Jimmy Akin – Page 742

My Governator Offers Some Bad Advice

So Ah-nold was over in Berlin (which, some may be surprised to learn, is not the capital of his home country) and in a magazine interview he apparently dished out a little advice for the Republican party:

Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has taken an
unorthodox approach since winning office last year — standing by a
promise to toe a conservative line of fiscal matters while veering left
on social issues such as gay rights and the environment.

In an interview with Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily,
Schwarzenegger said that "the Republican Party currently covers only
the spectrum from the right wing to the middle, and the Democratic
Party covers the spectrum from the left to the middle."

"I
would like the Republican Party to cross this line, move a little
further left and place more weight on the center," he was quoted as
saying. "This would immediately give the party 5% more votes without it
losing anything elsewhere" [SOURCE.]

No.

What Ah-nold is recommending is a return to the 1970s, when we had liberal Republicans in office like Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller as party leaders. You know what that got us: Jimmy Carter! (Well, actually, anti-Nixon sentiment also had to do with giving us History’s Greatest Monster.)

What Ah-nold is recommending is "Let’s do the timewarp again." He may think that electoral success for Republicans is just a jump to the left, but if anything it is to be found a step to the right (Reagan country).

Now, we all know that after the political conventions, candidates of both parties try to soften their image and appeal to the mushy middle voters who haven’t yet made up their minds. During this time they say a lot of phony baloney stuff meant to appeal to people unable to figure out which side of the fence to fall off. That’s fine. The party faithful know that the candidates have to say this stuff, but they don’t really mean it. They may have to throw the mushy middle a few bones (which it could use, being mushy and all), but they still plan to govern in a way consistent with the party faithful’s core values.

For the party faithful of the Democrats, that means an anti-life governing policy.

For the party faithful of the Republicans (or at least an indispensible element in the Republican coalition), that means a pro-life governing policy.

It’s their intent to honor these values that is the reason the party faithful are voting for them in the first place. If they betray those values, the party faithful will stay home and the candidate will lose.

That’s what almost happened to Bush in 2000 when a previously unnoticed drunk driving record emerged in a classic, last minute dirty trick. Four million Evangelicals stayed home and Bush got into a squeaker that it took the Supremes to decide.

This illustrates the problem with what my governator is recommending: If the Republican party does more than make token gestures toward those who are liberal on social issues like gay marriage and abortion (e.g., letting Ah-nold and Rudy speak at the convention), if it allows its governing center to shift on these issues then pro-lifers will immediately desert the party.

It would be worth it to have four (or even eight) years of a pro-abort president to teach the Republicans that these issues are NON-NEGOTIABLE, because their understanding that is the only way these battles can ultimately be won. They may throw occasional bones to blue-leaning people, but they have to deliver red-meat to the redstaters.

Were the Republican party to permanently shift its governing center leftward it would permanently cease to be the majority party.

Sorry, Ah-nold. That kind of governating may work in blue states like California and New York, but not elsewhere.

Sigh. Why Do Biblical Archaeologists Make Such Inflated Claims?

HERE’S A STORY IN WHICH AN ARCHAEOLOGIST CLAIMS TO HAVE DISCOVERED "THE CAVE OF JOHN THE BAPTIST."

He hasn’t.

At least, there appears to be inadequate evidence to propose that he has.

The cave, which is located on the grounds

of Kibbutz Tsuba just outside Jerusalem, is "about an hour’s donkey

ride from Ein Kerem, the village where Christian tradition says John

was born," Gibson says.

It is also on the edge of the Judean desert, where John was known to hold spiritual retreats.

He decided to start excavating after

discovering a crudely-drawn picture of John the Baptist carved into the

limestone walls "dressed in camel hair robes" as described in the

Gospel of Matthew.

Several crosses and a rough drawing of a

severed head were also carved into the walls, illustrating John’s death

by beheading at the hands of Herod Antipas, ruler of the northern

Galilee region at the time.

Underneath the picture of John is a small niche "designed for a relic", Gibson explains.

"These drawings are the work of Byzantine

monks who used to gather in the cave to tell the history of John the

Baptist," he said, pointing out an area around the eyes where vandals,

or iconoclasts, had tried to destroy the pictures.

Excavations, which took place between

2000 and 2003 in conjunction with a team from the University of North

Carolina, revealed a space some 24 metres (yards) long, 4.5 metres wide

and four metres high, with 18 huge steps leading down to a large

rectangular pool.

"Its use for baptism rituals dates back to the Iron Age, the era of the kings of Judea," he said.

