Wednesday, January 29, 2014
For bluntly addressing the pro-infanticide policies of Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, Greta van Sustern categorized pundit Eric Erickson as a creep and a jerk. Bristol Palin also lambasted Davis for a lack of parenting skills. Does Sustern intend to categorize the young unwed Palin mother in the same manner? Or will the Fox News broadcaster refrain from doing so as a friend of the family since Greta’s husband was at one time on the Palin payroll?
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
How To Use Pinterest To Sell Your Art
Crossfire Targeted For Sparking Interest In Civic Affairs
In the August 28, 2013 edition of USA Today, Rem Rieder doesn't hold back in his disappointment at the news of this classic program's return and his overall contempt for the argumentative debate format.
Rieder laments, “Crossfire, which features a conservative and a liberal predictably and tiresomely bickering with each other, mirrors perfectly what is so wrong with today's hopelessly polarized and paralyzed politics.”
Rieder goes on to conclude that these days that there is no real attempt to solve problems or get outside of the Beltway.
Reider attempts to cast himself in the role of the kind of dispassionate analyst he claims that he longs to see heading into public affairs programing. However, his words betray blatantly leftist sympathies.
For example, in listing the identities of Crossfire's new hosts, Newt Gingrich is the only one held up for ridicule. Van Jones confessing to be a self-avowed Communist is glossed over as if such an admission is something normal and healthy.
Gingrich might daydream about space colonies. But in the ideal world of Van Jones where he identifies so enthusiastically with that particular form of tyranny, authorities would seize nearly everything you have worked for (with the exception of Van Jones' lavish CNN salary) and violently eliminate those that continue to speak out against a dictatorial regime despite extensive efforts at reeducation and social manipulation.
One might respond that an observation pointing out a failure to expose Van Jones as a leftwing subversive is reading too much into it. After all, with Kardashian bastards and Miley Cyrus stage humping, the average American no doubt finds it difficult to retain this constant barrage of information at the forefront of their cognitive awareness.
Rem Rieder, however, drops another comment that reveals that there is more to his agenda than a dispassionate pursuit of just the facts.
Apart from the incident where Robert Novak (likely suffering from the early stages of a brain tumor) stormed off the set no longer capable of handling James Carville's banshee-like shrieking, one of most recalled moments of the original Crossfire occurred with the visit of Comedy Central's John Stewart of the Daily Show. During the interview, Stewart lamented how the debate program and especially Tucker Carlson was hurting the country.
The thing of it is, the likes of John Stewart has done more to hurt this country than the number of interchangeable hosts and even greater number of guests exchanging wonky barbs at one another ever could.
Personally, I can probably count on both hands the number of times I have seen the Daily Show. The only segment that sticks out in my mind was of some bozo walking around in a giant penis costume promoting safe sex or some similar propaganda.
If that represents the kind of public affairs programming Rem Rieder thinks is needed to either elevate or save the Republic, we are worse off than most of us realize. It is likely not John Stewart's wisdom as a statesman that Reider is praising but something else entirely.
In the waning days of the Roman Empire, lavish entertainment spectacles were put on for the purposes of distracting the population from the public scandals and disasters that confronted the world superpower of that day.
Granted, in much the same way that politics is said to be a form of show business for the unattractive, programs such as Crossfire, Hannity, and The O'Reilly Factor tend to be a form of pugilism or professional wrestling for the physically puny but verbally inclined. But despite any shortcomings that these programs might posses, it cannot be denied that they at least get across the point that there is something rotten in Denmark (or more accurately, the United States of America in this instance).
That's why the likes of Rem Rieder are more enthused about a perambulating giant penis costume. And the reason behind that might not be quite so obvious as one might assume by that shocking verbal formulation.
Elites talk up the delights and wonders of deliberative democracy. But the last thing they really want are those in the servile classes to passionately hold to any fixed standard or belief that would impede this human capital from being reshaped, deployed, and even eliminated in accordance with the most convenient timetable possible.
This is the sentiment spoken of euphemistically when talking heads, academics, bureaucrats, and elected officials express a nostalgia for a bygone era when legislators would get together at the end of the day to hash out compromises over cocktails or, in the case of Ted Kennedy, cocaine and lapdances. That approach might have been OK when the kinds of things discussed were the equivalent of whether a tax rate would be 9% or 10%.
But these kinds of backroom compromises have gone on for so long and the line of acceptability moved back so far that, for the go-along to get-along to continue, those of good conscience are being pressured into betraying the fundamental values and morals without which a ordered yet free society will surely collapse.
For example, if one the ethical building blocks upon which a just and free society rests is the assumption thou shalt not murder, meaning that it is beyond the limits of acceptability to deliberately take the life of an individual that has committed no crime, where is the moral wiggle room for an abortion of convenience or preference? On what grounds do you kill a life form, that will be no more genetically complete than it would be at the time of birth, without the consent of that individual for the purposes of harvesting that individual's stem cells or other biomolecular components?
Most believe that marriage is a sacred covenant instituted by God Himself predating the codification of organized religion in a time when man's relationship with our Creator did not require the medium of the written word. So on what grounds can that definition be changed on the whims of a jurist or plebiscite and on what basis do those making such a claim complain when these fickle procedures decide to change the arrangement back?
Just where does one compromise on these kinds of issues? For if one does, isn't doing so the equivalent of saying it is allowable to slap your spouse one time across the face but twice is going too far?
As these kinds of social developments continue to unfold, it is becoming more apparent that recognition of gay marriage is not so much about these individuals confessing unending love for one another which they are pretty much able to do so already in parts of the country where most mind their own business and where laws prohibiting illegitimate carnal knowledge haven't been enforced for years. Rather, it is about bringing the destructive power of the state crushing down upon those that do not stand around applauding the new world we are being thrust into.
Don't believe me? Perhaps you ought to ask the bakers and wedding photographers whose businesses have been ruined for failing to embrace diversity to this radical extent. What about their ability to express their preferences without fear of retaliation?
Only time will tell whether or not there is a place for a revived Crossfire in a media landscape where the clash of opinions is more the norm than an entertaining novelty, However, even if this particular program falls by the wayside as a result of attention being grabbed by flashier versions of this classic debate format, Crossfire deserves a place at least in the pages of journalistic and mass communications history for admitting that legitimate opinion worthy of national consideration exists beyond the narrowly defined parameters of the mainstream establishment.
By Frederick Meekins
Monday, January 27, 2014
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Why Shouldn't Those On Food Stamps Be Required To Show ID?
The same ones opposed to this suggestion probably think you shouldn't be required to document income levels when applying for the program as well.
If Americans are now required to show ID's in doctor's offices they have been going to for decades, why is it an outrage to require those on the public dole to acquire food to verify who they are?
It is claimed that the poor cannot afford to acquire proper identification.
But, by golly, it's probably a pretty safe wager that these indigents had the latest iteration of the Iphone as soon as it was released and can operate the technical intricacies of the device with an adeptness that would put a NASA engineer to shame.
By Frederick Meekins
If members of a church want to participate together in a social media fast, that is one thing. However, there is no basis in Scripture to demand such a spiritual exercise be congregation-wide or to use such an activity as a measure to distinguish between the proverbial sheep and the goats. If anything, the Bible would seem to indicate such activities aren't even to be made public if you want to be technical about it.
