Science must destroy religion

[tonyrey]

It’s subnatural sorcery to derive insight from blind particles.

Ad hominem, TS!

There’s no sorcery posited anywhere in the chain, here. It’s a hypothesis that is completely devoid of sorcery or anything like it.

To derive insight from blind particles is undoubtedly a form of sorcery. Mechanical machinery can produce nothing but mechanical machinery which doesn’t even know it exists, let alone understand itself. There is no such thing as “an explanation” in the materialist’s scheme of things. As you have pointed out it’s just an isomorphism of inanimate objects which just happen to exist for no reason or purpose whatsoever.

How do you know this, Tony? If you were, as atheists believe, “the universe experiencing itself”, how would you disprove that idea? With your intuition? I can’t help but think that’s all you’ve got on that side of the ledger. If so, well, I don’t need to go any further.

It’s not the universe experiencing itself but atomic particles succeeding in becoming aware of themselves. The onus is on you to explain how that is possible. There is certainly no scientific explanation to that effect, merely an assertion on the part of materialists that it has occurred, their sole reason being the assumption that reality consists solely of material objects. Yet they know matter exists only because they have a rational mind - which is conspiciously absent in inanimate entities.

According to TS, worship is restricted to impersonal “nature”, whatever that may be (given that it has never been clearly defined so that it can cater for any unexplained phenomena).

No, I’m saying worship is not a part of the picture here, at all. Nature it what it is. It’s impersonal, and there’s no basis for worship. You get to this view, in part by understanding problematic nature of worship, and its inapplicability, here.

Worship occurs when you regard something as the supreme factor in your interpretation of reality, pay it homage and adapt your way of life in accordance with its demands (even if these turn out to be illusions!) There is obviously nothing else you consider to have greater power and significance than physical energy. So you should be full of awe, adulation and gratitude towards it if you value your life…

The only type of aspiration in your weltanschaung is that of a vacuum cleaner! You keep forgetting hope, love, beauty, art, humor, joy, and all the rest are no more than permutations of submicroscopic phenomena moving around in space.

I don’t forget that, which is why I understand that a human is not a vacuum cleaner. A vacuum cleaner does not have these features, right? Right? If love, hope, beauty, etc. are real, and on my view they are, they realized, reified as configurations of matter. That’s what makes them real. That isn’t “mere” or “just” in some deprecating way, and neither is it magic. It’s just the what anything real obtains as real. Which is more than I could say about my understanding of these things as a Christian, which held them as unreal fantasies, immaterial “things” – a cognitive dissonance right there – that had all the features of non-existence, but I believed in as a kind of magic, a supernatural fantasy.

If everything is composed of isomorphisms of atomic particles everything must be subject to the same laws and limitations as atomic particles. Nothing cannot defy, for example, the law of conservation of energy. All events must be determined or indeterminate - and also purposeless - which rules out free will and rationality.

The mysterious transmutation of matter into mind is an article of faith constantly overlooked in your process of “reasoning” - which should be restricted - if you are consistent - to strictly quantitative descriptions of material events.

We have evidence of matter’s existence. That doesn’t take faith.

It takes faith to pin all your values and hopes (if you have any!) on the primacy of matter.

We observe nature and the way matter and energy are configured, changed, preserved, etc. over time. Based on what evidence we have, mind as matter has a huge advantage over any other hypothesis in terms of evidence, falsifiability, and economy. It takes no more faith than a computer would have analyzing the situation according to the rules we give it (“Prefer evidential support, falsifiability, economy”)…

Mind as matter has an insurmountable disadvantage. The only fact of which we are certain is the fact that we are thinking. We infer that everything else exists from our perceptions. There is not one jot of evidence that neurons are aware of anything or know what they are doing whereas our thoughts are intangible but inescapable. To put matter first is to put the cart squarely in front of the horse - with no one in the driving seat! Your thoughts are unbridled and therefore taking you in many wrong directions because there are far more ways of being mistaken than right if they are out of control.

Unfortunately “ideals”, “values”, “superstitions”, “view”, “wonderful”, “terrible” and “glory” are meaningless terms from a scientific point of view - which is after all the only isomorphism (to which the isomorphism described as Touchstone is linked…)

No, these are all real, natural phenomena. Concepts and emotions humans develop and experience in their minds, naturally. There’s nothing about them that puts them out of the reach of science, or renders them meaningless. They are meaningful because they are really, actual phenomena that govern human actions and interactions.