Okay.

So it’s a cave near Ein Karem. Lots of caves in the area. Doesn’t prove John the Baptist went to this one.

It’s got carvings from Byzantine monks who met there centuries after John’s time to talk about and presumably pray to John the Baptist. Again, doesn’t prove he was there.

Oh, and it’s got a mikvah in it. Big whoop. There are ancient mikvahs all over the place in Israel. Ritual immersions were a major ceremonial practice in ancient Judaism, and the fact you’ve turned up a mikvah–even a mikvah near Ein Karem–in no way proves the presence of John the Baptist. What were all the people in the area who weren’t John the Baptist supposed to do for their ritual immersions?

Further, though the way the story is worded is ambiguous, Gibson may be saying that this mikvah dates back to the Iron Age, in which case it predates John by centuries.

All of this hardly justifies the claims Gibson is apparently making for the place:

"The first concrete evidence of the existence of John the Baptist has been found on site," 46-year-old Shimon Gibson told AFP.

Gibson, who holds a degree from

University College London and has written several works on Biblical

archaeology, believes the discovery to be "the first archaeological

proof of the historical veracity of the Gospels".

This is nothing more than the archaeological snake oil that is regularly peddled to tourists in Israel, where a spot that has no verifiable connection with a biblical figure or figures will be pronounced to have such a connection for purposes of making it a tourist destination so the locals can make money off it. (E.g., "the field of the shepherds," which is just a field near Bethlehem that nobody can remotely prove is where the angel appeared to shepherds to tell them about Jesus’ birth).

Now, I don’t want to diss biblical archaeology at all. There are some sites where we know for a fact

that this is exactly where someone was or something happened. (These

are the sites that impress me most.) I just get frustrated with the

overinflated claims made for many of these places for purposes of

tourism.

John the Baptist’s cave, which has been restored by Kibbutz Tsuba, will be opened to the public early next year.

Big surprise.

Sigh. Why Do Biblical Archaeologists Make Such Inflated Claims?

HERE’S A STORY IN WHICH AN ARCHAEOLOGIST CLAIMS TO HAVE DISCOVERED "THE CAVE OF JOHN THE BAPTIST."

He hasn’t.

At least, there appears to be inadequate evidence to propose that he has.

The cave, which is located on the grounds
of Kibbutz Tsuba just outside Jerusalem, is "about an hour’s donkey
ride from Ein Kerem, the village where Christian tradition says John
was born," Gibson says.

It is also on the edge of the Judean desert, where John was known to hold spiritual retreats.

He decided to start excavating after
discovering a crudely-drawn picture of John the Baptist carved into the
limestone walls "dressed in camel hair robes" as described in the
Gospel of Matthew.

Several crosses and a rough drawing of a
severed head were also carved into the walls, illustrating John’s death
by beheading at the hands of Herod Antipas, ruler of the northern
Galilee region at the time.

Underneath the picture of John is a small niche "designed for a relic", Gibson explains.

"These drawings are the work of Byzantine
monks who used to gather in the cave to tell the history of John the
Baptist," he said, pointing out an area around the eyes where vandals,
or iconoclasts, had tried to destroy the pictures.

Excavations, which took place between
2000 and 2003 in conjunction with a team from the University of North
Carolina, revealed a space some 24 metres (yards) long, 4.5 metres wide
and four metres high, with 18 huge steps leading down to a large
rectangular pool.

"Its use for baptism rituals dates back to the Iron Age, the era of the kings of Judea," he said.

Okay.

So it’s a cave near Ein Karem. Lots of caves in the area. Doesn’t prove John the Baptist went to this one.

It’s got carvings from Byzantine monks who met there centuries after John’s time to talk about and presumably pray to John the Baptist. Again, doesn’t prove he was there.

Further, though the way the story is worded is ambiguous, Gibson may be saying that this mikvah dates back to the Iron Age, in which case it predates John by centuries.

All of this hardly justifies the claims Gibson is apparently making for the place:

"The first concrete evidence of the existence of John the Baptist has been found on site," 46-year-old Shimon Gibson told AFP.

Gibson, who holds a degree from
University College London and has written several works on Biblical
archaeology, believes the discovery to be "the first archaeological
proof of the historical veracity of the Gospels".

Now, I don’t want to diss biblical archaeology at all. There are some sites where we know for a fact
that this is exactly where someone was or something happened. (These
are the sites that impress me most.) I just get frustrated with the
overinflated claims made for many of these places for purposes of
tourism.

