science

Ben Stein vs. Richard Dawkins

Calvin Freiburger atheism, Dawkins, DVD, evolution, God, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, intelligent design, religion, science
Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled sounds eye-opening, and if this observation for Mariano at Atheism Sucks is any indication, it sure will be:
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Now on to Prof. Dawkin’s ID promotion. Mr. Stein’s interview with Prof. Dawkins is something to behold—a feast sights and sounds, I assure you. For instance, Prof. Dawkins asserts that people feel liberated and relieved when they realize that God does not exist. Mr. Stein asks him how he knows that, he is after all speaking with an empirical scientist. Prof. Dawkins responds that he receives letters from people to that effect. To which Mr. Stein states that there are some 8 billion people in the world and asks, “How many letters do you get?” This is funny and even embarrassing but think about it: the sorts of letters that Prof. Dawkins receives to that effect are of a very particular sort having been written by people who were motivated to contact him in order to either thank him, or buddy up to him, or congratulate him, etc. This certainly constitutes a biased sample. This sadly short segment is peppered with Prof. Dawkins making authoritative pronouncements only to be asked how he knows that and being forced to admit that he does not.
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Finally, he is asked how life could have originated presuming that God does not exist. He begins to explain Darwinian Natural Selection but is asked to back up to how life began in the first place. Taking a page straight out of Francis Crick’s atheist escapism playbook—he proposes Directed Panspermia. He lucidly explains, beyond any obscurity, that alien civilizations could have developed to the point of gaining the ability to seed life on earth. This is a theory for the intelligent design of life on earth. What then is the next logical question? How did life originate on that alien world? Prof. Dawkins explains that he believes that it was through Darwinian mechanisms.

The Case for Life – Part II

Calvin Freiburger abortion, evil, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, morality, pro-life, science
THE VALUE OF LIFE
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Personhood
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Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft writes:
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[T]he essential pro-life argument is as follows. The major premise is: “Thou shalt not kill”—i.e., all deliberate killing of innocent human beings is forbidden. The minor premise is that abortion is the deliberate killing of innocent human beings. The conclusion is that abortion is wrong.
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There are two significantly different pro-choice answers to this argument. The more radical, or “hard” pro-choice position denies the major premise; the less radical, or “soft” pro-choice position denies the minor. “Hard pro-choice” denies the sanctity or inviolability of all humans; “soft pro-choice” denies the humanity of the fetus.
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Part I was in response to “soft pro-choicers.” The following is intended for “hard pro-choicers.”
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Incredibly, we are told that being alive is insufficient to justify protecting unborn humans from deliberate killing, because personhood develops by degrees. Their theory says the unborn are partial humans at different stages of development, so their moral worth increases gradually. This is also described as weighing two conflicting sets of interests, or claims to rights.
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There are glaring problems with this theory, however. The ideas of which gradations of development merit what treatment & protection proposed by pro-choicers always have an unmistakable quality of arbitrariness to them. As Kreeft writes, “It looks very suspiciously like the category [of human non-persons] was invented to justify the killing, for its only members are the humans we happen to be now killing and want to keep killing and want to justify killing.” The various qualities preborn humans lack, supposedly making them less worthy of protection, all fluctuate not only in the womb, but well after our births as well. For example:
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Consciousness: We are not conscious when we sleep, suffer a severe concussion, or are in a coma. Do we cease to be persons under these conditions?
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Pain: Anesthesia and painkilling drugs take away our capacity to feel pain temporarily, as do severe injuries to our nervous system. Is killing us more permissible if our murders will be painless?
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Viability: Just as all of us required natural life support—umbilical cords to nourish us and wombs to protect us—in our earliest stages of growth, many need artificial life support—pacemakers, iron lungs, oxygen tanks, dialysis machines, feeding tubes, etc., to say nothing of various life-saving drugs—in their later stages. Are people who aren’t “viable” without such aid less deserving of protection against homicide?
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We would never dream of applying such standards to born children or adults (well, most of us wouldn’t); why should we take them as persuasive guides to treatment of the preborn? Furthermore, we know that, even after we’re born, we still are not completely developed. Kreeft points out, “If it is more permissible to kill a fetus than to kill an infant because the fetus is less of a person, then it is for exactly the same reason more permissible to kill a seven-year-old, who has not yet developed his reproductive system or many of his educational and communications skills, than to kill a 27-year-old.”