Friday, January 24, 2014
To deceive the German people in part, the Nazis staged elaborate, large-scale theatrical events with smartly dressed stormtroopers marching in intricate formation. Even Jewish historian George Mosse admits he found himself nearly being swept along with the excitement when he witnessed these spectacles in his youth. In the attempt to deceive the American people, Obamaists presented Richard Simmons sticking his head between his legs and essentially whistling as part of a six hour informercial.
Not exactly sure what to make of the advertisement for “Real Time with Bill Maher” on the back cover of the 1/27/2014 issue of National Review. On the one hand, it shows that conservatism is broadminded enough to accept the money of the ideology's most vehement critics. And on the other hand, ought a publication that claims to stand for traditional values and morals to promote someone such as Bill Maher that has described his opponents such as Sarah Palin in the vilest of terms? Would the magazine accept funds on behalf of a media personality that utilized the “n-word” in reference to President Obama?
Hispanosupremacist Evangelical Conspires To Undermine Christian Opposition To Gay Marriage
Click On The Headline
To gloss over his rowdy behavior and filthy heathenish appearance, Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman has decreed that the term "thug" is a racial slur equivalent to the "N-word". Actually, the term originated in reference to Islamic and Hindu sectarians from India that use to inflict violence upon unsuspecting travelers. So if we are to view the term as racially insensitive, must we also abandon the use of the term "vandal" or "vandalism" since that term traces its origins back to that of a marauding Germanic tribe that use to plunder Roman outposts?
General David Petraeus laments in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are ending up unfulfilling, dead-end jobs that don’t tab into their skills. And how is that different than the economic plight of most other Americans? Veterans deserve gratitude for their contribution to the war effort. However, when it comes to this aspect of existence, they aren’t deserving of handouts more than anybody else. They weren’t drafted. They made the decision on the own to join the military.
Thursday, January 23, 2014
And exactly what part of his former Fox News program and related undertakings does Glenn Beck consider to have torn the country apart? Was it the flow charts that dared spell out for the American people the intricate global conspiracy bent on destroying our constitutional liberties? Or does Beck lament his own plans to destroy human freedom through the promotion of his own shoddy Mormon theology and the establishment of a Jonestown-like compound with a sign overhead demanding all who enter in to forget their previous way of life and where residents were have to been denied backyards in order to condition them away from their individualistic proclivities?
John Warwick Montgomery Reviews "Zealot: The Life & Times Of Jesus Of Nazareth"
Interesting in his condemnatory oration of the evils of collegiate sexual assault President Obama gave no advice about staying away from frat house booze parties and not dressing like an outright slut. These don't excuse wandering hands, but isn't it akin to sleeping with your door locked? It's not something you should have to do, but it is just the way it is in such a wicked world.
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Friday, January 17, 2014
Thursday, January 16, 2014
A convicted Ohio murderer and rapist gasped as it took him nearly 15 minutes to expire during his execution. Critics warned that the combination utilized to carry out the sentence would cause the felon to die in agony and terror. And the pregnant woman (and thus also her baby) that he raped and murdered did not? Are we to suppose he lulled her to her eternal rest through tender caresses and verbalized sweet nothings?
Same churches that gripe about folks having fewer kids will cry and scream even louder should tithe dollars dwindle as congregants would make the rational and ethical decision that the higher moral priority is that they keep their own progeny fed than whether the church gets new carpeting or that the pastor goes on “pilgrimage” to Israel or the savannahs of Africa.
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
In a Washington Post Op-Ed, Southern Baptist Convention functionary Albert Mohler is highly critical of Evangelical acceptance of birth control. However, he himself has only reproduced twice. The position Mohler has enunciated leads us to two likely conclusions. Either he is as impotent as a proverbial Nevada boxing commissioner. Or, as in the case of many Evangelical leaders that miraculously came out in opposition to Halloween once they enjoyed their own childhoods of Trick-Or-Treat revelry, the use of these pharmaceuticals just happens to become wrong once he and the Mrs squeaked past their own years of fecundity. Apparently, screwing yourself away from the dinner table is a moral obligation only for the lesser breeds of humanity.
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
An activist on the radical end of the homeschooling spectrum quipped that one can either choose Communism or COMMUNITY. COMMUNITY is in many instances merely just a diluted form of Communism. Granted, it might not at this juncture result in systematic executions, but both ideologies view the group rather than the individual or a transcendent morality governing the behavior of the individual as the highest source of authority and the criteria through which justification for decisions is arrived at.
Monday, January 13, 2014
Friday, January 10, 2014
So apparently it's an outrage to artificially manipulate traffic patterns for political purposes when that goal is to get back at an electoral rival but perfectly acceptable to arbitrarily manipulate traffic patterns in order to get motorists to abandon their individualized vehicles in favor of public transportation.
Fascinating. Apparently Chris Christie's minions orchestrating a traffic jam to get revenge on a political adversary is proof that the New Jersey Governor is unfit for presidential office. However, if one points out that Obama attended a church for two decades advocating the destruction of the White race, that he began his political career at a fund raiser held in the home of a domestic terrorist, or that he had millions kicked off their health insurance policies to prove the need for the establishment of a nationalized system, you are the one at fault for even bringing these things up.
Thursday, January 09, 2014
To prove the extent of her recovery three years after the mass shooting in which she was severely brain-damaged, former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords parachuted from an airplane. The question is, though, following such a severe neurological trauma has she regained control of her bladder and bowels. Wouldn't that be a more accurate assessment of the extent to which she has healed?
Wednesday, January 08, 2014
A Lutheran talk show discussed whether or not a church should cancel services for inclement weather. One caller suggested a make-up day be scheduled. One already has. It is called next Sunday. For regulars, there really isn’t much that goes on that can’t be delayed until the following week. And those that close to death, it’s likely they would not have made the cancelled service to begin with.
Tuesday, January 07, 2014
Protecting Clones
In popular culture and elite scientific circles alike, cloning is being heralded as a process through which humanity will be ushered onto the cusp of a golden age in terms of advances in the areas of agriculture and medicine. As with most advances, those with an entrepreneurial inclination are already positioning themselves to take advantage economically of the opportunities looming on the horizon.
For example, on April 3, 2001, the United States Patent and Trademark Office issued Patent US 6,211,429 for a process for animal cloning. One must keep in mind that, apart from agricultural applications, such research is initially tried on animals with the hopes of eventually perfecting the techniques for human usage.
One scholar concerned about the application of this utilitarian mindset to human beings where people could end up being used as something not all that different than barnyard livestock is Paige Cunningham of the Center For Bioethics and Human Dignity. In response, he has formulated a set of principles that could very well stop this tragedy before things get too far out of hand.
The first principle has been stated as the following: “Every human being, however conceived or created, is unique and deserving of protection. From a religious perspective, humans are different than animals and above all animals because humans alone are created in the image of God.” This principle is Biblical as it respects the individuality of the human being as a unique creation no matter how he might have been brought into the world. Even though we might find it unsettling that an individual might be grown in a laboratory and not as the result of a loving (or at least pleasurable) coupling of his parents, that is no reason why, as Cunningham’s declaration argues, such a person should not be granted the same privileges and protections enjoyed by the remainder of our species.