John the Baptist’s cave, which has been restored by Kibbutz Tsuba, will be opened to the public early next year.

Big surprise.

Crichton on Global Warming

Continuing excerpts from Crichton’s important speech:

This fascination with computer models is something I understand very
well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right. Because
only if you spend a lot of time looking at a computer screen can you
arrive at the complex point where the global warming debate now stands.

But it is impossible to ignore how closely the history of global
warming fits on the previous template for nuclear winter. Just as the
earliest studies of nuclear winter stated that the uncertainties were
so great that probabilites could never be known, so, too the first
pronouncements on global warming argued strong limits on what could be
determined with certainty about climate change. The 1995 IPCC draft
report said, "Any claims of positive detection of significant climate
change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the
total natural variability of the climate system are reduced." It also
said, "No study to date has positively attributed all or part of
observed climate changes to anthropogenic causes." Those statements
were removed, and in their place appeared: "The balance of evidence
suggests a discernable human influence on climate."

In trying to think about how these questions can be resolved, it
occurs to me that in the progression from SETI to nuclear winter to
second hand smoke to global warming, we have one clear message, and
that is that we can expect more and more problems of public policy
dealing with technical issues in the future-problems of ever greater
seriousness, where people care passionately on all sides.

MORE TOMORROW.

READ THE WHOLE SPEECH.

Scary Science Stories #1

While we’re listening to Michael Crichton talk about bad science, let’s add a couple of practical examples.

The story you are about to read is true.

Consider the following sequence of events:

Rhesus monkeys are out running around in the wild doing rhesus monkey things.
Somehow these monkeys develop a virus that we will refer to as Virus W.
Virus W doesn’t usually kill the monkeys, so it spreads widely in their population.
Humans come and capture some of these rhesus monkeys.
They are then turned over to scientists.
The scientists vivisect the monkeys to obtain their kidneys.
The kidneys are used to culture a vaccine to cure a disease that harms humans: polio.
Unbeknownst to the scientists who cultured the vaccine in rhesus monkey kidneys, the process they are using does not kill Virus W, which has not yet been identified by human science.
Virus W piggybacks on the polio vaccine.
The infected vaccine is given to tens or hundreds of millions of human beings, stretching over decades.
Virus W comes to exist in 23% of the human population (whether globally or in America isn’t clear).
Virus W is passable from one generation to the next and thus will persist in the human race for generations.
Fortunately, Virus W is not normally harmful to humans, though a slight correlation with a certain kind of cancer may exist.

It is not clear if Virus W was present in the human population prior to the polio vaccine distributions, but there is some evidence it was, though to a lesser extent than afterwards.

The real name of Virus W is Simian vacuolating virus 40, or just Simian virus 40, or just SV40.

This story is true, or strongly thought to be true and not very controversial so far as I have been able to determine.

This is probably because SV40 does not normally kill humans.

If it did kill humans, then the polio vaccine makers would likely be circling the wagons and impeding investigations of the matter–and possibly lying about their vaccine cultivation methods in order to cover themselves. All those would be very human reactions.

And they would serve to make the matter controversial.

Like Scary Science Story #2.

I’ll tell it that one to you tomorrow.

(N.B. People who can guess what Scary Science Story #2 is likely to be about, do not spoil it for others in the comments box below!)

But What Does The Former President Really Think?

Time Magazine reports:

“Michael Moore’s got to be the worst for me,” former President George

H.W. Bush tells TIME’s Hugh Sidey when asked about the low point of

this last term. “I mean, he’s such a slimeball and so atrocious. But I

love the fact now that the Democrats are not embracing him as theirs

anymore. He might not get invited to sit in Jimmy Carter’s box (at the

Democratic Convention) again. I wanted to get up my nerve to ask Jimmy

Carter at the Clinton thing (the opening of Bill Clinton’s library),

‘How did it feel being there with that marvelous friend of yours,

Michael Moore?’ and I didn’t dare do it.”

Gotta admire his plainspokenness!

Wish he had asked Carter, but I guess manners prevailed.

But What Does The Former President Really Think?

Time Magazine reports:

“Michael Moore’s got to be the worst for me,” former President George
H.W. Bush tells TIME’s Hugh Sidey when asked about the low point of
this last term. “I mean, he’s such a slimeball and so atrocious. But I
love the fact now that the Democrats are not embracing him as theirs
anymore. He might not get invited to sit in Jimmy Carter’s box (at the
Democratic Convention) again. I wanted to get up my nerve to ask Jimmy
Carter at the Clinton thing (the opening of Bill Clinton’s library),
‘How did it feel being there with that marvelous friend of yours,
Michael Moore?’ and I didn’t dare do it.”