You have already ruled out the existence of minds by deriving them from events in the brain. A mind is an entity whereas events in the brain have no unifying factor or control-centre. It would be more consistent to argue like Hume that there is merely a bundle of perceptions although that hypothesis is faced with the same difficulties - further exacerbated by the problem of personal identity, continuity and responsibility.

The foregoing is no more than a meaningless collocation of scientifically unrecognisable terms and therefore of absolutely no significance…
“constructs”! The physicalist Q.V.Quine pointed out that material objects and gods are in precisely the same epistemological category. It is worth reading “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (online) to understand (hopefully) that your entire concept of reality is vitiated by your blind adherence to a logically untenable mechanistic doctrine falsified by every rational (?) statement you utter and the occupational hazard of those whose lives are immersed in the unreal world of computer systems (the nightmarish apogee of a dystopian, inhuman elimination of persons by an amoral scaffold erected to satisfy your desire to justify your own notions of what you are entitled to believe and how to live - thereby unwittingly depriving yourself of any power to choose what to believe or how to live if you take your determinism to its logical conclusion… but then logic is unimportant, isn’t it?

I’m quite familiar with Quine, if you mean W.V.O. Quine. I do not know of any Q.V. Quine, physicalist or no.

My mistake! I was thinking of q.v.

That would be a discussion for another thread, but Quine’s argument that all belief frameworks are ultimately pragmatic, and cannot be cleanly and fully separated into synthetic and analytic camps I agree with, largely, and materialism has no problem with that, so far as I’m aware. My materialism is not dogmatic, but thoroughly pragmatic in a way Quine would understand, and to a large extent, shared. It isn’t that “something beyond” cannot or doesn’t exist, by dogma or necessity. That kind of thinking is problematic in and of itself. Rather we have no practical basis to think anything “beyond” obtains.

It is not a question of something “beyond” but something “within”. When you are out of your mind you have left your mind behind! It is preferable to have a bodiless mind rather than a mindless body…

Quine’s point is that all our knowledge is based on mental constructs which clearly have epistemological precedence over anything else we claim to know. In other words try as we might we cannot dispense with mental activity without destroying the source and foundation of all our knowledge.

Materialism is rare in the history of philosophy because it is based on a fatal flaw - as logical positivists discovered to their dismay after prematurely discarding metaphysics as nonsense. The verification principle was the cause of their downfall because it cannot be verified by sense data. Pragmatism works up to a point but it fails miserably when it comes to explaining intangibles. It is impossible to ignore them without descending into absurdity.

To reduce truth to isomorphisms of atomic particles undermines rationality because it becomes mechanistic parallelism rather than the correspondence of thoughts to facts. If facts don’t exist knowledge becomes an illusion for the simple reason that we don’t have direct knowledge of anything except the contents of our mind.

Considering that the mind-matter problem has been discussed for over two thousand years it is hardly likely that there is a simplistic solution like AI.

 

[Gaber]

let me rephrase, all are welcome to the discussion, believers and non believers alike. I guess I wasn’t paying attention to this corner of the world, and just recently became aware that atheists had started displaying such antipathy towards God. I agree that it is a huge issue. It doesn’t just involve Catholics, it involves all religion.

Perhaps I need to be cleare in tements. It is not atheism that is at question here, though it has its own set of things that might be addressed. What is being addressed int he article it the idea that science is pretty much monolithic, whether or not it is completely inclusive of origins or meanings. As a discipline which deals with the comonallities we encounter in the material world, it, not religion, has consitently been the go-to discipliine to sove issues surrounding food, water, shelter, etc, etc, etc. It is something with enough repeatable and provable commonality that it is useful with or without faith, and by people of anuy faith. It deals with the imediately tangible nature of our dayu to day existence.

Religion may appear to do that on the stage of one’s inner life, but that doesn’t transfer as an individual perceptioon or as group perceptions on the whole to the world stage. In fact, it is so i9nneffective as a universal solution that various groups of faithers are causing upheavals and retardations on a world scale by the insistence that their particular brand of faith it sthe one and onlyu single universally applicable solution of any merit whatsoever. you know that, because you feel, I am sure, that way abut Catholicism. Right?

But for someone watching from outter space, there is not any one religion that is a palpable solution in the way that science is as far as taking care of business in the world all the different contradictory faiths share. And that world is in a degree and kind of danger of diminishing returns, and that degradation is being materieall aided by the fact of diswagreement among faithers, not scientiests.

