualism (for example, the received understanding of Descartes’ view), to what I would call weaker versions of dualism (most importantly, the Thomistic view) to views that I regard as somewhere in between the two poles (like emergent dualism or property dualism), to more “materialistic” views like nonreductive dualism, all the way through to hardcore epiphenominalism and eliminative materialism (yes, it’s going to be one of those episodes).
In episode 2 in the series I’ll be looking at some of the implications of these views that are of interest to me as a Christian with interests in philosophy. What (if anything) do the various views imply about important issues like free will and responsibility or the possibility of life after death? (Here I’ll draw a little on my paper that interacts with William Hasker’s emergent dualism, but it won’t all be about that view.)
In episode 3 in the series, while remaining with the subject of philosophical anthropology (the question of what a person is/is made of), I’ll be turning to biblical and theological considerations. What – if anything – does Scripture have to say directly about this subject. What are the implications of this subject for Christian doctrines or understandings of the Christian life? What role have diverging beliefs in this area played in the history of Christian theology?
It’s a subject that has interested me for some time (especially from a theological point of view), and I’m looking forward to getting into the philosophical side of things, some of which is new territory for me as well.
On another note, with my new microphone the sound quality is a lot better, but if I only offer low quality audio files I may as well still be using a cheap microphone! So I’ll be making the mp3 files for future episodes higher quality than I have been. I’ll start using a 96k bitrate, which is still fairly low for an mp3 file.
It has finally arrived, episode 25. It’s a bit of a different topic for me, not very philosophical, I guess a little theological, just some ideas that have been on my mind a bit lately about how we should approach the world and what it means to be a Christian in it.
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In a recent podcast episode, “Stop Being a Christian and Start Being a Person,” one of the things I talked about is that we Christians should not assume that because a scholarly endeavour is overtly Christian, it will be good. I also stressed that we should be prepared to recognise the gifts and goodness manifested in scholarship regardless of who presents it.