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(And again, those who defend abortion this way, if they are intellectually honest, have no choice but to acknowledge that at least some abortions, and many motives for abortion, are indefensible by their own standards, because all these qualities develop well before birth.)
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Women’s Autonomy over “Their Own Bodies”
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It is also claimed that, because an unborn baby is inside of and dependent upon a pregnant woman, the mother is the dominant party in the relationship has a basic right to dispose of her child. First, this argument ignores the fact that unborn humans are individual, separate human beings. That they are connected to their mothers does not change this—a fetus’ unique genetic identity is his/her own, not the mother’s; a fetus’ developing bodily systems are his/her own, not the mother’s; etc. To say abortion is about control over “women’s own bodies” is simply a falsehood (a falsehood which Kreeft lightheartedly demonstrated as follows: “if the fetus is a part of the mother, then the parts of the fetus must be parts of the mother. But in that case, every pregnant woman has four eyes and four feet, and half of all pregnant women have penises!”).
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Second, why does a fetus remain in his/her mother’s body for nine months? The umbilical cord supplies the fetus with oxygen and nutrients. He/she remains inside Mom’s body for protection from the outside world while developing. The means of delivery may be different, but the needs themselves do not differ from the basic needs of any person: food, air & protection from the elements. Obviously, these differences between pre-birth & post-birth are too small to constitute differences in moral worth.
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Third, babies cannot seriously be said to be “imposing” themselves upon their mother because no human being asks to be conceived in the first place. Coming into existence is completely beyond his/her control. Doesn’t the act of creating a new human life come with any obligations to that life? To say it does not carries an unmistakable air of narcissism.
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Furthermore, no responsible observer could pass judgment on the proper treatment of human beings without seriously considering the thing which makes all the difference in the world between a worthless collection of molecules and an individual of incalculable worth: the soul. If humans are endowed with souls, then their unique moral worth is tied to them, not to any particular trait or ability. Secular pro-choicers will try again to play the religion-in-politics card, or mock the very idea of considering the soul. The religion angle is addressed in Part I, and the fact that belief in the soul has a long, rich and thoughtful history, combined with its centrality to the issue of human moral worth, demands that we take the possibility seriously. And nobody but the most fanatical atheist could conclude there’s zero chance of the soul’s existence, so basic moral responsibility demands that we err on the side of caution—life—in such a serious matter.
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The folly of soft pro-choice is very easy to demonstrate objectively, since it is based on nothing more than ignorance and/or lies. Hard pro-choice is a different animal—it doesn’t claim to accept the same starting premise (that deliberately killing innocent humans is wrong). Unlike pro-lifers, who place moral worth in what something is (a human being), hard pro-choicers place moral worth in what something can do and what qualities it possesses. I must confess that I find their utilitarian philosophy on life so bizarrely alien and incompatible with mine that I can’t even begin to imagine the mind which could adopt such callous & repugnant beliefs. Because of that, I’m somewhat at a loss to dissect it further myself. Fortunately, others have done so far better than I ever could. Everybody with a sincere desire to find the humane, just, and intellectually-honest answer to the issue of abortion really ought to read Peter Kreeft’s two painstaking essays “Human Personhood Begins at Conception” and “The Apple Argument against Abortion”, as well as Ramesh Ponnuru’s aforementioned book The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life. Also, thanks to G-Man’s spirited challenges, the comments section explores the issue in further depth, too.
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Lastly, we’ll return to the matter of doubt. Even if one is ultimately unconvinced by the case & evidence for life, any rational & objective pro-choicer who examines it should at least be able to recognize the possibility, however slight, that pro-lifers are right. So, as President Ronald Reagan said:
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[A]nyone who doesn’t feel sure whether we are talking about a second human life should clearly give life the benefit of the doubt. If you don’t know whether a body is alive or dead, you would never bury it. I think this consideration itself should be enough for all of us to insist on protecting the unborn.