Part of the justification for the first principle, while theologically sound from a religious perspective, that human beings are different than animals because humans alone are created in the image of God, unfortunately may be tougher to sell in a culture contaminated by Darwinian materialism. It is not only from a religious perspective that human beings are different from the remainder of the animal kingdom but in the manner of our fundamental ontology as well. When was the last time someone saw chimpanzees constructing medical facilities or dolphins cogitating on declarations to protect themselves from doing harm to one another? Someone might think they are an animal when it comes to themselves but seldom do they want to be treated like one.
Cunningham’s second principle has been stated thusly: “Every human being has the right to individual autonomy; i.e. that his or her bodily integrity must not be invaded or compromised by others.” The first principle was forceful in its conviction to the point of almost being too explicitly religious in that it overlooked the biological uniqueness of man in favor of the theological,. The second, though well intended, rings with a bit of the vagueness this declaration was promulgated to protect against.
While the Christian can agree with the principle that in most instances that the bodily integrity of the individual must not be invaded or compromised by others, the proposition is not always absolute. Unless enunciated in a strong pro-life context as intended, platitudes about not compromising the bodily integrity of the individual were the very kind of statements that got the ball rolling down the hill of human devaluation in the first place all in the name of “choice” and banshees wailing in the street slogans such as “keep your laws off my body”. One must be clear that the unborn child (either growing in the womb or in the laboratory) possesses the same protections against bodily harm as those enjoyed by the parents.
The third principle, that no person has the right to enslave, own, or control any human being regardless of their stage of biological development is a sound reminder of the basic principles this nation was founded upon, went through numerous struggles to extend to all those living here, and continues to expand into the twenty-first century. This principle does a superb job of upholding the innate dignity of the individual as created in the image of God and the equality of all men before Him irrespective of their power or status.
The fourth principle contends that any organism that is genetically human is a human being. While this statement is necessary in this Postmodern age that loves nothing better than to play word games in an attempt to justify all kinds of moral outrages, in academic circles and the popular press where secular philosophy and the Christian worldview clash almost constantly the position may already be in need of modification.
Though it may sound like science fiction, there is a growing movement called “Transhumanism” that seeks to expand the abilities of mankind beyond the limitations imposed by the biology of the species through genetic or technological enhancements. Some propose to accomplish this by combining human and animal DNA.
Therefore, at some point ethicists, theologians, and concerned scientists are going to have to sit down and hash out what is the bare minimum of human DNA a person can have and still be considered a human being. For example, is an organism with only 90% human DNA worthy of protection as a human being? Such statements may cause one to chuckle, but the matter is so serious, according to Tom Horn of RaidersNewsUpdate.com, that neuroscientists experimenting on mice by injecting human brain cells into the skulls of these rodents are under orders to destroy these vermin if they start to exhibit signs of intelligence.
The fifth principle holds that “A cloned embryo is distinct and separate from the person donating the genetic material, and therefore is a unique being protected in law.” This is a principle that Christians need to be at the forefront of championing.
Often the cloning discussion is framed in terms of setting aside a genetic savings account for a rainy day. For example, if someone needed a spare kidney or liver, one could simply thaw out a non-sentient replicant kept in suspended animation for just such an emergency. However, what really happens when a cloning takes place is more akin to forming a twin of oneself or, if one is unsettled by such age differences between siblings, parenting a child in a non-traditional format. As close as these human relationships are, at no time may we use our family members as spare parts without their consent.
The last principle holds that, “No person or institution has the right to control or profit from any process designed to clone a human being.” While it is a good idea to take the profitability and power out of the cloning process as such an action would cut down on firms entering into this undertaking (including government), if we wait to the point where we attempt to regulate the procedure where it is legislated that the technique must benefit all mankind, things may have already reached the point of no return. Such a response would imply that cloning had already become widespread. Rather, Christians in positions of influence should instead get busy cultivating, as Pope John Paul II use to call it, an ethic of life where blatant disregard for other human beings is such an anathema that no self-respecting scientist would consider participating in such research.
Overall, the policy declaration suggested by Paige Cunningham is to be commended as a good starting point for those within the church to start thinking about these kinds of issues that they may have not taken the time to consider previously but that are about to role over our country and change it in fundamental ways that we do not like unless we rise up now to set things on a better moral path.
By Frederick Meekins
Since he is spewing environmentalist hysteria on Crossfire how we are suffering ecological catastrophe for releasing an eon's worth of carbon in the span of a century, Van Jones should be asked if he travels by foot from the CNN Washington studios to his fellowship at the Aspen Institute Of course, Gingrich isn't going to have the spine to raise the issue. The former Speaker of The House has been wined and dined or on the payroll himself of the very same New Age boards and think tanks.
Monday, January 06, 2014
Retirement & Wellness
Express Your Faith
Friday, January 03, 2014
The cover of the Jan. 2014 issue of Sojourners reads “Twisted Theology: Churches That Still Treat Women As Inferiors Are Distorting The Image Of God”. On the surface, that is correct. However, will this mouthpiece of leftwing theological radicalism be as bold with a similar headline condemning abortion, unrepentant homosexuals in the pulpit, and gay marriage?
The cover of the Jan. 2014 issue of Sojourners reads “Twisted Theology: Churches That Still Treat Women As Inferiors Are Distorting The Image Of God”. On the surface, that is correct. However, will this mouthpiece of leftwing theological radicalism be as bold with a similar headline condemning abortion, unrepentant homosexuals in the pulpit, and gay marriage?
A story in the 12/13/13 issue of The Nation is titled “Solving Gentrification”. Apparently it is proper to prevent rich White folks from moving into certain neigborhoods. But if it is proven you are conspiring in a similar manner against Black people and poorer foreigners, you'd probably be ruined financially as part of a civil rights lawsuit.
Thursday, January 02, 2014
Does Duck Dynasty Coot Advocate Institutionalized Pedophilia?
Should suitors wait until the young lady has reached a more legally respectable age of at least 20, this rube thinks the gal is already on the downward decline.
Some will flippantly dismiss his ramblings as backwoods ignorance. However, these ruminations are not much different than those in a number of more clean cut and technologically sophisticated homeschool circles.
The Swansonite sect that produces Generations Radio has even extended its blessing to the concept of the man being older than the young lady not having reached the socially accepted age of majority. And similar ideas are seeping into the more mainstream Evangelical subculture such as through Albert Mohller and James Dobson.
For raising these kinds of concerns in other contexts, I was snapped at that these thinkers have no control over me and that is correct.
However, I am sure similar things were said about the Warren Jeffes breakway Mormon cult before that group of sickos set up outposts throughout the American far West.
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
The Morality Of Stem Cell Research
Thus far we know the following. Medical science has determined that stem cells posses the potential of being altered into other kinds of cells. This could potentially make them useful in curing various kinds of diseases.
The controversy arises over the source from which these cells are harvested. One possible source are mature stem cells obtained from adults. This extraction does not harm the donor. The drawback is, however, that it is believed it may not be possible to manipulate mature stem cells into becoming the different kinds of cells doctors and scientists may need to treat all the conditions begging for medical attention.
On the other hand, it has been suggested that stem cells obtained from embryos may be a more fruitful source. These may prove easier to alter since they have not yet matured. The main drawback, however, is that the embryo must be destroyed in order to obtain the stem cells for research and experimentation.
