An Inconvenient Lie

Good article here.

A Representative Government?

The Flag Desecration Amendment was rejected by the Senate. It is interesting that 34 Senators voted against the amendment even though their home states have made it clear that they support this amendment.

From the N.Y.Times:

Had the Senate passed the amendment, it would have been likely to win ratification from the required 38 states since, supporters say, all states have endorsed the amendment in some form.

And the Washington Post:

"Fifty state legislatures have called on us to pass this amendment," Hatch told colleagues.

I hope is that the citizens hold their representatives accountable for their actions and replace certain legislators with people who will actually represent them. Look up how your senators voted and if they didn't vote for you, don't for vote for them.

Time to convert

Well, this is bad, but this has got to be the breaking point.
Maybe this new Episcopal bishop will bring some good into the world -- she should lead many episcopalians to convert to Catholicism.

On clubfeet and Jolie-Pitts

In other genetic news, here is an article on the Gattica-like genetic screening that is coming soon to a clinic near you:

Britain's Sunday Times reported that more than 20 babies had been aborted in advanced stages of gestation between 1996 and 2004 in England because scans showed they had clubfeet. . . .
Another four babies were aborted because they had extra digits or webbed fingers, according to the same story. In 2002, a baby was aborted at 28 weeks because of a cleft palate. Last year, a 6-month-old fetus was aborted when ultrasound revealed that part of a foot was missing, according to the Times.

Of course, even more frightening than the babies killed because of minor "flaws" are the babies killed for simply being:

Since abortion was legalized in 1973, estimates are that some 50 million of them have been performed in the U.S. Of that number, relatively few have been owing to fetal defects as compared to lifestyle concerns, according to a 2004 Alan Guttmacher Institute study.

A little less sci-fi, but just as strange, is this family's racial screening:

"Next we'll adopt," Jolie told CNN in an interview to be aired on Tuesday.

"We don't know which -- which country. But we're looking at different countries. And we're -- I'm just-- it's gonna be the balance of what would be the best for Mad and for Z right now. It's, you know, another boy, another girl, which country, which race would fit best with the kids," she said, referring to her adopted children.

OK, Kids, its time to pick your baby brother. Do you want him to be white? black? Just tell me what would be best for you and mommy will make it happen. At least Jolie is talking about adoption instead of creating her next little one in a test tube, but she does have the attitude and down: Pick out the color, decide which pieces you want to include, and make your perfect baby. Pray that Mad and Z want a little clubfooted British sibling and then Jolie can save a baby who faces the fate discussed in the first article of this post.

Men Without Chests and now Men Without Stomachs

The idolization of technology is having a dangerous effect on humanity -- here it quite literally making us less human.

Stanford was among the first to begin counseling families with inherited genes that increase their chance of contracting stomach cancers—and offering some an operation to eliminate the risk of it ever occurring.

That was an offer the Bradfield cousins who tested positive for the CDH1 mutation accepted. Six of the cousins including Slabaugh had their stomachs removed at Stanford by surgeon Jeff Norton, MD. For them, as with others, testing meant an end to constant worries about the future.

Stomach cancer would be horrible, I'm sure, and the article says that individuals with this certain mutated gene have a 70-80 percent chance of developing stomach cancer, but this still does not seem like the most rational approach. If this gene can be detected years before any cancer has developed, why not just employ regular checkups to catch the cancer right as it begins and then remove the stomach? At least before there was a 20-30 percent chance of having a "normal" stomach for their entire lives; now these individuals have reduced that possibility to zero. I can guarantee you that you will never stub your toe if you amputate your leg, but I think most people would find my guarantee silly. I bet some would see the benefit as long as I told them the process uses a state-of-the-art genetic bio-laser that can only be fueled by stem cells from aborted fetuses. Cutting-edge! I would also make sure I borrow some of the language from the stomach-stealing Stanford scientists:

For those who inherited the mutated version of the gene, knowledge means power. They had their stomachs removed before discovering signs of cancer, thus evading their genetic destiny.

Who could argue with that?

Hawking, meet Weston; Weston, Hawking.