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With that in mind, here’s a challenge to all pro-choicers: just how certain are you that you are right and we are wrong? Concerning uncertainty, there are two obvious moral principles. First, while people can take risks for themselves based on personally weighing the evidence & choosing what they feel comfortable with, they are most certainly not entitled to take risks with other people’s possible lives or well-being. Second, the amount of caution & restraint one must exercise is dependent upon the consequences of being wrong. Taking a chance on a brand of TV you’re not familiar with is one thing. Taking a chance on the fate of over a million humans annually is quite another. Consider the following two scenarios:
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First, let’s say pro-lifers are ultimately wrong, but win the Culture War.
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That means about 1 million additional births annually. Hardships will be attached to each, of course, but most of those new lives will also enrich the future in ways too numerous to mention. In addition, no abortions would mean no dangerous consequences of abortion.
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Embryo-involving methods of research have been banned, maybe leading to a delay in medical advancements, but (despite liberal lies) adult stem cell research would still be vigorously supported. Plus, drawing a line in the sand at embryo experimentation would also be likely protect ethical lines which many pro-choicers would agree shouldn’t be crossed, such as giving birth to children for the sole purpose of harvesting their organs.
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Second, let’s say pro-choicers are ultimately wrong, but win the Culture War.
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That means over 45 million murders have taken place since Roe v. Wade, with society’s blessing, and the death toll will keep rising by a million every year. Every victim is utterly innocent & defenseless.
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Every. Last. One.
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The physical & psychological side-effects of abortion will continue to plague women. Embryonic stem-cell research may lead to medical breakthroughs, but an addiction to human life will have been created within the scientific world, potentially opening the door to speciously-rationalized horrors we can’t yet fathom.
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It’s obvious that the consequences of pro-lifers being wrong are nowhere near as dire as the consequences of pro-choicers being wrong, and it’s clear that pro-life victory is far more likely to make the world a better place. That alone should be enough to determine what the ethically-responsible position is.
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These are risks the pro-life community isn’t willing to take. Are you?
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The Case for Life – Part I

Calvin Freiburger abortion, Christianity, evil, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, morality, pro-life, science
WHEN DOES LIFE BEGIN?
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What Are We Protecting?
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First, let’s lay a ground rule. By “life” we refer to any individual organism which is a member of the human species—not individual cells, sperm or eggs, hair follicles, skin, etc. (though a seemingly-needless distinction, these comparisons actually come up in debate—the pro-life movement is sometimes characterized as some strange mission to prevent the destruction of mere organic matter, a straw man which is then “discredited” with challenges like “You kill life every time you get a haircut!”) The latter are merely parts of other organisms, not organisms themselves. Nor are embryonic & fetal humans sacred because they are “potential life;” we seek to prevent their destruction because their lives already exist.
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Theologically Speaking, When Does Life Begin?
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If you claim to believe in the Old Testament or Torah’s veracity as the Word of God and absolute Truth, then the answer is simple. God told Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” Before we have a physical form we have a soul, an identity which God can and does know.
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The Bible has many such references to children within the womb as human and spiritual, and the Catholic Church has recognized this for the majority of its history. Many of these references obviously apply to Judaism as well, but as a Christian I defer to Bonnie Chernin Rogoff, founder of Jews for Life:
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Judaism does not believe in the Christian concept of ensoulment, that at the time of conception the soul enters the embryo making that new life equivalent with a born person. In the earliest stages of pregnancy, up to 40 days post-conception, the fetus is considered “mere fluid” (Mishnah Niddah 3:7). However, after 40 days the fetus is considered formed and a woman who miscarries or aborts has to undergo the ritual cleansing process (mikveh) just as she would if a living child were born (Mishnah Kritot 1:3-6). In the Talmud Arakin 7a-b, the passage indicates it is permissible to desecrate the Shabbat to save the life of an unborn child. Further, while a traditional Jew is forbidden from carrying a knife on the Shabbat, a Jewish surgeon may do so, and use it, to save an unborn child’s life […]
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The view of Judaism is that abortion, while not considered murder, should be strongly discouraged. While the fetus is not accorded full human status, it is still considered a developing life with value, that must be protected and saved whenever possible, unless the life of the mother is in danger. In that case, it is permissible to abort the fetus. The Mishnah Oholoth 7:6 along with Rashi’s commentaries in Talmud Sanhedrin 72b make it very clear that the life (and not the ‘choice’ or ‘health’ of the mother) is the only permissible reason for abortion. Had abortion been performed in Rashi’s time for birth control, convenience, or economic reasons there would have been an outcry from rabbis and the religious community and the practice would have been condemned. Under no circumstances should abortion performed for frivolous reasons be given a stamp of approval by rabbis, under the pretext of “health.”