This debate has become one of the foremost issues in contemporary American politics as both sides make a number of compelling ethical claims. On the one hand, advocates of embryonic stem cell research often suffer from afflictions those of reasonably good health cannot possibly understand at this given point in our lives. It is only natural that they and their loved ones would want research into what could be the most effective cure. Yet on the other hand, there are concerns about the destiny of the embryo from which the stem cells are taken since the fertilized egg is a self-contained genetically distinct living human organism.
The foremost ethical principle bearing on this dispute is the sanctity of human life. Interestingly, in this case the principle is being invoked by both sides of the debate. Thus, one almost needs the wisdom of Solomon in attempting to apply the concept in a judicious manner.
Since the suffering are beings made in the image of God, medical science does have a duty to do what it can to ease the misery of the profoundly ill. That said though, society in general and the medical establishment in particular must go out of its way to defend innocent human life that cannot protect itself.
It is against the law to destroy an eagle egg which is essentially an unborn eagle. Then why should it then be permissible to kill an unborn child since it is a principle Biblical in origin traditionally accepted throughout Western society that a human being is infinitely more valuable than any animal? For if His eye is on the sparrow, then I know He’s watching me.
Furthermore, with all the efforts by activists lobbying for funding for embryonic stem cell research, it is doubtful that most of the public is being told the entire picture regarding these developments in medical science.
According to columnist Charles Krauthammar, who is himself a paraplegic and a trained physician, in a column from October 15, 2004 titled “Anything to get elected” posted at Townhall.com claims of those such as John Kerry and John Edwards that hold out the hope of such miracle cures only if Americans vote for the right candidates, “In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery.” Krauthammar goes on to point out that it could be another generation before scientists are anywhere close to finding a cure for paralysis and that NIH stem cell researcher Ronald McKay has admitted that “stem cells as an Alzheimer’s cure are a fiction but that people need a fairytale.”
Furthermore, even if embryonic stem cells prove more malleable than their adult counterparts, we might not like the results. According to a LifeNews.com story by Steven Ertelt titled “Embryonic Stem Cell Research Causes Tumors”, University of Rochester researchers found that, while stem cells injected into the brains of rats to ease the symptoms of Parkinson’s did help a number of the rodents, a number of the cells began growing in a manner that would have led to tumors.
Apart from the harm that might befall the recipients of the procedure, it would still remain morally dubious even if it returned the patients to robust health and vitality. Writing in another column entitled “Stem Cell Miracle?: An Advance This Side Of Bush’s Moral Line” appearing in the January 12, 2007 Washington Post, Charles Krauthammar admits that, even though he himself supports abortion and does not believe life begins at conception, he is leery of what may result should some kind of restriction not be placed on embryonic research. Krauthammar warns, “You don’t need religion to tremble at the thought of unrestricted embryo research. You simply have to have a healthy respect for the human capacity for doing evil in pursuit of the good. Once we have taken the position of many stem cell advocates that embryos are discardable tissue with no more intrinsic value than a hangnail, then the barriers are down. What is to prevent us from producing not just tissues and organs but humanlike organisms for preservation as a source of future body parts on demand?”
This possibility has been explored in a number of imaginative contexts such as “Gene Rodenberry’s: Earth Final Conflict”, where one episode depicted human bodies not quite allowed to develop consciousness kept in a state similar to suspended animation until their organs were needed. In “The Island” starring Ewan MacGregor, clones were kept in a guarded facility until their parts were needed by their genetic progenitors.
The fundamental guiding principle of medicine is to do no harm. That lofty ideal ought to apply to both the patient seeking services as well as the individual from which the cure could very well be extracted.
By Frederick Meekins
Monday, December 30, 2013
Newscast Overlooks Charity Recipient's Backstory
Interestingly, the WRC 4 coverage of the outreach deliberately avoided detailing the background of this recipient of eleemosynary.
For example, the most obvious question coming into the mind of the average viewer not having been conditioned by bureaucratic reeducators is where is the father in the midst of this hardship?
Relatedly, in the age of Maury Povich, since this woman has multiple children, are there multiple fathers?
Maybe if she had taken two jobs prior to procreating, this woman wouldn't have had the time nor the energy necessary to spawn in the first place.
Perhaps this woman should have had a better taste in men instead of now expecting the men that actually have jobs and work for a living to pick up the slack left dangling by the deadbeats.
This woman was no doubt informed of the pending of this Christmas charity over her latest iteration of the Iphone.
Most will no doubt be peeved about the discerning raising these kinds of issues.
No doubt Biblical admonitions about doing unto the least of these and such will be readily raised.
Interestingly, seldom is the one mentioned that points out that those unwilling to provide for their own children are worse than an infidel.
By Frederick Meekins
Using Abram & Hagar To Understand Reproductive Technology
One such desire that has been a constant throughout the passing millennia has been the longing to have children. Both classic literature and front page headlines attest to the length some will go to to satisfy the parental impulse.
Here in our enlightened and progressive era are those wearing their sophistication on their sleeves for all to see who would say that there is no reason medically or morally why the desire for children cannot be fulfilled for those seeking to have the role of primary adult caretaker in the life of a specific young person.
One venue through which couples unable to have children of their own have turned to is surrogate motherhood. In this arrangement, the genetic material of the husband is implanted for the purposes of impregnation in a fecund woman who agrees to turn over custody of the child (often for a hefty sum of money) to the biological father and his wife.
To those seeing marriage as little more than a contract instituted by human beings with little purpose beyond establishing a stable social order, its slight alteration among consenting adults is of little consequence. However, from an examination of Genesis 16, we see that utilizing a woman other than the wife one is married to in the eyes of God is fraught with consequences that cannot initially be predicted.
From the text, the reader gathers the following facts.
Though God had promised an heir to Abram and Sarai, it seemed to them that they would remain barren since they were getting along in years.
So Sarai suggested that Abram go to her servant Hagar and father a child through her. Being a typical man, Abram readily agreed and took Hagar as a second wife.
After Hagar conceived, like a typical woman Sarai chewed out Abram when doing exactly as he was told by his wife did not turn out exactly as she expected. This happened in part when Hagar copped an attitude that she was more of a woman than Sarai since Hagar conceived, no doubt rubbing it in her employer’s face.
Caught in the middle, Abram let the catfight continue and told Sarai to do as she pleased with Hagar. So since she was mistreated by Sarai, Hagar ran away.
However, Hagar eventually returned to Abram to have Ishmael after being told by the Lord to do so and after being promised that she would be the mother of a great nation in her own right as well.
This text is fraught with a number of ethical issues.
For starters, there is the near universal desire to have a family, which, often a central motivating impulse in normal circumstances, must have been an overwhelming desire when it was prophesied that one’s offspring would come to influence all the world.
Second, there is the issue of the sanctity of marriage. From Scripture, it is taught that the standard is matrimony between one man and one woman as it says two shall become one flesh, not three.
As such, wherever there are two ladies competing to be queen of the castle there will inevitably be conflict.
There is also the issue of Abram stepping up to the plate and taking care of Ishmael and Hagar even if it would be more convenient to get them out of the way.
Some might question what bearing the Abram-Sarai-Hagar triangle has to do with the modern practices of surrogacy.
