Ben Stein: Science Leads to Killing People

[MaryJohnZ]

If you claim to be active and interested in reproductive ethics, I’m astonished you don’t know that.

americanpregnancy.org/womenshealth/pcos.htm

My understanding is that the Church does not object to them being used for this purpose, so long as there isn’t a possibility of conception (so it’s not for sexually active people). If one is not sexually active, there can be no contraception. There’s a health issue, too If it’s not well-regulated, it can make one miss periods, or even be harmful if pregnancy ensues.

Wouldn’t life have been simpler for you, if Stein had chosen to smear Sanger, instead of Darwin?

Margaret Sangar’s embrace of birth control and all it represents is one of the darkest stains on the social development of the 20th century. the fact is that birth control was repudiated in the Old testament when God struck a man dead for pouring his seed out on the ground and wasting it. A woman can do the same thing when she uses abortifacents that disallow for a firtilized egg to implant. it is one thing for sperm to travel up a fillopian tube and not fertilize and egg. it is another for an object, either chemical or physical to suppress the natural process of procreation because a human being has decided to block it purposefully.I am sure you are aware of the reasons why this is an obstruction of God’s purpose for human sexuality. If a woman is given a prescription from hormones for some regulatory purpose, i am sure the church will allow it as long as it is not used as birth control. However to use these chemicals frivolously is foolish to the extreme. They were never really tested on the developing bodies of young teen women for the side effects of their long term use. they are dangerous and have caused death from some teen women. And to imply they are a beneficial product for women in general is irresponsible.

From an article on the dangers of birthcontrol :

"Norplant, the implant that can be placed under one’s skin for five years, was pulled off the market in 2002 for many reasons, one of them being the number of lawsuits it received for causing conditions like depression, ovarian cysts, hair loss, and dangerous blood clots that could lead to stroke and heart disease.[1] Another controversy around Norplant, and the long-lasting shot Depo Provera,[2] was in regards to their use in women prisoners, who were forced to use these products as a condition of parole despite severe health risks. This became an equal rights issue because it disproportionately affected working class and minority women, as well as those with handicaps like mental illness. [3]

The Ortho Evra birth control patch has been linked to 23 deaths, including a 17 year old who died of a pulmonary embolism, which is a condition usually found in senior citizens.[4] Young people contracted these illnesses because they used hormonal methods like Ortho Evra, which put chemicals called progestins in the body. Although they are similar in structure to the natural hormone progesterone, which is produced during pregnancy, progestins’ effects are very different and sometimes dangerous. The NuvaRing[5], an externally worn ring endorsed by celebrities, causes some of the same problems as Ortho Evra.

Pills like Mircette and Ortho-Tri-Cyclen, which contain a compound called desogestrel, are coming under scrutiny as blood clot sufferers have filed a class action lawsuit[6]. Again, girls as young as 16 have been dying from these products, and doctors, including family doctors and, in Canada, school nurses, have been prescribing these dangerous substances[7]."

Death, Lawsuits, and the Pill
The Case Against Hormonal Birth Control
© Mara Linda Yu

womens-sexual-health.suite101.com/article.cfm/death_lawsuits_and_the_pill

In Christ MaryJohnZ

 

[StAnastasia]

Man! Have you read the posts here at all! The debate has not been ant-evoltution but anti-materialistic, godless evoltution as in darwinism…a difference that you seemed to have missed.
No one has made the claim above…but we have argued with evidence from Darwin’s own notebooks and journals that he was agnostic and in the Descent of man he pushed foreward a theory meant to eliminate God from the the formation of the human conscience. I guess you missed those posts.

Mary

Mary

Yes, I’ve read most of the posts on this thread. You and other Steinists seem to accept hook-line-and-sinker Ben Stein’s idiotic notion that evolutionary thinking led to the Nazi “Holocaust.” I went to see *Expelled *with a group of friends, and the entire cinema audience laughed uproariously most of the way through. To put this in context, I live in a university town, in a state many of whose inhabitants have more than a high-school education.