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Life is a precious, priceless gift from our Creator. Believers have a moral duty to recognize life from the beginning and to stand in defense of lives that cannot defend themselves…but some on the Left would have us believe otherwise.
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Even the Devil Can Quote Scripture
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Abortion is sometimes defended from a theological standpoint, with claims such as:
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Exodus 21: “If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.” Violence against a pregnant woman causing premature birth is punished monetarily rather than with death; therefore, we are told, killing pre-birth is less grievous than killing post-birth. But what abortion defenders leave out is that the phrase “and yet no mischief follow” means, quite simply, “if the baby survives the attack.” The lines immediately following the passage make this clear: “And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye…” In this regard, the fetus’s death is no different than an adult’s.
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The description of Adam’s creation in Genesis says “God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” This supposedly indicates that life does not begin until the first breath is taken. But there are two problems with this view. 1.) As the first humans, Adam & Eve could not have resulted from a pregnancy, so the process by which God created them would likely be different. It seems plausible to assume that He created their bodies and souls separately, then put them together, and once they were in place, our God-given system of sexual reproduction took care of the physical self and God created the spiritual self earlier in development for all of His subsequent children. Subsequent references to humans in the womb suggest this, especially verses 13-16 of Psalm 139. 2.) Like all bodily functions, breathing starts prior to birth. Pro-choicers who define life in this way have themselves inadvertently rendered many abortions unacceptable—near the end of the second trimester, the baby is, in fact, breathing.
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Genesis 38 recounts the tale of Judah and his widowed daughter-in-law, Tamar. Upon discovering her out-of-wedlock pregnancy, Judah orders Tamar to be burnt to death—a punishment he cancels upon discovering that he is the father (he slept with her, mistaking her for a prostitute when she was disguised). Pro-choicers note that the sentence would also have killed Tamar’s unborn twins; therefore, the unborn must have less moral worth than a person. But this theory fails immediately: considering that Judah has “married outside the faith, raised [at least] two wicked sons, wrongfully accused his daughter-in-law of his sons’ deaths, lied to his daughter-in-law, refused to keep the law of levirate marriage and, of course, had sex with a prostitute;” he’s not exactly a moral compass! “But nobody other than Tamar prevented him from carrying it out, did they?” True, but that only means people deferred to his judgment & authority; it doesn’t say those people were right to do so. Since the primary message of the story concerns Judah’s wickedness and redemption, not babies, it can hardly be seen as a barometer to treatment of the unborn.
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“Jesus never mentioned [abortion] even once.” Jesus never mentioned drive-by shootings, either. But (obviously) he did mention murder. Value systems such as Christianity don’t need to list off every conceivable method of doing wrong as long as there is a clear set of moral principles in place to determine whether or not particular actions constitute sin. Since “thou shalt not murder” is about as unequivocally Christian as possible, one need only show that the unborn have lives of their own to establish that Jesus would forbid their deliberate destruction.
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When faced with contrary interpretations of Scripture, it is important to do two things: first, examine the context of the quotation in question, and second, weigh it against the entirety of the Biblical evidence. In the final analysis, Judeo-Christian teaching firmly sides with the sanctity of life.
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Religious Convictions in Politics
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“Even if God wants us to personally recognize life from conception onward, we can’t apply a personal religious belief to public policy.” Wrong again.
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The First Amendment guarantees that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Thomas Jefferson famously referred to this as a “wall of separation between Church & State.” Fashionable though it may be to “evolve” the Constitution’s meaning over time, here we’ll stick to a literal read of its actual text, as understood by the Founding Fathers.
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The Founding Fathers understood “establishment of religion” to mean what it did under “the Church of England: a formal union of political and ecclesiastical authority in the hands of the state,” as Dr. Mark Levin writes in the excellent Men in Black (hardcover, p. 36). In other words, the Amendment prevents a church from imposing enforced regulations or punishments upon people, such as ineligibility from public office, taxation of minority sects, and jailing or executing heretics; as well as the converse: preventing the state from suppressing the religious activities of churches and private citizens. Hence, it is a rather straightforward separation of two organizations.
