Media Updates

A friendly reader posted a link to where my appearances on Family News In Focus responding to Sen. Kerry’s speech involving religion can be found:

IT’S HERE. (.wax format; works with Windows Media Player; my segment starts a little after 3:30 minutes into the broadcast)

I also was able to find a link to my appearance on California NRP talking about stem cells:

IT’S HERE. (.asx format; works with Windows Media Player; my segment starts about 20 minutes into the hour)

This morning I’m sheduled to appear on XETV FOX channel 6 (the local San Diego FOX station) to talk about stem cells again. I should be on about 7:15 a.m., though the segment should be short.

MORE INFO ON CALIFORNIA’S PRO-STEM CELL PROP 71 HERE.

If it gets passed in this state, it will create competition among other states to fund similar initiatives, lest they get left behind in a “stem cell race.”

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

14 thoughts on “Media Updates”

  1. Dr.Goldstien’s euphemistic denigration of embryos came off as childish (“balls of cells in a dish” maybe not technically a euphemism but the way he delivered it was plainly demeaning) (and referred to later by a caller as “sucker shaped bunch of cells”?) I like the way you made light of that dishonesty by appealing to the science of the matter, nicely done.
    He then stated after acknowledging your reference to embryos as babies that the “majority of our society doesn’t think of it that way”, which is such a cop out, hiding in the popular moral relativism which harbors these ideas of killing for convenience. You could almost hear his conscience screaming as he said regarding embryos: “our society for better or for worse routinely creates and destroys them”. Ugh, the impunity with which he speaks of the destruction of human life is heart wrenching.
    The caller John sounded very confused, poor guy. He talks about “theologians within the church” that disagree on the sanctity of life from conception? I didn’t catch the book he mentioned but it seems clear, as you state in the voters guide, there simply isn’t theological wiggle room on the issue. It’s unfortunate and painful to see such confusion among Catholics. Can you address what he was trying to get at saying that the church’s teaching wasn’t credible because embryos aren’t baptized and buried?
    Keep up the good work Jimmy.
    (btw the link is broken for the Family News in Focus bit and can be found here)
    http://boss.streamos.com/wmedia/swn/oneplace/wm/fnf/fnf20041026.wax

  3. I’m listening to it right now. You’re doing really well Jimmy. Good defense.
    Too bad we can’t clone about a thousand of you and send you out to every radio station in the country.

  5. I imagine that there will be further opportunities to discuss the five non-negotiables. It would be neat to have a list of what-to-do and what-not-to-do in a radio debate.

  6. Good job Jimmy. I just finished listening to the California NRP show and you did a great job with what you were given. It must be so frustrating to get so little air time when the host gives oodles and oodles of time to the guest on the other side of the topic.
    It’s so frustrating to me when people use the “it’s just a bag of cells in a dish” argument. All I can say is, “Well, O.K. If I look at you through a microscope and see “a bag of cells” am I authorized ethically then to kill you and give your parts to other “more worthy” human beings?” Seriously, what do people expect a human being to look like when they look through a microscope? Also, he said that the embryos do not have organs or brains or anything like that. Of course they do! What do you expect a brain or other organ of the human being to look like at that stage of development!? Gee, maybe a lot like a stem cell? To expect a human being to look like an adult in the embryonic stage of development is simply irrational, illogical, and completely unscientific.
    Arrrgh!
    Phew, I had to get that off my chest.
    Again, good job Jimmy.

  7. Out of curiousity, does anybody happen to know when ensoulment occurs? Because if it happens at conception, it seems that there would be a problem when twinning occurs. Twinning occurs after conception, so would the spirit somehow split in two? Not really sure how that would work out, and I think I heard that this was an issue being discussed by theologians right now. Thanks.

  9. This is conjecture, but it seems logical enough to say that at the moment the fertilized egg splits into two seperate cell masses that are each growing on their own they are therefore both individuals and both have souls. Even if “ensoulment” does happen at a later time, since there’s no way to determine if it has or has not happened objectively, there aren’t circumstances where destroying a growing embryo is not killing a person. Anything less leads to infanticide. Cause if we can killum in the womb, why not killum outta the womb.
    Most politicians don’t report having souls, (I kid, but seriously) we can’t go around advocating their violent deaths (even if their mother IS involved) now can we. But only because they’re obviously alive, and human, and therefore, despite their own ignorance, they have souls.

  10. I would suppose that it would certainly be possible to have ensoulment at conception. Even in the case of twinning. Presumably, God would know about the upcoming twinning and would place both souls in the zygote and they would share a body for a time until they are seperated. It certainly shouldn’t be problematic to speak of two souls sharing a “body” because we conjoined twins. In essence they have never completed the “twinning” fully to the point of becoming two seperate bodies.
    There are other things that can happen early on in development. You can have a rare case where there is a “twinning” and then one of the twins is consumed by the other twin and only one body comes forth. In this case I presume it would be that there had been two souls, and one of the souls had perished early on and the remains of that soul’s body was absorbed into the other’s body.
    Fascinating topic Simon.

  11. Except I think to say the soul is “in” a person is a misunderstanding, and just because twins are conjoined doesn’t mean their souls are more connected than any other two souls. And a soul doesn’t perish, the body perishes.
    /knitpicking for necessity

Comments are closed.