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."
The woman on the left is a Dominican sister. She helps escort women into abortion clinics so that they can have their children killed.
As Ed Peters writes,
[S]uch are the times we live in: a Catholic religious can act for years as an abortion clinic escort and cause barely a ripple in her religious community, the local church, or in Rome. History won't believe it.
Indeed it won't.
Once this is all sorted out, history won't be able to understand how a situation like this could arise or continue.
Ed isn't very hopeful that anything will be done to rectify her situation, but I'm more optimistic. The Internet is a wonderful thing, and now that
That's the question blogger and transhumanist economist Robin Hanson asked his class recently. He writes:
On Tuesday I asked my law & econ undergrads what sort of future robots (AIs computers etc.) they would want, if they could have any sort they wanted. Most seemed to want weak vulnerable robots that would stay lower in status, e.g., short, stupid, short-lived, easily killed, and without independent values.
Yes. That's exactly right. Especially the no independent values part. Robots should only exist to serve man (in the good sense, not the bad, Twilight Zone sense).
When I asked “what if I chose to become a robot?”, they said I should lose all human privileges, and be treated like the other robots.
Yes, that is exactly what should happen.
Of course, you can't become a robot, but you could progressively cyborgize yourself to the point that the human being that you are dies and what is left is a robot that is creepily similar to you and that identifies itself as you, but that's not you. You died and left a particularly creepy robot in your place.
This robot should lose all human privileges and–at best–be treated like the other robots.
Actually, it should be put in a special class of robots that are human-pretenders. There's a difference between a robot that claims to be the further incarnation (or inmetalization) of a human being and one that just roams around vacuuming your floor. The former is much more socially dangerous than the latter, as it leads to confusion about human identity (case in point: Robin Hanson thinking he could become a robot).
Human pretender robots should therefore be put in a special class by themselves and then crushed with one of those big machines that turns automobiles into cubes of scrap metal.
They should not be allowed.
I winced; seems anti-robot feelings are even stronger than anti-immigrant feelings, which bodes for a stormy robot transition.
Just whose side are you on, robo-traitor?
Oh, and I liked this from the comments:
You’ve heard this all before Robin, but I can’t resist. You can’t “become a robot,” any more than I can become a prime number. You might be able to make a robot that is very similar to yourself, but it still wouldn’t be you.
Admittedly, I would probably find a robot simulation of you very congenial. But I would never be able to forget that he wasn’t the real Robin.
Things like this have been in the works behind the scenes for some time, but the Holy See has finally announced formal means for facilitating the reconciliation with the Catholic Church of Anglicans who are disaffected with the heterodox trajectory of the worldwide Anglican communion.
The plan will allow bishops' conferences to create "personal ordinariates"–basically nonterritorial diocese with its own bishop (although the former Anglican ordinariates will be able to have priests as their heads).
Further details are to be announced in an apostolic constitution by Pope Benedict. Initial details have been made available by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
As both statements point out, this move is in part a product of ecumenical dialog–even if it is rather a bank shot. It will be interesting to see how ecumenists receive the move. One has the impression that, for many, ecumenical dialog is an end in itself–not something that is supposed to produce concrete results, or at least not the result of bringing people into full communion with the Catholic Church in its current form.
I was told in a discussion I was having with a fallen away Catholic the following:
There was a respected Cardinal theologian of the Vatican that wrote that the "virgin birth" is an "ontological" story … Not an "historical" one. The church doesn't even believe it. Do you know which Cardinal wrote that tenet of the church? Ratzinger!!!
My questions is the obvious one, has Pope Benedict XVI ever said anything close to this, and if so, I need an explanation.
I've been subsequently told that he did talk on the ontological reality of the Virgin Birth but did not deny the historical fact. However, I was given nothing to reference.
If your friend said that Cardinal Ratzinger contrasted a historical with an ontological Virgin Birth, there has been a misunderstanding somewhere along the line.
In fact, I don't know what it would mean to contrast a historical event with an ontological event. Ontology refers to the study of that which exists (fundamental reality), and if something is an ontological event then it can't be ahistorical (something that never occurred). I suppose one might talk about ontological realities that are outside of time, but I don't know what it would mean to say that the Virgin Birth is one of those.