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Separating religious principles from politics is very different. There is nothing in the Constitution that dictates what values, ideas, or motivations are allowed to animate people. Indeed, such a restriction—regulating the intellectual or moral criteria by which American citizens are allowed to judge candidates & policies—would be un-American to the core.
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Consider the 1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. Written by Thomas Jefferson, it is rightly hailed as a prime example of American enlightenment. But its actual text would surprise many who only hear it mentioned in passing as a victory for church-state separation. Jefferson wrote (emphasis added):
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“Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being Lord, both of body and mind yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others…”
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In Jefferson’s mind, freedom of thought was God’s will, and he had no qualms about positing that the country should follow such a Judeo-Christian value. The Constitution allows us to make such judgments; the only limitation is that in doing so, we cannot infringe upon the other rights outlined in the Constitution (“But I thought abortion was a constitutional right!” Patience; we won’t forget to address that one.).
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(There is a lot of eye-opening reading on the Founding Father’s true religious intentions for America; William J. Federer’s America’s God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations is a great resource to start with.)
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“I still think opposing abortion is a religious teaching, so we can’t legislate it.” Consider that prohibitions against murder, theft and lying in the Ten Commandments are among the most explicit religious teachings of all, more so than those against abortion. Does that mean our laws against homicide, theft, slander, libel, or perjury are unconstitutional because they force people to abide by the Ten Commandments? While religious belief must not infringe upon our natural rights in public policy, there is nothing unconstitutional about accepting religious advice on how best to protect those rights. During the 2004 presidential campaign, Democrat Sen. John Kerry cited his religious convictions as “why I fight against poverty. That’s why I fight to clean up the environment and protect this earth. That’s why I fight for equality and justice.” In other words, he wanted to “impose” his religious beliefs about poverty, nature, etc. upon the American people. Until Kerry’s stances infringe upon actual rights, he is entitled to persuade a majority of his fellow Americans of their merits. The same holds true for marriage activists (on both sides), for pro-lifers, and for the aforementioned “Christians for choice.”
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Think of it this way: protecting innocent people is a goal that transcends belief, one that all believers and unbelievers ought to agree upon. Believers simply accept religious insight to help determine whether or not the unborn fit into the category of innocent people. Right or wrong, it’s a proposition that is fully appropriate for public discourse and the will of the people—not censorship or disqualification.
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Scientifically Speaking, When Does Life Begin?
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Of course, the religion-out-of-politics line is little more than a ploy to disqualify rather than debate pro-lifers, or to avoid taking a firm stand. In fact, if there is one truth that must be driven home, it is this: the question of life’s beginning is not by any means exclusive to religion. Science can answer it—and it has.
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In his magnificent The Party of Death, Ramesh Ponnuru writes:
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We have developed ways of talking that enable us to pretend that the point can be blinked away. In the case of abortion and embryo research, the main technique is to suggest that there is some great mystery about “when life begins,” and that this alleged question is a religious or philosophical one. Yet science has since solved the mystery. From conception onward, what exists is a distinct organism of the human species. The philosophical question is what we make of that fact. To jumble these issues together—the essentially scientific question of categorizing an embryo as human and living, and the moral question of whether it follows from that categorization that it has a right to life—is a logical error. Justice Blackmun, of course, proceeded in just this erroneous fashion in Roe. And if we are not careful, talking in terms of “meaningful life,” or, as [author Ronald] Dworkin does, of “life in earnest,” can lead us into this error as well.
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All of us who read this page were once human embryos. The history of our bodies began with the formation of an embryo. We were those embryos, just as we were once fetuses, infants, children, and adolescents. But we were never a sperm cell and an egg cell. (Those cells were genetically and functionally parts of other human beings.) The formation of the embryo marks the beginning of a new human life: a new and complete organism that belongs to the human species. Embryology textbooks say so, with no glimmer of uncertainty or ambiguity.