Ben Stein seems to me in no way qualified to comment on history, biology, philosophy or theology. However, in his defense, I have seen Stein in commercials for eye-care products, and I believe he is reasonably qualified to hawk this merchandise.

StAnastasia

 

[MaryJohnZ]

Yes, I’ve read most of the posts on this thread. You and other Steinists seem to accept hook-line-and-sinker Ben Stein’s idiotic notion that evolutionary thinking led to the Nazi “Holocaust.” I went to see *Expelled *with a group of friends, and the entire cinema audience laughed uproariously most of the way through. To put this in context, I live in a university town, in a state many of whose inhabitants have more than a high-school education.

Ben Stein seems to me in no way qualified to comment on history, biology, philosophy or theology. However, in his defense, I have seen Stein in commercials for eye-care products, and I believe he is reasonably qualified to hawk this merchandise.

StAnastasia

I am not impressed with your comments here. the fact the audience was laughting uproariously doesn’t prove a think but ‘group thinlk’ and probably an immature group who had already been prejudiced against the content of the movie.
The same crowd probably went ot Al Gore’s movie and thought it mwas wonderful.

 

[StAnastasia]

I am not impressed with your comments here. the fact the audience was laughting uproariously doesn’t prove a think but ‘group thinlk’ and probably an immature group who had already been prejudiced against the content of the movie.
The same crowd probably went ot Al Gore’s movie and thought it mwas wonderful.

To the contrary, this was a group of independent-thinking middle aged and older people. Trust me, this city has a very educated population, not easily duped by the likes of Ben Stein and Premise Media! The audience included some seminary and university professors, and although they were more polite and subdued in their laughter, they were also more knowledgeable and precise in their rejection of the film’s wild claims. Among other things, they know the tenure process (probably unfamiliar to most uneducated viewers), and the claims of the “martyrs” didn’t wash at all.

StAnastasia

 

[MaryJohnZ]

To the contrary, this was a group of independent-thinking middle aged and older people. Trust me, this city has a very educated population, not easily duped by the likes of Ben Stein and Premise Media! The audience included some seminary and university professors, and although they were more polite and subdued in their laughter, they were also more knowledgeable and precise in their rejection of the film’s wild claims. Among other things, they know the tenure process (probably unfamiliar to most uneducated viewers), and the claims of the “martyrs” didn’t wash at all.

StAnastasia

My experience is the contrary. Some of the more educated audiences are the ones I have come across are the less independent in their thinking. Haven’t you noticed how everyone in these academic circles thinks alike? It is amazing to me how much illogic runs in these circles. I went to some of the more liberal thinking universities myself…like U of W, madison, and if you can come out of their not being ‘cloned’ into a liberal you have done well. that is why the statistics show that if you want your children to lose their faith just send them to some of the more prestigious universoties like harvard and they will have the classroom experiences that kill their faith. I have seen the kind of
propaganda that goes on. That is not independent thinking…it is group thought.

maryJohnZore

 

[StAnastasia]

My experience is the contrary. Some of the more educated audiences are the ones I have come across are the less independent in their thinking. Haven’t you noticed how everyone in these academic circles thinks alike? It is amazing to me how much illogic runs in these circles.
maryJohnZore

This was a Catholic group watching “Expelled.”

And no, I’ve never encountered the phenomenon you describe of academics thinking alike. But then I’ve taught in fewer than a dozen universities and seminaries, so my teaching experience may be more limited than yours. How big is the pool from which you drew your sample?

StAnastasia

 

[The_Barbarian]

My experience is that most people who think academics all think alike, have very limited experience in academia.

Some “discussions” in some departments are pretty bruising processes.

 

[MaryJohnZ]

This was a Catholic group watching “Expelled.”

And no, I’ve never encountered the phenomenon you describe of academics thinking alike. But then I’ve taught in fewer than a dozen universities and seminaries, so my teaching experience may be more limited than yours. How big is the pool from which you drew your sample?

StAnastasia

If you see the same phenomena at all the colleges and universities you teach then you should be able to judge for yourself…if all those people were laughing and making fun of what Ben Stein was saying then I would say they were not being very 'Catholic" at all. They were being prejudicial and rude-- and I would still use the word “group thinking, since they were ‘all’ doing it…”.