That being said, there was a statement that Cardinal Ratzinger made in his book Introduction to Christianity which was criticized by Hans urs von Balthasar (not the same person as Gaius Baltar), in which he discussed the conception of Christ and contrasted the biological (not historical) and ontological aspects of the event.
What he said, in essence, was that a virginal conception was not necessary for God to become man. If he wanted to, God could have chosen for Christ to have a human father as well as a heavenly Father.
The ontological reality of the Son of God taking on human nature thus did not require the biological event of a virginal conception. God also could have used the biological event of a nonvirginal conception. The biological aspect of the conception of Christ is thus independent of its ontological dimension (God becoming man).
However, God did choose to use a virginal conception as a way of underscoring the fact that Jesus is the Son of God.
In a Messianic framework: If he has no earthly father, then whose Son is he?
Unfortunately, Cardinal Ratzinger was not–by his own admission–as clear as he meant to be, and some (like von Balthasar) took issue with him, while others outright misrepresented his view.
You know, I've always thought, even before I was a Catholic, that if
you want to find out what Christians believe and why, you ought to ask
Christians before you take too much to heart what is said about their
beliefs by critics or cranks or even professors.
I have come to
apply that same approach to the beliefs of other groups, as well. So,
for instance, if I want to know what Buddhists believe, I favor asking
Buddhists, rather than some expert in comparative religions who studies
Buddhists like insects pinned to a card.
The same courtesy ought
to be extended to the modern descendants of the Maya, who would like to
make it very clear that they – none of them – are lying awake nights
wondering if the world will end in 2012. Not according to this AP article from Yahoo News, anyway.
The
purveyors of this cash-conjuring nonsense, such as the folks at the
History Channel, are doing to the Maya what Dan Brown did for the
Catholic Church in his ham-fisted conspiracy fiction… spinning tales
out of whole cloth and embroidering them with totally unrelated bits of
archeological and historical "evidence" which are only evidence of their
colossal ignorance.
There's nothing wrong with ignorance, per se.
Ignorance with humility is harmless and curable, but ignorance combined
with pride blossoms into arrogance, and is most often incurable, the
patient being highly resistant to the only antidote.
The Maya
would like to invite us all to shut up about the "mysteries" of the
calendar of their ancestors, and take a moment to consider that no contemporary Mayan has ever considered that the calendar predicts anything like the end of the world in 2012.
I
do predict, however, that the loopy 2012 theories will generate a lot
of book and DVD sales. If you could pile all that bull**** into one
place, it might really shift the poles enough to usher in a new ice
age. The real disaster may be the denuding of forests to print all the
books, or the food shortages caused by hoarders who foolishly threw out
their stockpiles of supplies from the Y2K scare. Should have held onto
those powdered eggs…
The news this morning was so surreal, it was like something off Saturday Night Live.
So Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize.
As the church lady would say, "Well. Isn't that special."
The Nobel committee apparently wants to cheapen its brand. I mean, the Nobel committee has made boneheaded, purely partisan awards before, but this one is totally over the top.
In the words of White House correspondent Jennifer Loven:
The awarding of the Nobel Peace Price to President Barack Obama landed with a shock on darkened, still-asleep Washington. He won! For what?
For one of America's youngest presidents, in office less than nine months — and only for 12 days before the Nobel nomination deadline last February — it was an enormous honor.
I mean, you don't typically give such awards to people who have accomplished so little–especially when the mainstream media, which has been totally in the tank for Obama, is finally taking note of his string of non-accomplishments.
Like in this sketch from Saturday Night Live . . .
BTW, SNL seems to have slipped (even further). The guy playing Obama doesn't look or sound like him.
Nevertheless, the Nobel decision is a bigger joke than anything on SNL.
Mickey Kaus argues that Obama should decline the award–which would have the advantages of making him appear humble (not that he is in the slightest) and of insulating him from withering criticism later on, both at the time he accepts the award and in coming years if, as it appears, his presidency continues to go badly.
What the Nobel folks don't realize is that, in their attempt to boost President Obama, they've actually made his job harder.
Unfortunately for the president, it doesn't sound like the president is planning to decline:
"I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments but rather an affirmation of American leadership," he said, speaking in the White House Rose Garden. "I will accept this award as a call to action."