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That new organism is alive rather than dead or inanimate. It is human rather than a member of some other species. It is an organism distinct from all others. It is not a functional part of a larger organism (the way a kidney is part of a larger organism). It maintains its own organic unity over time. It directs its own development, according to its genetic template, through the embryonic, fetal, and subsequent stages. Such terms as “blastocyst,” “newborn,” and “adolescent” denote different stages of development in a being of the same type, not different types of beings. At each of our earlier stages of life, we have been, as we are now, whole living members of the species Homo sapiens. (hardcover, p. 77-78)
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And medical textbooks do indeed say so:
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Human Embryology, 3rd Edition by William Larsen, Lawrence Sherman, S. Steven Potter, & William Scott: “In this text, we begin our description of the developing human with the formation and differentiation of the male and female sex cells or gametes, which will unite at fertilization to initiate the embryonic development of a new individual.” (p. 1)
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The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 7th Edition by Keith Moore & TVN. Persaud: “Human development begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm (spermatozoon) unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.” (p. 18)
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Human Embryology & Teratology, 3rd Edition by Ronan O’Rahilly & Fabiola Muller: “Although life is a continuous process, fertilization (which, incidentally, is not a ‘moment’) is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is formed when the chromosomes of the male and female pronuclei blend in the oocyte.” (p. 8)
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Developmental Biology, 6th Edition by Scott Gilbert: “Fertilization is the process whereby two sex cells (gametes) fuse together to create a new individual with genetic potentials derived from both parents.” (p. 185)
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Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia, 7th Edition by Douglas Considine: “At the moment the sperm cell of the human male meets the ovum of the female and the union results in a fertilized ovum (zygote), a new life has begun.” (p. 943)
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Langman’s Medical Embryology, 7th Edition by TW Sadler: “The development of a human begins with fertilization, a process by which the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote.” (p. 3)
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Patten’s Foundations of Embryology, 6th Edition by Bruce Carlson: “Almost all higher animals start their lives from a single cell, the fertilized ovum (zygote)… The time of fertilization represents the starting point in the life history, or ontogeny, of the individual.” (p. 3)
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It doesn’t take much to see the common pro-choice line “clumps of cells” is empty, simplistic propaganda: Eye-opening information about fetal development is no secret, we know that preborn children are capable of feeling pain (note: link is a PDF file) at approximately 20 weeks, and the latest ultrasound technology shows us these “clumps” are surprisingly familiar.
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So where does all this leave us? The life of a human being does, in fact, begin at conception; so every abortion, every embryo discarding (either via stem-cell research or in-vitro fertilization), and some types of birth control destroy a human being. Yet when faced with this reality, pro-choicers have developed new criteria for human rights, which are designed to deny them protection based upon factors other than their biological humanity…factors which will be explored in Part II: The Value of Life.
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The Case for Life – Introduction & Index

Calvin Freiburger abortion, Christianity, evil, morality, pro-life, science
The First Right
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We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—US Declaration of Independence
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So reads the founding document of our nation. The unalienable right to life can be thought of as the First Right of our Republic, because without it, no other right can be exercised. Thus, protecting that right is the paramount duty of our government and society. And in order to best fulfill that duty, we must carefully determine exactly what constitutes life, and when we have it.
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In this troubled age, when respect for life remains in doubt even within the Republican Party, there is no more important cause than standing up for America’s soul and turning back the callous disregard for the innocent which has infected our nation like a cancer in the past decades. In this upcoming five-part essay, I shall attempt to articulate both the case for life and its proper role in the GOP & conservative movement as comprehensively as possible.
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Part I: When Does Life Begin?
Part II: The Value of Life
Part III: Life and Public Policy
Part IV: Life and the Constitution
Part V: Pro-Life Strategies
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Part I examines when life begins & why it deserves protection, and will be posted shortly after this Introduction.

Scientists Skeptical of Man-Made Global Warming

Calvin Freiburger blogosphere, environment, global warming, science
How often have we heard that mankind’s contribution to global warming has been proven to be significant and dangerous, the debate’s over, and the dissent is a minority comprised of Flat-Earthers, oil-company stooges and clueless twits? Well, as is so often the case when dealing with liberals, the truth happens to be another story.
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Enter the Oregon Institute of Science & Medicine’s Petition Project. (Big thanks to Matt, who called attention to the petition in this debate.) Their position is as follows:
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We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
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There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.