Gotta admire his plainspokenness!

Wish he had asked Carter, but I guess manners prevailed.

Hitler's Pope's Author Gets A Clue

Professor Bainbridge teaches:

In the latest Economist ($) we learn that John Cornwell has recanted the charges he made against Pope Pius XII’s conduct during the Holocaust:

As he admits, Hitler’s Pope

(1999), his biography of Pope Pius XII, lacked balance. “I would now

argue,” he says, “in the light of the debates and evidence following Hitler’s Pope,

that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to

judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under

the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by the Germans.”

It would be nice if Amazon’s editorial content for the book had some acknowledgement of Cornwell’s retraction of the very serious charges the book makes.

This is good news. Cornwell finally got a clue. Of course, it’s not much of a clue in view of his current book savaging John Paul II, but it’s something.

(Cowboy hat tip: Gleeful Extremist.)

Hitler’s Pope‘s Author Gets A Clue

Professor Bainbridge teaches:

In the latest Economist ($) we learn that John Cornwell has recanted the charges he made against Pope Pius XII’s conduct during the Holocaust:

As he admits, Hitler’s Pope
(1999), his biography of Pope Pius XII, lacked balance. “I would now
argue,” he says, “in the light of the debates and evidence following Hitler’s Pope,
that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to
judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under
the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by the Germans.”

It would be nice if Amazon’s editorial content for the book had some acknowledgement of Cornwell’s retraction of the very serious charges the book makes.

This is good news. Cornwell finally got a clue. Of course, it’s not much of a clue in view of his current book savaging John Paul II, but it’s something.

(Cowboy hat tip: Gleeful Extremist.)

A Burning Question?

Down yonder, a reader asks:

Jimmy,

Do you think one could argue that cigars and cigarettes are immoral?
The Catechism states that Tobacco, used in moderation, is morally
licit. However, cigarettes and cigars aren’t just tobacco, but tobacco
laced with poison (literally).

For the record, let’s quote the Catechism on this matter:

CCC 2290
The virtue of temperance disposes us to avoid every kind of excess: the abuse
of food, alcohol, tobacco, or medicine. Those incur grave guilt who, by
drunkenness or a love of speed, endanger their own and others’ safety on the
road, at sea, or in the air.

This passage relates appears to recognize that the moderate use of tobacco (like the moderate use of the co-named items food, alcohol, or medicine) is morally licit under the virtue of temperance. (Certainly the Church has never suggested a general anti-tobacco policy to its members, despite hundreds of years of its common use in Christian circles.) The conclusion one would draw from the Catechism seems further confirmed by the fact that, regardless of the claims made regarding "addiction" and cigarettes, many people only occasionally smoke pipes and cigars and with no apparent ill effects (some even smoke cigarettes only occasionally).

It may not be politically correct to point this out, but it seems to be true.

Recognizing that, what about the claim that commercially-available tobaccos are "laced with poison."

To be blunt, this particular claim seems to be propaganda of the anti-smoking industry.

Whether or not something is a poison depends on the amount in which it is received. If you eat a pound of salt at one sitting, it will turn out to be quite toxic to your system. But salt itself is essential for life. Similarly, drink five gallons of alcohol in one sitting and you will most certainly die. But drink alcohol in moderate amounts and it actually improves health.

Quantity thus is everything. Any substance administered in sufficiently small quantities would seem to count–in those quantities–as a non-poison. No substance I know of would kill a person if present only in a single molecule.

If (per supposition, though recognizing that matters here are likely way over-inflated due to political correctness and bad science) contemporary tobacco products are "laced with [substances that in sufficient quantities become] poisons," this would mean that the amount of such products whose use would be moderate would grow smaller (but not vanish in an instant).

It therefore seems to me that the presence of chemicals in contemporary tobacco products that increases their potential toxicity thereby limits the amount of such products which can be moderately consumed, but it does not eliminate it.

In addition, I am quite suspicious about claims made in such regards. We have already seen that the claims regarding "second-hand smoke" are highly problematic, and so are many other clearly propagandistic communiques in this regard.

Here in California, for example, the anti-smoking industry aired TV commercials advertising the "fact" that cigarettes release X-number of "chemicals" into the air, as if cooking popcorn did not release a similar number of "chemicals" into the environment.