But before we get to the "not" part, I want to give Mr. Easterbrook his props, because he makes several good points, including often overlooked ones, and he attempts to respond to those with an opposing view by attempting to address their arguments in a fair and evenhanded manner.
So let's take a look at what he has to say and try to sort the wheat from the chaff . . .
Human clones, it is widely assumed, would be monstrous perversions of nature. Yet chances are, you already know one. Indeed, you may know several and even have dated a clone. They walk among us in the form of identical twins: people who share exact sets of DNA.
Yes! This is a point people often overlook. Human clones already exist, and the answer to many of the things people wonder about clones (e.g., would they have souls, can you baptize them, etc.) can be answered just by asking the same question about identical twins. "Clone" just means "genetically identical individual." Clones are not mysterious, alien, science-fictiony creatures. In fact, the thing that makes a clone a clone is its sameness, not its differentness. And for whatever reason (reasons we don't have a good grasp on), human pregnancies sometimes result in two or more genetically identical individuals.
Such twins almost always look alike and often have similar quirks. But their minds, experiences, and personalities are different, and no one supposes they are less than fully human. And if identical twins are fully human, wouldn't cloned people be as well?
Bingo. They would. And therein lies the problem. They are fully human, so you have to treat them with full human dignity.
Suppose scientists could create a clone from an adult human: It would probably be more distinct from its predecessor than most identical twins are from each other. A clone from a grown-up would have the same DNA but would come into the world as a gurgling baby, not an instant adult, as in sci-fi. The clone would go through childhood and adolescence with the same life-shaping unpredictability as any kid.
Yah, though I'm not quite sure what is meant by "more distinct from its predecessor than most identical twins." I suppose what is meant is that a clone would have a life history that is more different from the life history of the original than the life histories of two identical twins. While I agree that that much may be true, I don't see how that results in "more distinct" individuals. Indeed, any time in the near future reproductive cloning will be used by very rich people who want "Mini-Me"s that they can creepily raise to inherit the corporation, and the clones will be steered down paths that nudge them in the direction of being "just like Dad."
Normal people will continue to make babies the old fashioned, two-parent way. Anyone who wants a clone of himself, and is willing to spend large amounts of money to get it . . . there's something wrong there. Something ego-centric–or even ego-maniacal.
The basic dehumanization involved in voluntary, reproductive cloning is the sheer will to power over another person that it represents. It's fully imposing my genetic Me-ness on another individual rather than lovingly combining with a spouse and giving origin to an individual that shares traits of both of us, leaving the mix of those traits up to Providence. It's making a child that says only "Me" rather than "Us."
Anyone who wants to so genetically dominate their offspring suffers from a morbid and inhuman sense of self.
The eminent University of Chicago ethicist Leon Kass has argued that human cloning would be offensive in part because the clone would "not be fully a surprise to the world." True, but what child is? Almost all share physical traits and mannerisms with their parents. By having different experiences than their parents (er, parent) and developing their own personalities, clones would become distinct individuals with the same originality and dignity as identical twins—or anyone else.
I'm not familiar with Leon Kass's work, and despite the conjunction of the words "university" and "ethicist"–which is a high-reliability marker for "rationalizer of dehumanization"–it's heartening to hear of a university ethicist objecting to human cloning.
Nevertheless, I don't find Kass's argument–at least in the micro-form in which Easterbrook presents it–to be persuasive.
On the other hand, while I agree that a normal child is not a total surprise to the world, and that total surprise is not a sine qua non of human reproduction, I don't buy at all the idea that developing one's own personality is needed for one to have human dignity (like "identical twins–or anyone else"). Dignity is something you have by virtue of being human. You don't have to grow or develop to have it. It's one of the standard features we come with from the factory, and mor
al principle requires it to be respected rather than disrespected.
Cloning does the latter by imposing on a child the disordered genetic will to power of a particular individual.
Others argue that cloning is "unnatural."
It is unnatural, but we have to be careful here what we mean by "nature." We've already seen that nature (meaning, the natural world) produces human clones in the form of twins. That's as may be, but the kind of nature we are concerned about in moral discussions is not the physical or empirical world but the moral principles that can be discerned by reflection on human nature. That's what natural law reasoning is all about (cf. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor).