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So how many signatures do they have? Any lefties in the audience may wanna sit down (all emphasis mine):
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During the past several years, more than 17,100 basic and applied American scientists, two-thirds with advanced degrees, have signed the Global Warming Petition.
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Signers of this petition so far include 2,660 physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers, and environmental scientists (select this link for a listing of these individuals) who are especially well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide on the Earth’s atmosphere and climate.
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Signers of this petition also include 5,017 scientists whose fields of specialization in chemistry, biochemistry, biology, and other life sciences (select this link for a listing of these individuals) make them especially well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide upon the Earth’s plant and animal life.
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Nearly all of the initial 17,100 scientist signers have technical training suitable for the evaluation of the relevant research data, and many are trained in related fields. In addition to these 17,100, approximately 2,400 individuals have signed the petition who are trained in fields other than science or whose field of specialization was not specified on their returned petition.
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Of the 19,700 signatures that the project has received in total so far, 17,800 have been independently verified and the other 1,900 have not yet been independently verified. Of those signers holding the degree of PhD, 95% have now been independently verified. One name that was sent in by enviro pranksters, Geri Halliwell, PhD, has been eliminated. Several names, such as Perry Mason and Robert Byrd are still on the list even though enviro press reports have ridiculed their identity with the names of famous personalities. They are actual signers. Perry Mason, for example, is a PhD Chemist.
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The costs of this petition project have been paid entirely by private donations. No industrial funding or money from sources within the coal, oil, natural gas or related industries has been utilized. The petition’s organizers, who include some faculty members and staff of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, do not otherwise receive funds from such sources. The Institute itself has no such funding. Also, no funds of tax-exempt organizations have been used for this project.
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Also, here is another partial list of scientific dissenters and their comments (I know I’ve blasted reliance on Wikipedia in the past, but in this case the reliability of what you see on the website is not an issue, because each entry is an external link to the actual story or article).
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So what does this prove? “All these people reject man-made global warming; therefore, it’s false?” That’s not what I’m trying to say at all. The point is that the dissent is substantial enough that simply adding up the players on each side and throwing in with the supposedly-bigger team isn’t a reliable or conclusive enough method to reach a conclusion. You’d think liberals, what with their high-minded talk about logical thought and questioning authority, could appreciate such an idea. But you’d apparently be wrong.

Memo to Governor Doyle

Calvin Freiburger evil, good news, pro-life, science, stem cells
More stem-cell advances, and they’re not embryonic:
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Research reported this week by three different groups shows that normal skin cells can be reprogrammed to an embryonic state in mice. The race is now on to apply the surprisingly straightforward procedure to human cells.-If researchers succeed, it will make it relatively easy to produce cells that seem indistinguishable from embryonic stem cells, and that are genetically matched to individual patients. There are limits to how useful and safe these would be for therapeutic use in the near term, but they should quickly prove a boon in the lab.
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[…]
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But the iPS cells aren’t perfect, and could not be used safely to make genetically matched cells for transplant in, for example, spinal-cord injuries. Yamanaka found that one of the factors seems to contribute to cancer in 20% of his chimaeric mice. He thinks this can be fixed, but the retroviruses used may themselves also cause mutations and cancer. “This is really dangerous. We would never transplant these into a patient,” says Jaenisch. In his view, research into embryonic stem cells made by cloning remains “absolutely essential”.
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Do we still have a way to go? Of course. I’m not going to take the Doyle route and pretend my favored research is a bed of roses completely devoid of thorns, but the potential of not just this development, but past advances such as umbilical cord blood, is undeniable. Given that we know the embryo to be a living human, and that embryonic-stem-cell research would be years off anyway, what possible rationale is there to justify killing in science’s name?

Man’s Inhumanity to Man…& the Spin Defending It

Calvin Freiburger abortion, history, pro-life, religion, reporter, science
Back on April 5, the Reporter ran this pro-life letter:
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Abortion: ‘Man’s inhumanity to man’
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Keith Kramer
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Because abortion cannot be defended on its own merits, population controllers argue for a woman’s right to choose, never about what is being chosen.
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Choosing abortion always kills the innocent glimmer of light within our very dark world. A grieving time for life, our society begs healing from questions still to be asked; yet a man’s intellect never quite permits asking, lest complacency flee like dried dandelion fluff.