For today the process is much more clinical. The surrogate is not brought into the family as a concubine or second wife (except in parts of Utah perhaps) and the man does not get to lay back and enjoy the delights of his harem.
However, there is still the possibility of what was undertaken as an effort to acquire some of the most profound joy human beings can experience (namely having a family) spiraling out of control in terms of heartache and jealousy. For example, in the case of Elizabeth Whitehead who was contracted to be a surrogate, wads of cash were not enough to extinguish maternal feelings and a nasty custody fight ensued.
Frankly, a woman would have to be a borderline sociopath to be able to sever the bond with the child that grew within her for nine months.
Secondly, since the child becomes the child of the wife merely as the result of legal maneuvering, one must wonder just how attached she will be to the child as there is likely to be buried deep some kind of resentment that the husband had to turn to another woman (even if no “recreation satisfaction” was involved) to acquire a child. Even though Sarai instigated this ordeal in part to claim the child as her own, she certainly had few qualms about tossing Hagar out on her ear when things got tense.
This brings us to the only ethically viable alternatives for the Christian couple that want to both honor God and enjoy family life beyond the marital relationship.
If the wife is consistent and sincere that it does not matter if the child she is to raise is biologically hers or not, the couple should be informed that adoption is a way of fulfilling this desire that still honors the two-as-one ideal of marriage while assisting a child that would otherwise face this cruel world unloved.
If the couple is insistent that the child must be of their biological lineage, the Christian couple wanting to please God by keeping His commandments must pray for patience to wait upon the will of the Lord if they are to become parents and have fun while trying to find out.
By Frederick Meekins
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Secularist Educators On The March Against Traditional Holidays
For example, in terms of celebrations on the calendar, on their surface few would be more opposite than Halloween and Christmas.
Halloween, on the one hand, is a reflection that all things in this life come to an end in death and that death is the result of evil having come into the world and how all mortals have at least a passing degree of interest in that particular existential state.
Christmas, on the other hand, is a celebration of the birth of the One who came into the world so that we might have life and life more abundantly held at the time of the year in the Northern Hemisphere when nature begins to remind that the preponderance of darkness is itself a temporary thing.
By examining how each of these are viewed and approached in the mind of the secular statist, one gains more of a comprehensive understanding of the irrationality of many of the critics of these otherwise beloved occasions.
A number of these lame excuses were examined in a Desert News article titled “For Religious Reasons Christmas/Halloween Take A Hit In Schools.”
For example, at Inglewood Elementary in the suburbs of Philadelphia, party poopers there canceled the school's student Halloween parade on the grounds that the activity was religious in nature.
Reflection upon both Halloween and Christmas parties reveals that neither celebration will likely manipulate those attending these functions to abandon their mostly deeply cherished beliefs in favor of a whole new set of spiritual paradigms.
For example, the most professedly spiritual aspect of Christmas is the commemoration of the birth of the Christ Child destined to be slain from the foundation of the world in payment for the sins of every person to have walked the face of the earth willing to accept Christ as Lord and Savior.
However, at most Christmas parties, seldom does this truth upon which all of cosmic history orbits get all that much in the way of good eats and the gift giving frenzy.
But if Christmas has to be abolished because its true meaning might unsettle those that practice other creeds or who claim to practice no creed at all not so much out of a profound conviction that outright nihilism profess is really the correct way to ultimate truth but more out of a deep-seated hatred of Jesus, then Halloween should be banished from the halls of polite academia as well. But with violence and sexuality rampant throughout many of the nation's schools, can they really be considered all that polite anymore?
Halloween traces its origin back primarily to traditions surrounding the Celtic new year known as Samhain that were introduced to America by Irish immigrants. In pagan times, it was believed that during that particular time of year that the boundaries between the realms of the spirit and corporeal flesh were at their thinnest with beings able to cross over.
As a result, assorted customs developed where the living thought the agitated spirits could be mollified with treats. Eventually, the enterprising realized that they too could get a piece of the pie and whatever other goodies were being passed out that night if they decided to disguise themselves in costumes.
Over time, Samhain evolved into the festival that we have today. To kill a number of birds with one stone, the Roman Catholic Church adopted the days around the first of November as All Saints and All Souls Day since the minds of the natives were already focused upon the departed that time of the year. And a festival similar to the one already in place provided the reluctant with one less excuse as to why they did not want to convert to Christianity.
In its assorted prohibitions and condemnations, Scripture is quite explicit about the believer not having much to do with witchcraft, necromancy, and related things that go bump in the night. Coupled with a suspicion of Catholicism and the rise of alternative spiritualities such as the New Age movement in general or Wicca in particular, a perspective rose to prominence within the more conservative wings of Evangelicalism that the true Christian did not participate in this celebrations that look to as mascots the darkest archetypes such as witches, vampires, and the disembodied spirits of the departed that continue to walk the earth.
However, as Lutheran apologist Gretchen Passintino has amusingly summarized, participating in traditions such as Trick-Or-Treat no more makes you a pagan than opening a Christmas present makes you a Christian.
Probably nearly 99% of children participating in the traditions of Halloween such as parades are not doing so with the expressed purposes of rendering glory and homage unto Satan. Most are merely excited to be prancing about as their favorite imaginary character or as something they would like to be when they grow up and at the prospect of sugary or salty snacks once they have completed their celebratory perambulation.
Your child will be more likely to veer off into the Devil's clutches if they are denied things such as Halloween parades if for no other reason than to slap such ultracontrolling parents across the face. It is often the human tendency to conclude that if something is to be banned to the extent with nothing to replace it other than to sit around and mope (and that includes Bible study when everyone else is running the street gathering candy) it must be better than one can possibly imagine.
Concocting the excuse that both Halloween and Christmas must be banned since these celebrations might ignite the religious curiosities and inclinations of impressionable urchins apparently wasn't enough. The bureaucrats controlling the public school system had to reveal additional cards as to just how incompetent and devoid of common sense they really are.
Dr. Fredrick Withum released the following statement to the press as to why assorted holiday activities had to be canceled in the Cumberland Valley District where he is superintendent. He said, “Twenty years ago, nobody would have ever thought that a principal would have to consider, as a part of their training, what they would do in the event of a shooting in their building or in the midst of an aggravated custody issue within their building in which a national amber alert is issued The best way to make schools safer is to continue to help them be joyful places, but we are going to have to find new ways and new procedures to ensure this is the case."
The first part of this statement is invoked in order to paint those that disagree with what is to follow look like like such critics agree with mass murderers, kidnappers, and all around child predators. The opening statement has very little to do with why Halloween or Christmas festivities need to be canceled.
If students are passing through metal detectors and wanded before entering the building, shouldn't that level of vigilance be able to ferret out any potential ne'erdowell attempting to sneak in an actual weapon as part a Halloween costume?
It is not that students are in any increased danger as a result of Christmas or Halloween parades.
The thing is, like many of the parents that seemingly don't have any energy to take care of their offspring but are seemingly energetic enough to engage in the procreative calisthenics necessary to conceive another or to go on the hunt for another mate, most of the teachers backing this shift in policy are most likely just plain lazy and dislike children to such an extent that they simply don't want to be bothered with supervising physically assertive activities such as traditional holiday parties.