Unfortunately, Easterbrook takes a serious misstep here, and his argument thus goes off track due to an inaccurate or inapplicable conception of nature.
But nature wants us to pass on our genes; if cloning assists in that effort, nature would not be offended.
"Nature" as the physical world doesn't care about anything at all because it's not a person. Easterbrook is certainly aware of this and is presumably speaking of nature "wanting" or being "offended" as a form of literary expression (i.e., personification), but that doesn't mean that the conclusion "nature would not be offended" (translated: "It is not immoral") follows from his premise that "nature wants us to pass on our genes."
The fact that we have a hereditary impulse to pass on our genes doesn't justify any and all means toward that end.
Take rape as an example. Rape occurs sometimes in the human population and very often in some animal populations. But would we countenance the argument that "nature wants us to pass on our genes; if rape assists in that effort, nature would not be offended"?
Nature as the blind, physical world would indeed not be offended, but that doesn't change the fact that for one human to rape another is hideously immoral–precisely because it is contrary to the moral principles embedded in human nature.
In fact, rape is in some ways a good analog for cloning, because in both situations a single individual fully imposes himself (or herself) on another–in one case sexually, in the other case genetically. They both represent, in different ways, the total imposition of Me.
And just as there is something disordered and sick about raping someone, there is something disordered and sick about wanting to genetically dominate another person and have another genetic you walking around.
Moreover, cloning itself isn't new; there have been many species that reproduced clonally and a few that still do.
This is quite true! But these species aren't human beings. The fact that ducks rape ducks does not constitute an argument that humans should rape humans. Think in terms of human nature and what is says about a human who would want a genetic copy of himself.
And there's nothing intrinsically unnatural about human inventions that improve reproductive odds—does anyone think nature is offended by hospital delivery made safe by banks of machines?
Inventions–technology–are just physical objects and thus not subject to being natural or unnatural. They just are. What is subject to being moral or immoral, natural or unnatural, is the use to which technologies are put.
If you have human reproduction being done in a natural, moral manner, technology that helps that (incubators, ultrasound monitors, etc.) is wonderful! Technology most certainly can assist reproduction done in accord with human nature.
But it cannot legitimately assist immoral forms of reproductive behavior. A rapist cannot legitimately use victim-immobilizer technology (a gun, a rope, etc.) or some kind of science fictiony nanotech to help get the gametes to meet to "improve reproductive odds."
Thus one can't use medical high-tech to help a megalomaniac fulfill his genetic dominance of his offspring fantasy.
This does not necessarily make human cloning desirable; there are complicated issues to consider.
Good point! Props to Easterbrook for being willing to explore this aspect of the subject.
Initial mammalian cloning experiments, with sheep and other species, have produced many sickly offspring that die quickly.
A very important point, though a subsidiary one since it doesn't go to the core reason why human cloning is wrong.
Could it ever be ethical to conduct research that produces sick babies in the hope of figuring out how to make healthy clones?
No! No, it could not! This treats human beings as objects, as medical experiments (cf. Nazis, Jews). The only legitimate reason to produce babies is to have babies. Human beings are ends in themselves. You cannot produce babies in order to "conduct research." That dehumanizes human beings (the babies in question), and it is thus contrary to human nature and thus immoral.
And clones might be treated as inferiors, rendering them unhappy.
I'm not sure if "rendering them unhappy" is meant to be humorous, but there's a lot of issues in this sentence. As to whether clones would be treated as inferiors in their post-birth lives, who can say? That depends on a variety of factors, though it is a possibility. Merely by being created they were mistreated since they had someone else's genetic will to power imposed on them at the moment of conception, and all those sick baby clones who got killed while the process was being perfected–they sure were treated as inferiors.
Still, human cloning should not be out of the question. In vitro fertilization was once seen as depraved God-playing and is now embraced, even by many of the devoutly religious.
There are devoutly religious people who will endorse any horror you want (and devoutly irreligious ones who will do exactly the same thing).
The fact that in vitro fertilization–which similarly subverts human nature and the reproductive process appropriate to it (and which also results in numerous abortions due to too many kids surviving the implantation process, and millions more kids kept indefinitely "on ice," contrary to their human dignity)–only shows how accustomed we have become to treating human beings like objects.