Whatever your experience is, and how many universities you have taught at the studies such as the one below bear out my own observations that liberal bias abounds in higher academia. The result is a conformity in higher education to a standard that is biased against more conservative views. There are lots of ways more conservative teachers can be discouraged and demeaned in these institutions. the result is everyone who thinks alike has a great time…and they all think they are independent thinkers!
Just like you do, I imagine…

I would never have guessed you had taught at so many schools because from your comments i gathered you were a younger person, perhaps an undergraduate and so i was giving you some slack for that.

here are some statistics for you.

If you can come up with any study dhowing conservative bias at higher institutions I would love to see it, but this phenomena is pretty widely acknowledged and the evidence is very much knownby most people.

[studentsforacademicfreedom.org/news/1299/ArtEckste(name removed by moderator)ittofAcadBias011206.htm](http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/news/1299/ArtEckste(name removed by moderator)ittofAcadBias011206.htm)

The Rothman-Lichter-Nevitte article was based on a statistical study of professorial political opinions from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Learning, done in 1984, now combined with a large-scale statistical study (more than 1,600 respondents) of professorial political opinions done in 1999. Rothman-Lichter-Nevitte made three claims. The first claim was that, based on affiliation with either the Democratic or Republican Party and other indices, liberals and leftists outnumber conservatives and rightists on American university campuses by a very wide margin: overall, the 1999 study found that **72 percent of professors are “left/liberal,” while only 15 percent of professors are “right/conservative,” **a difference of about 5-1. This difference is especially noticeable in the social sciences and the humanities, where conservatives are outnumbered by anywhere from 8-1 to an amazing 30-1 (sociology, anthropology). The second Rothman-Lichter-Nevitte claim was that the higher one goes towards the elite schools within the hierarchy of American universities, the fewer conservatives there are; at elite research and teaching institutions (Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, Stanford, Columbia, Princeton, Williams, Swarthmore) conservatives are few indeed. Conservatives, where they are to be found at all, are mostly to be found at lesser schools. And this is so even if their publication records are excellent. The third claim made by Rothman-Lichter-Nevitte is that historically, this shift has occurred over the last 15 years. In the 1984 Carnegie study, liberals outnumbered conservatives on university faculties by only 39 percent-to-34 percent. As Rothman-Lichter-Nevitte conclude: “over the course of 15 years, self-described liberals grew from a slight plurality to a 5-1 majority on college faculties.” This has created a very sharp gap between the political sentiments of university faculty and the sentiments of the general American population, where only 18 percent view themselves as liberals, 37 percent view themselves as conservatives, and 55 percent view themselves as moderates.[2]

My theory is that it is because conservatives are capable of logical thought while liberals practice what they call ‘critical thinking’…something which is not always logical…

Sorry, I guess i am in a pequliarly sacrastic mood…

In Christ, MaryJohnz

 

[StAnastasia]

My theory is that it is because conservatives are capable of logical thought while liberals practice what they call ‘critical thinking’…something which is not always logical…

MaryJohnZ, can you give an example of logical thought from a conservative perspective?

 

[StAnastasia]

Whatever your experience is, and how many universities you have taught at the studies such as the one below bear out my own observations that liberal bias abounds in higher academia. The result is a conformity in higher education to a standard that is biased against more conservative views.

Four of them are Catholic universities, and one of them a seminary (oh – I forgot, I also taught philosophy of the human person to novices in a convent in fall of 1983!).

I haven’t experienced the conformity you write about, except conformity to truth. Remember what Karl Rove said:

“As people do better, they start voting like Republicans - unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing.” Too much education and you become a Democrat; not much education and you can remain Republican.

StAnastasia

 

[MaryJohnZ]

MaryJohnZ, can you give an example of logical thought from a conservative perspective?