Aside from serving as entertaining highlights of a given year, Christmas and Halloween parties also acculturate the youth with the narratives and traditions of the broader society across the span of time.
Thus, another prime motivator is not only bringing an end to Christmas and Halloween but also Western civilization in which these celebrations are practiced and expressed.
This is highlighted in Dr. Withum's statement when he says, “The best way to make schools safer is to continue to help them be joyful places, but we are going to have to find new ways and new procedures to ensure this is the case.”
Throughout his campaigns and early days of his presidency, Barack Obama talked repeatedly about the need to fundamentally transform America.
There is only so much that the federal executive branch can do at that level. And even if sweeping changed are implemented from above they are often characterized as opposed rather than being transformative in nature.
In order to be the most successful, revolutionary transformation must be inflicted upon those possessing the least experience with things being a way any other than the alterations being proposed. Their acceptance is often the result of being exposed to them over the course of an extended amount of time as resistance is eventually worn down.
It is during the earliest years of education that this sweeping social manipulation is most likely to be the most effective. Hence the emphasis upon finding new ways of having joy.
As one concerned grandmother whose grandchildren attend school in the impacted district pointed out, in many instances that the observance of these holidays in the public school setting are being abolished with the excuse that these celebrations take away from instructional time. Of this, she astutely observed, “That's a bunch of baloney. You're going to tell me that 20 minutes out of the whole school year will do that...?”
She is absolutely correct. It is doubtful that these students are being constantly drilled in the sciences and technologies that will be need to take on and defeat the Red Chinese in the looming Lunar War.
But then again, there might not be enough time left over in the school day for Christmas, Halloween, or even Valentines Day. After all, the students of tomorrow are busy learning why they need to submit to Islamic peculiarities such as Ramadan while being led in classroom chants how there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet while they select their Muslim names or how to put a condom on a cucumber while being told that Heather has two mommies.
In their war to take over America, no front is too trivial to the proponents of totalitarianism. Many have come to realize this in the struggle to redesign the nation's health care system.
However, seizing this essential aspect of our lives and sizable percentage of the U.S. Economy will not satisfy for very long. For even now those having embraced this despotic mindset conspire to proscribe for the citizen which rituals and commemorations bringing to mind ultimate concerns may be expressed in those venues now administered in the name of the state.
By Frederick Meekins
Monday, December 23, 2013
Thursday, December 19, 2013
A pastor opposed to Duck Dynasty on the grounds that the stars of the show belong to the Church of Christ further condemned the Duck Commander enterprise because the corporation operated an establishment that the ministered viewed as little more than a glorified gift shop where college students were selling overpriced trinkets to city folks and foreigners wearing camo. Where are any of these things forbidden from the pages of Scripture?
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Southern Baptist Elites Insist Upon A Divine Obligation To Violate The Tax Code
Viewing the detailed technicalities of Old Testament law as the epitome of morality rather than in certain instances as a temporary ethical way station as man was being elevated from pagan squalor to greater spiritual splendor, a number of Christian Reconstructionists are hinting at the propriety of polygmany. So apparently there really isn't much inherently wrong with more than one wife. Yet these are the same theologians that would probably forever forbid a man that married a divorced woman from holding church office. Some advocates of this perspective would probably devise a syllogism why the divorced that remarry and those that marry them should be put to death (especially the women) since the movement still holds that execution is the proper punishment for adultery.
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Life After Retirement
Could it be that a medical journal study concludes that vitamins do no good for your health because they are often readily available off the shelf and undermine the cut going to Big Pharma? We are suppose to toss them out now because they are of no proven health benefit. However, we are constantly bombarded with commercials where we are suppose to happily stuff ourselves with pills where it is admitted that a possible side effect is DEATH.
Monday, December 16, 2013
Sluts Demand The Right To Prance About Unnoticed
However, if you don't want to be looked at, conceal the merchandise.
Click On The Headline
Friday, December 13, 2013
Thursday, December 12, 2013
An educational conundrum. Should students be suspended for reenacting scenes from the life of Nelson Mandela where one student pretends to place a tire around the neck of another, filling it with gasoline and setting it on fire? If one says yes, aren’t you being racist by condemning the actions of the Left’s messiah of the week?
Enlightenment, Nirvana & Scientology
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Granted. It’s probably not a good thing if a pulpit constantly dwells on topics such as “The Purpose-Driven life” and “Your Best Life Now”. However, often criticisms of these publications and topics are formulated in such a fashion that the proper Christian is to never take the time to consider these kinds. However, when a person is feeling hopeless or down in the dumps, is a constant and blunt haranguing of total depravity really going to uplift the individual. But then again, if the person was to somehow make it out of their own personal slough of despond, they might end up not as relying so much on the church leadership to pull them around like a cow with a ring it its nose. Some of these churches make the claim that either Jesus is the Lord of all or not Lord at all and about heap damnation upon those trying to ponder how that implications plays itself out beyond the Sunday morning worship service.
Willing to shake hands with human dirtwad Raul Castro, would President Obama extend such a gesture of kindness to Paula Deen. All she did was say the N-word in a conversation with her husband after a gun was put in her face. Raul Castro is one of the great tyrants and mass murderers of the contemporary era (Mandela's kind of people).
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Post Office Downplays Christmas In Favor Of Ethnosupremacist Celebrations
An online photo of the advertisement was captioned that one of these things is not like the other.
The unsuspecting might at first be puzzled.
After all, each of these celebrations seems to have one of its symbols philatelically represented.
Hanukkah and Kwanzaa each are depicted with decorations conveying their spiritual message and meaning.
Christmas, on the other hand, is not extended the same degree of respect.
The menorah and the candles represent the miracle of the oil lasting for eight days rather than one.
The candles surrounding a Black person on the Kwanzaa stamp represent the radical communalism propagated during that particular festival.
And while one cannot help but feel a sense of joy at seeing a decoration like a gingerbread house and that pastry's festive cuteness, the desert does not convey the true meaning of the holiday in the same sense as the other two stamps.
This gingerbread house would be more akin to using a car bomb as a depiction for Ramadan.
To be consistent with the essence of the holidays conveyed on the other two stamps, a rendition of the so-called Christmas star should be depicted in keeping with the theme of light.
Interestingly, should the curious proceed onward to the website where the stamps can be purchased, one does find just such a stamp of the Magi following the yonder Star.
So if one with such a scene is available, why is it not good enough for the mailing?
Multiculturalists and pluralists will contend that any artistic renderings of Jesus as the Son of God are inherently exclusivistic.
But of the three holidays, Christmas is technically the only inclusive one of the entire bunch.
For example, Hanukkah celebrates the triumph of the Jewish people admittedly with the assistance of God over Antiochous Epiphanies with the Greeks representing the primary Gentile power of that day.
Hence, even if not expanionistically hostile, an underlying principle of Hanukkah is that Jews must defend their interests against the outside world.
And as an ethnographic religion for the most part, these walls must always remain up to an extent in suspicion of those from outside the group. Kwanzaa is even more ethnocentrically focused than Kwanzaa.
For whereas Hanukkah is a celebration of what God is believed to have done on behalf those who were of His covenant people at that particular point in world history, Kwanzaa deliberately downplays both reliance upon God and the worth of the individual in the favor of a COMMUNITY based on racial superiority through emphasis upon values such as unity, collective work, and cooperative economics.