Cloning could be a blessing for the infertile, who otherwise could not experience biological parenthood.
As we've seen, this is one of those "ends don't justify the means" things. Experiencing biological parenthood is a good thing, but you can't use any means you want to achieve it, as we saw in our discussion of rape (and, contrary to the claims of some feminists, rape is not simply about power; it is often about pleasure and also about reproduction; this was illustrated by the Bosnian ethnic cleansing rapes of the 1990s in which militants of one ethnic group raped women of another specifically to produce children that would have their own ethnic group's blood),
And . . . anyone having a clone is not really experiencing biological parenthood. Being a biological parent among humans means having your genes intertwined with those of another of the opposite sex. Even identical twins–the human clones that do exist at present–have genes from two biological parents.
And it isn't just biological parenthood that the infertile want. They want the experience of raising a child that is biologically their own–both of theirs.
Cloning doesn't do that, as can be seen if you imagine cloning the context of an infertile couple. If the couple creates a clone of one of them then the other doesn't get the experience of biological parenthood. Instead, they're living in a marriage with a creepy Mini-You running around the house, changing the Mini-You's diapers, making sure that the Mini-You does its homework, etc.
At least IVF, as bad as it is, lets both spouses be biological parents!
So I don't see how cloning is a boon to the infertile–except for creepy infertile millionaires who want identical copies of themselves.
And, of course, it would be a blessing for the clone itself.
No. Life is a blessing to the clone. Cloning was not. Cloning was the immoral means used to create life. One could not rephrase this and say, "of course, rape would be a blessing for the child of a rape." Children born of rape are blessed by being alive, but that doesn't in any way justify the method by which they were conceived.
Suppose a clone is later asked, "Are you glad you exist even though you are physically quite similar to someone else, or do you wish you had never existed?" We all know what the answer would be.
Yes, we do, because the gift of life is so good. Except for the suicidal, nobody who is alive would rather not have been born. That's the survival drive that is also part of human nature, and just as with the other fundamental human drives–the drive to reproduce, the drive to eat, the drive to socialize with other humans, etc.–it represents a good end that cannot be pursued by evil means.
The children of rape also would rather exist than not exist but that isn't an argument for rape. In fact, though the act of rape gave these children life, it also gave them a broken life situation in which they must either be shielded from knowledge of their true origin or they must live under the shadow of the immoral act that led to their conception and that makes their origin different than everyone else's.
The act of reproductive cloning would put the resulting children in an analogous situation.
Let's not put them there.
Beyond what Mr. Easterbrook covers in his piece,
there are other problems with cloning, such as all of the kids who would be created, experimented upon, and then killed as part of "therapeutic cloning."
The bottom line is that you either have to respect the way human nature is set up or decide that we are just walking bags of chemicals that possess no intrinsic dignity or rights–"ugly bags of mostly water"–and that humans therefore can be subject to any form of technological manipulation imaginable.
I'm not dissing the idea of using technology to assist human reproduction (rather than replacing it with something else) or the idea of using technology to help people genetically (gene therapy! woo-hoo!!) or even the idea of technologically augmenting human nature (super powers! bring 'em on!!!).
I am rejecting the idea of treating people as objects which can be manipulated and exploited with no regard for human nature and human dignity.
If that's okay then find the right candidate, trick him out with whatever augments you want, program him to love his work and not be able to conceive any other, and then . . .
Recently I wrote about the case of Fatima al-Mutayri, a young Saudi woman who apparently gave her life to Christ and was then martyred by her family.
In her writings (.pdf), she mentions Arabic Christian satellite television as an influence in helping her find her way to Christ.
In particular, she mentions programs airing on the al-Haya (Life) network. One was the popular program of the Coptic priest Fr. Zakaria Botros. Another was the Daring Question show, which is hosted by two former Muslims who are only referred to by first names: Rashid and Ahmed.
I've found some clips of the Daring Question show that have English subtitles, and I thought they would provide a valuable window into the world of evangelization in the Arabic-speaking world and the kinds of heart wrenching situations that those who engage in it have to face.
Please keep these folks and all in like situations in your prayers.
The woman on the left is a Dominican sister. She helps escort women into abortion clinics so that they can have their children killed.