48 million babies have reported as having been aborted since Roe vs Wade. Reported deaths in the Iraq conflict: 4,186. As a Catholic I am called to vote to support life as a social justice issue and as I weight those two issues: war Vs abortion I( can logically see that abortion takes more lives than the accumulated casualties of the iraq conflict. Therefor:Abortion becomes an issue which I cannot ignore in favor of a anti-war ethic since I can easily see that ending abortion will save more lives and be more effective in bringing a pro-life ethhic to my country. it is obvious that if we are to become a peace loving and making nation that peace in the womb is a logical place to start.

A liberal person will side step and say all life issues are equal (how is that logical?!)…or
I need to be pro-life but being antiwar is just as an important issue
as the abortion issue, or even more illogical, being anti-death penality is equally pro-life and therefore I will legitimatize voting for a pro-abortion candidate and even call myself pro-life because I am being ‘anti-war’ or ‘anti-deathy penalty’…

or here’s another one:
birth control will make abortions rare, therefore i will vote for candidates that support Planned parenthood because that means they will provide funding for birth control and that will make abortions rare…

A conservative will logically think birth control outside of marriage encourages premarital sex. Teens are not known for being responsible and planning ahead. They will not always be using birth control Unplanned pregnancies will continue to happen and may even increase as more teens are given birth control and encouraged to have pre-marital sex, therefore birth control does not equate to less abortions. (Plus the fact that birth control causes abortions…) therefore voting for candidates who favor lessening abortions through birth control are not really pro-life in the end because it won’t work that way.

---

or here is another one of those anti-logical liberal things.

A prolife person stands on a street corner with a banner showing an aborted baby, The tiny head and limbs are torn apart. It is a gruesome picture and shows the violence of abortion.

As a conservative, I logically think: "That is terrible. I can see that was a tiny human person. I can see what a cruel thing it is to perform such an act on a helpless small baby. Abortion is gruesome and wrong. I will pray and work to end abortion and vote for prolife candidates.

The typical liberal will say: “What a gruesome picture. How terrible of those conservative pro-lifers for showing such a thing. Those conservative pro-life people are so extreme! Thay are such terrible people for showing that picture…”

---

That is what my experience has been with liberals who ‘critically think’. The second example is exactly what I have had a liberal state rep. say to me about literature that shows what abortion does to babies.

---

Oh, and here is one from Notre Dame College where my sister teaches theology. The College president allowed an on campus presentation of the 'Vagina Monologues" last spring. As a conservative I think: That is not a way to give a Catholic example or promote Catholic moral teaching or even support the dignity of young women. Colleges cannot present every play out there and it is perfectly alright to say “no” to such a anti-Catholic view point and play. There must be a more positive play they could find to put on. I would call that logical.

But apparently, even thought the President of Notre dame knew the play was not representative of Catholic morals, he felt it was
necessary to allow it…

In Christ, maryJohnz

 

[MaryJohnZ]

Four of them are Catholic universities, and one of them a seminary (oh – I forgot, I also taught philosophy of the human person to novices in a convent in fall of 1983!).

I haven’t experienced the conformity you write about, except conformity to truth. Remember what Karl Rove said:

“As people do better, they start voting like Republicans - unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing.” Too much education and you become a Democrat; not much education and you can remain Republican.

StAnastasia

I guess we can agree that common sense and logic leaves with higher education then.

 

[StAnastasia]

I guess we can agree that common sense and logic leaves with higher education then.

Not at all!

 

[reggieM]

we have argued with evidence from Darwin’s own notebooks and journals that he was agnostic and in the Descent of man he pushed foreward a theory meant to eliminate God from the the formation of the human conscience.

We also showed that he was anti-Christian.

 

[reggieM]

If you see the same phenomena at all the colleges and universities you teach then you should be able to judge for yourself…if all those people were laughing and making fun of what Ben Stein was saying then I would say they were not being very 'Catholic" at all. They were being prejudicial and rude-- and I would still use the word “group thinking, since they were ‘all’ doing it…”.

American universities are not known as places that support independent thought. Group-think does rule among the tenured professors. There are some books that document this problem.

 

[reggieM]

Oh, and here is one from Notre Dame College where my sister teaches theology. The College president allowed an on campus presentation of the 'Vagina Monologues" last spring.