I'm no literary scholar, but I have said on many occasions that the Space Trilogy is the most relevant fiction addressing some of our modern problems. I read here that Stephen Hawking says that extra-terrestrial conquest is necessary to man's survival.

"It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species," Hawking said. "Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of."

I don't know what else Hawking said in his speech, but I'll just assume it was similar to Weston's comments in "Out of the Silent Planet." I'll provide a few snippets (remember that Weston was talking to the Malacandrans, not humans, but I still bet the two scientists would have agreed on the substance):

"To you I may seem a vulgar robber, but I bear on my shoulders the destiny of the human race. Your tribal life with its stone-age weapons and bee-hive huts, its primitive coracles and elementary social structure, has nothing to compare with our civilization--with our science, medicine, and law, our armies, our archetecture, our commerce, and our transport system which is rapidly annihilating space and time. Our right to supercede you is the right of the higher over the lower . . ."

. . .

"Life is greater than any system of morality; her claims are absolute. It is not by tribal tatoos and copy-book maxims that she has pursued her relentless march from the amoeba to man and from man to civilization."

. . .

"[Life] has ruthlessly broken down all obstacles and liquidated all failures and to-day in her highest form--civilized man--and in me as his representative, she presses forward to that interplantary leap which will, perhaps, place her for ever beyond the reach of death."

. . .

"It is in her right," said Weston, "the right, or, if you will, the might of Life herself, that I am prepared without flinching to plant the flag of man on the soil of Malacandra: to march on, step by step, superceding, where necessary, the lower forms of life that we find, claiming planet after planet, system after system, till our posterity--whatever strange form and yet unguessed mentality they have assumed--dwell in the universe wherever the universe is habitable"

. . .

It just goes on and on, until we meet Weston again in Perelandra, where he is, of course, possessed by the devil. I guess if the only measure of success is longevity, it doesn't matter what kind of company you keep as long as you keep the company longer than everyone else.

Ban More Books!

With Tolkien-esque providence, I stumbled across this article only a few days after having a similar conversation with some friends. The article's parting shot hits upon an important principle in the discussion:

If you want to fight some perceived cultural barrage against conservative, Christian values, then write your own creative children's story or exciting, best-selling novel that teaches good morals. Don't try to censor and censure the rest.

I realize this author is a junior polital science major, but welcome to Relativism 101. The author sets the starting point of any discussion at all ideas being presented as equal, with public opinion determining what is right. If you don't like a book, then write another one; present them both equally, without saying anything negative about the other, then see which one is better received. To me, this is the end of the debate.

Imagine a debate between a relativist and an individual who believes in absolute truth. The absolutist(?) argues that a certain position is right and anything contrary is wrong. The relativist states that the absolutist can not say this because in order to have an informed discussion, we must have access to all information to decide what feels right for each of us individually. If the absolutist concedes, then the relativist wins, because even if the absolutist convinces the relativist of whatever point is in contention, the resulting sentiment would be, "I agree with you and I think that this is right, but who am to tell anyone else my opinion if they feel differently." And we have ended the discussion squarely rooted in relativism.

If one cannot criticize and censor that which does not comport to the truth, then the lie has conquered. Finally, in an effort to keep Chesterton in as many posts as possible, this GKC quote seems like the right place to end the post:

"Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions."

Symbolism

Here is a little Chesterton for all those folks who think Robert Langdon is a brilliant symbologist:

. . . my companion said to me: 'Do you know why the spire of that church goes up like that?' I expressed a respectable agnosticism, and he answered in an off-hand way, 'Oh, the same as the obelisks; the Phallic Worship of antiquity.' . . . No mortal words can express the immense, the insane incongruity and unnatural perversion of thought involved in saying such a thing at such a moment and in such a place. For one moment I was in the mood in which men burned witches; and then a sense of absurdity equally enormous seemed to open about like a dawn. 'Why, of course,' I said after a moment's reflection, 'if it hadn't been for phallic worship, they would have built the spire pointing downwards and standing on its own apex.'

Sometimes it takes a brilliant man to recognize things so simple.