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We would dwell beyond the snares of “man’s inhumanity to man,” leaving inhumanity at the door of the Nazi holocaust. Now that we are the enforcer, we justify atrocity as somehow necessary and excusable.
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“I tremble for my country when I recall that God is just.”—Thomas Jefferson
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Today this response appeared:
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Brent Schmitz
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Mr. Keith Kraemer asserts in his letter to the editor on Thursday (April 5) that “abortion cannot be defended on its own merits,” and proceeds to refer to pro-choice Americans as “population controllers,” evoking images of the government mandated infanticide and involuntary sterilizations of parents that have occurred in China for the past decades.
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It’s equally safe to assume that there won’t be a mass program to imprison & kill Jews in the United States, too. Does that mean we can’t attribute such a desire to neo-Nazis operating within the country? Furthermore, while a variety of motivations prop up abortion (all of them sick), there is a very real movement of “population controllers” on the Left, as evidenced by Mark Morford of the San Francisco Gate.
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By focusing on abortion as “inhumanity,” Mr. Kraemer ignores the vital question of this issue, “When does human life begin?” I am neither a doctor nor a theologian, and do not presume to answer this question with an assertion, though Mr. Kraemer feels no such apprehension.
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I suspect Mr. Kramer “feels no such apprehension” about accepting unborn humanity as a given because we live in an age where that fact ought to be as clear as that the sun rises in the morning. I think that, considering the length of the average Opinion letter, Kramer focused on a point that needed to be heard.
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I would ask him what qualifications he has to assert the beginning of life at conception. This position, if supported adequately, is certainly valid, and thus would render abortion immoral, but Mr. Kraemer has given us no evidence to support his conjecture.
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I also find it interesting that Mr. Kraemer compares a pro-choice society to Nazism without acknowledging that there is doubt in whether or not abortion terminates a human life—there is no such doubt that millions of innocents died in the Holocaust.
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Actually, the only doubt is among those who want abortion to be legal. In reality, “life begins at conception” is a scientific fact. But Mr. Schmitz’s acknowledgement of doubt points to another flaw in the case for abortion: unless science could unequivocally establish that life begins at some point after conception, to terminate something you understand might be life is a clearly-evil act.
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Mr. Kraemer ends his letter with a quotation from Thomas Jefferson. I will do the same. “Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law.” Mr. Kraemer, defend your position without invoking religious dogma, which cannot be argued against, and our country can begin to have a serious debate about the moral dilemma that is abortion.
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The most serious debate our country ever had was about the moral dilemma that is slavery. And that is the evil to which Jefferson referred when he trembled for his country at the thought of God’s justice. Does Schmitz think Jefferson’s invocation of “religious dogma” invalidated his disgust for slavery? Did the explicitly-religious rhetoric invoked by the rest of the Founding Fathers supporting the overall concept of liberty invalidate the American Revolution or the Constitutional Convention? What about the deep influence religion held on Abraham Lincoln? Or Churchill’s calls to fight for “the survival of Christian civilization”?
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Maybe the issues revolving around America’s birth, slavery, the Civil War, and World War II don’t count as “serious.”

Heresy from the Church of Gore

Calvin Freiburger environment, global warming, Newsweek, science
A warmer climate could prove to be more beneficial than the one we have now. Much of the alarm over climate change is based on ignorance of what is normal for weather and climate. There is no evidence, for instance, that extreme weather events are increasing in any systematic way, according to scientists at the U.S. National Hurricane Center, the World Meteorological Organization and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (which released the second part of this year’s report earlier this month). Indeed, meteorological theory holds that, outside the tropics, weather in a warming world should be less variable, which might be a good thing.
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In many other respects, the ill effects of warming are overblown. Sea levels, for example, have been increasing since the end of the last ice age. When you look at recent centuries in perspective, ignoring short-term fluctuations, the rate of sea-level rise has been relatively uniform (less than a couple of millimeters a year). There’s even some evidence that the rate was higher in the first half of the twentieth century than in the second half. Overall, the risk of sea-level rise from global warming is less at almost any given location than that from other causes, such as tectonic motions of the earth’s surface.
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That’s Richard Lindzen, the Alfred Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT, in the pages of Newsweek. How inconvenient.