So there is a question bvefore us about the nature of faith itself as a phenomenon whose form is common–living as if something materially unprovable is absolute fact-- and it sidfferences: what that materially unprovable thing is in the eyse of any numbers and kinds of beholders.

So while atheism, whatever its drawbacks are, is compatible with the progress of science and thus things that might materiall benefit the world, religions in the aggregate, including ours as part of that are emphatically not. So the discussion needs to be specifically about the nature and usefullness of faith as such, *not of the benefit or superiority of any particuar one *

So, for my part, while I am not an atheist and have some serious contentions with that world view as to what it lacks, I have the identical contention with faith, as such, ours included, because it does not go to the root of the matter in practice, despite claining to do so. And this is demonstrable regarding any faith, Abrahamic or otherwise, and of atheism, all equally.

So while Mr. Harris might even have antipathy for Christianity, he does have a point of exceptional validity about the phenomenon of faith takn as an aggregate. And tht aggregate is what the discussion needs to be about.

Is that a little clearer? Or are you just too close to the problem to even be able to discern it? I don’t know.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

And the killing of human embryos for scientific purposes? The fact is that everyone reading this began their lives as unique human embryos. Just ask an embryologist

On that note, I have a friend that lives in Georgia that must fly out to Texas for medical treatment. Out in Texas they’ve extracted some of her stem cells (note: Adult stem cells) and are growing them to later be re-injected into her own body. Legislation had been passed in GA to make stem cell treatments illegal. The law did not distinguish between embryonic and adult stem cell treatments. I’m sure there was good intention when the law was made, but it seems that in this case a mixture of religious elements and medical ignorance may have caused a few to get caught in the middle.

 

[Gaber]

On that note, I have a friend that lives in Georgia that must fly out to Texas for medical treatment. Out in Texas they’ve extracted some of her stem cells (note: Adult stem cells) and are growing them to later be re-injected into her own body. Legislation had been passed in GA to make stem cell treatments illegal. The law did not distinguish between embryonic and adult stem cell treatments. I’m sure there was good intention when the law was made, but it seems that in this case a mixture of religious elements and medical ignorance may have caused a few to get caught in the middle.

And this is now happening, as Mr. Harris rightly points out, on a world wide scale.

 

[Gaber]

It’s quite clear from his other writings that Mr. Harris hates religion and Christianity in particular. When one is given the truth and has the ability to understand it, the fact is, some people will reject it. Filter or no filter. Long before “modern science,” men thought and believed that there is no God.

I have sensed, especially in recent years, a desire for some type of ‘other,’ totally pure and neutral experience that comes from nowhere. I heard it from the Hippies in the late 1960s. They would tear down everything and give us a Woodstock Nation. All we got was porn and hedonism.

The truth of Jesus Christ is available to all. It is not private and job one for the Catholic Church is to preach the Gospel to all nations and baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Lengthy, eloquent statements and an evangelization of a vague, “one size fits all” religion have been tried before. Nothing’s going to change.

Peace,
Ed

Since you, identifying with the pobject of Mr, Harris’ writings, might feel put upon, is it really haterd on his part, or is it just part of blanket concern for the turmoil caused by the factions and fractions of faithing as a whole? Andsince Christians constitute such a huge part of those who have faith, why would it be a surprise that his main thrust might be in the direction of christianists?

And while long before Jesus and before other misconstrued and misinterpreted mystical geniuses there were people who thought there wasn’t a God, there were as many who thought there was. The operative word is “thought.” Thinking either way, as is there is or isn’t a God is an identical problem. It is thinking, not knowledge. And Mr. Harris, despite being on the “thinking not” side, has an excellent point: the “thinking so” side is in such a jumble as tobe getting in the way of not onlyu the progresss of the world, but its very safety, and needs to take a serious look at itself, icluding those who “think” they know what jesus was about; I’m betting that despite the story Christians tell themselves, they haven’t a clue, and have historicized and personalized something that is menat originally to have a far more significant meaning thatn a popular and politically supprted religion.

And it was by no means a “one size fits all” notion as a garment of thought, as I am sure that you would like Catholicism to be in the sense of a final and total world religion. Yes? What’s the difference? Wouldn’t that be “one size fits all?”

There is at otally opure and Natural experience that comes from seemingly nowhere, at least nowhere tht the thinking mind can assess. It is called Grace. And it is received, or it isn’t. Go figure. and it has nothing to do with what flavor of belief system you mentally subscribe to.