Interestingly, the day of faith commemorated by Kwanzaa is not so much faith in a divine power that exists transcendent to man and society but rather in the people as embodied by their mere human leaders.
Ultimately, all that Kwanzaa cares about is Blackness for the sake of Blackness.
With these observations in mind, if there were certain elements within society that flew into vehement outrage at the sight of the paraphernalia of these particular celebrations to such an extent that they demanded that these decorations be kept out of site behind a metaphysical locked counter or in a brown paper bag, does that mean that the government or Congressionally authorized semi-public corporations should comply with such demands?
Galatians 5:15 does indeed teach that the cross is an offense to those preferring to stay mired under the muck of their own sin.
However, in proclaiming the birth of Christ, the angel proclaimed, “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.”
That free gift of salvation is available to any irrespective of background, ethnicity, or status willing to call upon the name of the Lord and be saved.
By Frederick Meekins
Monday, December 09, 2013
So apparently, if you utter the N-Word to your husband in the privacy of your own home after a gun is put in your face, you should be destroyed financially. If it is on record that some of your favorite works of artisitic expression glorify violence against White folks, there is a possibility that your funeral will one day compete with that given year's twelve days of Christmas.
In reflecting on the death of Nelson Mandela, Jesse Jackson remarked that today there are so few with so much and so many with too little in terms of monetary resources. That is an interesting observation given that Jesse Jackson accumulated his own fortune not by providing he fellow man with desired or needed goods or services but rather through threats and extortion.
Reflecting upon the death of Nelson Mandela, former Secretary of Defense William Cohen remarked that our poisoned politics might be resolved by adopting the spirit of this departed world leader. So does that mean we are to move forward by conducting acts of terrorism against public infrastructure and acts of violence against our political opponents?
Thursday, December 05, 2013
Harry Potter Goes From Hogwart's Superstar To Emptying Mad Scientist's Bed Pans
Wednesday, December 04, 2013
A fuss is being made that the American education system is coming in near at the bottom. At this point in the social decline, is it really going to matter? Unless you are good at boozing and carousing, it’s not like busting your hump on the books is going to get you anywhere anyway above the lower end of average. Even in Christian circles, you are going to need a tale sprinkled with at least hints of debauchery if you expect anything to be dropped into your outstretched hand.
If we are to curtail artistic, literary, and analytical criticism of a particular religion of peace for fear of sparking a homicidal rampage in these otherwise docile spiritualists, does Chairman Obama intend to condemn Paris Hilton for cavorting three-quarters naked in the geopolitical backyard of those we are suppose to censor ourselves over for the purposes of mollifying?
It was remarked on an episode of Generations Radio that fellow parishioners ought to move their conversational interactions beyond friendly banter about topics such as sports or the weather. Instead, they are to interrogate one another about their respective walks with the Lord. But provided I’ve kept my hands off their teen daughters (an increasing problem in a number of Fundamentalist congregations) or not staggered into the church drunk (interesting enough no doubt from booze often served at functions under the auspices of congregations on the Reformed end of the Evangelical spectrum) something that personal really isn’t the business of those gathered there once they have a pretty good indication that I have professed faith in Christ.
Fanatic Homeschooler Pronounces Condemnation Of Lily Pad Christians
By that, he is expressing an underlying disdain for church hoppers and shoppers.
Instead, once you land in a church, under almost under no circumstances other than gross doctrinal error ought one consider leaving the respective congregation in which one finds oneself.
There is no winning with this variety of legalist.
For Swanson is also among a growing cabal regularly pronouncing condemnation upon those not married off by the time they are 22 years of age.
But what if there is next to no one appealing in these kinds of hardline congregations?
And just as importantly, what if a church is so small and strict that there is the likelihood those outside of a small clique that will never be able to exercise any sort of spiritual or ministry gift there other than pewfilling and dropping an offering in the collection plate?
by Frederick Meekins
Tuesday, December 03, 2013
Government propagandists a part of Frau Obama's anti-obesity initiative Let's Move have produced public service announcements geared toward American Indian and Hispanic populations featuring music from those respective cultures. Will there be comparative broadcast spots targeting respective White demographics? Will Rednecks get a PSA with bluegrass playing in the background? Will science fiction enthusiasts have an announcement produced in their honor set to the tune from Star Wars or the classic version of Battlestar Galactica?
If it is wrong for authors to write stories where a dictatorial regime uses brutal entertainments and public displays to keep a terrified population in line such as The Hunger Games, wouldn't it be wrong to write about similar accounts taking place in the Roman Empire? In particular, by this guideline, wouldn't it then be wrong to propagate the story of one such person condemned as a troublemaker who was nailed upon a cross but whom some say ultimately rose from the dead?
Fanatic homeschooler Kevin Swanson is continuing to condemn the Hunger Games series on what he insists are Biblical grounds. As in regards to the first film, he insists that David in the Old Testament sets a better example for Christian youth because the Hebrew shepherd boy was so deferential to authority that he would not assassinate a slumbering Saul when the opportunity presented itself. Yet their seems to be no indication as of yet in the Hunger Games cinematic storyline of Catniss or any of the other protagonists getting so horny that they have their romantic rivals murdered so they can get their freak on.
Monday, December 02, 2013
Sunday, December 01, 2013
Diseased Televangelist Apparently Lacked Faith
However, one cannot help but observe in these situations that when you, mere pewfiller, fall ill that to these faith healers it is because of some unconfessed sin in your life (usually refusing to send a direct deposit each month into the bank accounts of these religious charlatans).
Yet when such tragedy befalls these types, the event is spun in terms of them going home to the eternal reward that they so richly deserve.
Click On The Headline
Friday, November 29, 2013
Doesn't “How The Grinch Stole Christmas” convey the message that a thief that returns what belonged to you to begin with should be rewarded? The special should have ended with his corpse hanging from the tree in the town square. If the Who's in Whoville weren't so soft on crime, the Grinch would have been too afraid to loot their village.
Isn't 8:30 am on Thanksgiving when a sizable percentage might not even be out of bed a little early to activate the telephone prayer chain? So it's worth the risk of someone getting up and breaking a hip forcing them into the hospital because someone else is on the way to the hospital? God's last name is not Gallup or even Zogby. He's not more likely to answer a prayer the way that you want it just because that petition's polling numbers are on the rise.
Ivy League Word Games Undermine Human Dignity
Those professing to be enlightened and progressive scoffed that such a claim was an over-exaggeration designed to elicit fear. However, in the thirty-plus years since the legalization of abortion, some of the nation’s most celebrated academics in the most prestigious publications are now advocating that we as a society do away with infants that do not live up to some standard while going out of their way to defend the rights of animals and criminals.
Princeton Professor of Bioethics Peter Singer, who advocates bestiality (giving a whole other connotation to the phrase a boy and his dog) and animals rights as epitomized by the Great Apes Project which argues gorillas and orangutans deserve many of the protections enjoyed by human beings, believes that it is permissible to kill an infant up until 28 days after birth because an infant is not self-aware nor worthy of personhood since the baby has no preferences concerning living or dying. Furthermore, such a course of action might be of benefit to the family.