I’m glad to see that you’re very well informed, Mary. Those are the people who laugh at Ben Stein. They’re obviously corrupted and have lost the Catholic Faith.

As a conservative I think: That is not a way to give a Catholic example or promote Catholic moral teaching or even support the dignity of young women.

Exactly. It’s not even “as a conservative” that one would say that, but as a believing Catholic who has reflected on the teaching of Christ regarding modesty, family life and purity of soul.

Colleges cannot present every play out there and it is perfectly alright to say “no” to such a anti-Catholic view point and play. There must be a more positive play they could find to put on. I would call that logical.

They deliberately attack the Catholic Faith. I’ve seen the same thing in “Catholic” colleges and universites for decades. We can see it in our corrupted (but getting much better) seminary programs that killed off vocations or produced some of the monsters we’ve dealt with in our “crisis”.

But apparently, even thought the President of Notre dame knew the play was not representative of Catholic morals, he felt it was
necessary to allow it…

Absolutely right. They will passionately defend their perversions. Again, these are the people laughing uproariously at Expelled. When asked, however, if they can defend the dogmas of orginal sin, the eternity of hell, the creation of the human soul ex nihilo and many others – they will either gaze with a blank stare or just continue the laughter.

The loss of many souls will fall heavily on them. I pray daily for these “enlightened Catholics” daily. I’ve suffered from them myself for years.

 

[edwest2]

For the past 40 years, a concerted attack on Catholic centers of higher learning and seminaries has been going on. The outlines have been given here:

philly.com/inquirer/columnists/rick_santorum/20080410_The_Elephant_in_the_Room__Mandate_for_Catholic_colleges.html

Almost as if on cue, some “dissident” priests and nuns decided to leak some details of Humanae Vitae before it was ready for the outside world. And how can you sell millions of birth control pills to millions of Catholics if their Pope tells them contraception is wrong?

One priest posted here not long ago about how he was asked by a group of priests to sign a letter back in 1968 in protest of it. He refused. He recounted how one priest, a former Marine, hit him with some pretty salty language regarding his refusal.

I have also read at least one account about how things “went nuts” in seminaries in the late 1960s and 1970s. Priests were not taught about strict rules for contraception. They were led to believe, and told their parishioners, to follow their conscience. Guess what? And Pope Paul VI told everyone what would happen if the teaching of the Church wasn’t followed.

Catholic Universities began to distance themselves from the Church, hiring people who weren’t even Catholic. Now, recently, the Church is involved in reversing that trend, so that Catholics can give to other Catholics that which is authentically Catholic.

Then the barbarism of abortion was ushered in under pleas of save the women from the back alley abortionist and to be “used in emergencies only”! Our Christian compassion was ruthlessly exploited. Now it’s abortion on demand.

I should also mention the plague of so-called Adult Bookstores that spread across the United States in the 1970s. These were not purveyors of ‘artistic’ images but graphic prostitution. And lawyers fought for the ‘right’ to exhibit this demeaning and degrading, to both men and women, ‘expression.’

But back to the OP, only people kill people. But the fact is, since World War II, the armaments industry was promoted and eventually absorbed every source of usable brain power in the country. Got a new, cheaper, more effective way to kill people faster? Call DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), call anyone in the military.

And war? “Hello, Mr. President? I’m sitting on a lot of inventory (bombs, bullets) here and I got four kids to put through college. You know what I’m sayin’?”

No ‘science’ doesn’t kill people but World War II ushered in the Cold War, recently downgraded, and then things went through their “biggest reorganization since World War II” after the terrorist attacks.

But they gotta move that inventory. Sad. Really, really sad.

God bless,
Ed

 

[StAnastasia]

American universities are not known as places that support independent thought. Group-think does rule among the tenured professors. There are some books that document this problem.

Is there evidence to back up this claim?

 

[Roamin_Catholic_1]

Is there evidence to back up this claim?

Hallelujah!

 

[The_Barbarian]

Evidence? You said the “E” word! They don’t need no stinking evidence. They want it to be true, and so it must be.

You’re one of those people who think there’s an objective reality, aren’t you?