Interestingly, Singer is not some lone crank that got hold of a bad batch of pot in the faculty lounge. Professor Steven Pinker, director of MIT’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, in the November 2, 2000 issue of the New York Times Magazine defended the practice of infanticide by suggesting that the killing of an infant should be treated differently than a person.
Pinker argues that we only have a right not to be killed if we have “an ability to reflect upon ourselves as a continuous locus of consciousness, to form and savor plans for the future, to dread death, and to express the choice not to die.” Thus, infants do not qualify for protections against murder, and may be disposed of without offense.
The fundamental issue of this debate is perhaps one of the most important of all in this day of unsettled foundations. That of course is the question of what exactly is a human being.
Both Singer and Pinker argue that newborns should not enjoy legal protection from on the part of parents or the medical establishment because they are not fully human since they have not reached a certain level of development. The traditional ethical position contends that the baby is entitled to the same protections from bodily harm as any other member of the human family. Though these two professors have countless accolades and honors heaped upon them for their acclaimed erudition, both science and Biblical teaching affirm the position considered outdated by influential opinion-makers.
From scripture, it clearly teaches, “Thou shalt not murder.” And though many theologians and Bible scholars grant an exception for the taking of human life in the case of self-defense in the case of war or when confronted by someone intent on doing bodily harm and in the case of capital punishment authorized by the Noahic covenant as spelled out in Genesis 9, in no way does an infant pose the kind of threat presented by these specific exceptions. Inconvenience just does not constitute that manner of bodily harm.
Jeremiah 1:5 says, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” In Psalms 139:13-16 it says, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;...My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.”
If the embryo inside the mother is not a distinct person in his own right, how is the Lord able to know a specific collection of cells apart from the mother? Life as a continuum from conception and gestation on through birth and maturation is further confirmed in Psalms 51:5 which says, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” Nonpersons are not capable of existing in a state of sin.
Those with degrees as long as their arms cannot turn around and claim such speculations are ancient Hebrew superstitions. These prophetic revelations are confirmed by the very science the wonders of the modern world are based upon.
Both the fetus and the newborn are as genetically unique at these particular stages as the ethicists and physicians pondering the nuances of this philosophical quandary. Scott Rae writes, “(1) An adult human being is the end result of the continuous growth of the organism from conception. (2) From conception to adulthood, this development has no break that is relevant to the essential nature of the fetus. (3) Therefore, one is a human person from the point of conception onward (142).”
One of the most powerful arguments against both infanticide and abortion is that if you devalue human life at these stages, what is to prevent it from being devalued at other stages by radical utilitarians and the like? This is what happens when the standard suggested by both Peter Singer and Steven Pinker is employed.
For starters, what even is a “continuous locus of consciousness” and even if we knew, how many would even want to reflect upon it? Furthermore, even if one did, shouldn’t human value be based on something more than whether or not the individual is tickled pink at the prospect of his own belly button?
What if the individual does not temporarily possess the ability to reflect upon oneself as a “continuous locus of consciousness”; does this mean the disgruntled spouse has a window of opportunity each night to whack their mate as the sleep and get a get of jail free card? After all, during many stages of sleep one is not even aware of one’s surroundings much less one’s inner emotional workings.
The other criteria used to determine whether or not an infant is worthy of life are no less troubling. Both Pinker and Singer hold to a standard that an individual is not worthy of life unless one has the ability to ask to be kept alive.
If that is the case, if one slips on the ice and knocks themselves out, they had better come to before the ambulance gets there because who knows what organ hungry doctors would do if this criteria is allowed to play itself out. Before you know it, your kidneys and corneas could be on airplanes headed in multiple directions.
All joking aside, Pinker’s comments especially cause one to stop and pause to wonder if these remarks could be used to justify a sliding scale for human life not all that different than the blue books used by insurance companies to assess automobile depreciation. For example, Pinker says, to be worthy of life, one must savor plans for the future and dread death. Since the twenty-year old has more of these than the eighty-year old, doesn’t it then follow that it would be a greater offense to kill the twenty-year old than the eighty year-old? If the Professor has raised his children in light of such values, I trust for his own sake he does not let his guard down around them for fear of what he might find being plunged in his back as he ages.
Furthermore, who at some point in their lives (especially during the moody teenage years) hasn’t gone through a period where they didn’t care one way or the other whether life continued or not? Even if one is no where near jumping off the root of a building or suck fumes out of an exhaust pipe hasn't gone through times where the thought did not transiently skip across out minds how much easier things would be if we simply didn't wake up the next day. That did not mean that those around us had the right to do away with us.
It has been said that a society will be judged by how it treats its weakest members. If current academic opinion about how easily the unborn can be discarded is any kind of barometer, America could be in for a tumultuous twenty-first century.
By Frederick Meekins
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Issue Of Personhood Foundational In Bioethical Debates
Perhaps the most fundamental concern raised by a standpoint informed by the principles of the Bible is none other than personhood. Though something we each possess, its value varies drastically depending on the worldview each of us brings to the concept.
For example, to the person living out a consistently evolutionary or materialistic perspective, the idea of personhood is not that important since it is merely an arbitrarily contrived social and intellectual construct with no inherent worth other than what we decide to give it. Thus, it is no major concern if the concept is altered to exclude those at the extreme ends of life’s continuum unable to sustain themselves apart from intensive medical intervention.
However, if one approaches the matter from the Judeo-Christian perspective, the concept of personhood impacts dramatically the techniques and procedures one finds morally justifiable. Since man is made in the image of God, the life and spirit of man (his personhood if you will) is unique in all of creation. As such, it is due a respect placing it just below the reverence due God Himself.
Since the human being holds a special place in the heart of God, it is God Himself that establishes the guidelines regarding how we are permitted to relate to and treat other human beings. In Genesis 9:6, where God establishes His covenant with Noah it says, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man”. Later in the Ten Commandments this decree is reiterated in the command “Thou shalt not commit murder”.
From this, it is established that it is morally incorrect to take an innocent human life not having itself taken another human life. Therefore, it is improper to deliberately take a human life that does not threaten yours or has not violated the law.
Since the minds of men dwell continually on evil, a number of wily thinkers attempt to skirt around the issue by redefining personhood to make it distinct from the humanity of these individuals facing the prospects of having these procedures inflicted upon them. However, even these attempts prove inadequate as they endeavor to describe things how some would like them to be rather than how God created them.
For humanity/personhood is something one possesses inherently rather than bestowed upon you as a result of having reached some developmental milestone. The individual remains a distinct biological entity throughout the continuum of existence.
If anything, by limiting personhood to those having reached some arbitrary standard such as viability, quickening, or sentience speaks more to the limitations of medical science than an actual state of ontology. And with advances, these frontiers are being pushed back further all the time.
Things are now to the point where doctors are able to do surgery inside the mother’s womb. A photo of one such procedure where a tiny hand reached out of the mother’s abdomen got Matt Drudge fired from the Fox News Network. It was feared such an image might unsettle or disturb the consciences of viewers regarding the issue of abortion.
Scott Rae in “Moral Choices: An Introduction To Ethics” concludes his examination of the abortion issue with the following argument advocating for personhood of the unborn: “(1) An adult human being is the end result of the continuous growth of the organism from conception... (2) From conception to adulthood this development has no break that is relevant to the essential nature of the fetus... (3) Therefore, one is a human person from the point of conception onward (142).”
by Frederick Meekins