 

[edwest2]

Since you, identifying with the pobject of Mr, Harris’ writings, might feel put upon, is it really haterd on his part, or is it just part of blanket concern for the turmoil caused by the factions and fractions of faithing as a whole? Andsince Christians constitute such a huge part of those who have faith, why would it be a surprise that his main thrust might be in the direction of christianists?

And while long before Jesus and before other misconstrued and misinterpreted mystical geniuses there were people who thought there wasn’t a God, there were as many who thought there was. The operative word is “thought.” Thinking either way, as is there is or isn’t a God is an identical problem. It is thinking, not knowledge. And Mr. Harris, despite being on the “thinking not” side, has an excellent point: the “thinking so” side is in such a jumble as tobe getting in the way of not onlyu the progresss of the world, but its very safety, and needs to take a serious look at itself, icluding those who “think” they know what jesus was about; I’m betting that despite the story Christians tell themselves, they haven’t a clue, and have historicized and personalized something that is menat originally to have a far more significant meaning thatn a popular and politically supprted religion.
There is at otally opure and Natural experience that comes from seemingly nowhere, at least nowhere tht the thinking mind can assess. It is called Grace. And it is received, or it isn’t. Go figure. and it has nothing to do with what flavor of belief system you mentally subscribe to.

To be a bit more blunt, you are espousing the same ‘we’re all one and all religions share certain similarities,’ which apparently spring from nothing, then humanity has two choices: drop all religions and belief systems and let science rule or, at least, just dump all religions and belief systems on the trash heap of history.

What’s left? Science. The Technocracy. The rulers will be guided only by science and the scientific dictatorship will guide us to what? More nothing. Because even if they come up with new flavors for snack foods, the fundamental man will not change.

And you have a bias: I do not believe that Catholicism should be the global religion by force. Unless you believe that power and influence are more important than the truth. I’ve witnessed my faith to other people and some listened and some didn’t and some had some very negative and not nice things to say about religion in general.

So, nothing is going to change.

Peace,
Ed

 

[Touchstone]

It’s quite clear from his other writings that Mr. Harris hates religion and Christianity in particular.

Harris is no fan of Christianity. But if there’s a religion Harris is hostile to in particular, it’s Islam, no question about it. Islam is far more a menace and threat to humanity in Harris’ view than Christianity, and you can find dozens of quotes and sources to demonstrate this from him with little effort.

See this exchange between Lawrence O’Donnell and Sam Harris as an example of this position from Harris:

youtube.com/watch?v=8E1u9lQeAsY

-TS

OnEdit: Here’s another bit from Sam Harris I remembered and found on YouTube, where he talks about the problems “in particular” with Islam that do not apply to Christianity (and other religions):

youtube.com/watch?v=ZCOQukCn0kg&feature=fvwrel

 

[ivebeenshown]

He’s not so obligated, nor have I said he would be.

Alright, so we agree on the premise that the Catholic God is not particularly morally obligated to relieve or prevent any suffering.

I mentioned the opposite, in fact, better if God did no miracles at all, as that’s at least not to pour salt in the wounds of the suffering who do get passed over by God when he does act capriciously in restoring the sight of Padre Pio’s young patient, miraculously, for example.

If the suffering are not particularly entitled to relief and God chooses to relieve some but not all, why would that be immoral? How would it be God’s fault that the unrelieved suffering might insist that they are entitled, and feel wronged due to their own insistence? Is that not akin to a child crying because he did not get a baseball while attending a game, when the team has the resources to give every child a ball?

If you ran a social experiment, and chose 20 out of 100 people to be afflicted with some terrible, but treatable disease that you have the cure for, you aren’t a “loving God”, if you pick 4 of the afflicted 20, and randomly reward them with the curing treatment.

That would definitely be true. Deliberately inflicting undeserved suffering is an injustice. That in itself would render God less than all-good.

The “random 4” are happy, of course, but only in a selfish sense (applying that to Padre Pio in real life, he should have been appalled at a God that would act so capriciously in restoring the girl’s sight). Their treatment is just an extra measure of cruelty to the 16 remaining afflicted. Through no fault of their own, for no reason at all, they’ve been denied available treatment. It’s not just tragic enough that they’ve come down with the condition. They are now conspicuously the subjects of cruel caprice in the withholding of treatment.

That would be true considering the person delivering the relief was the very person that delivered the affliction. In the case of God, the affliction of mankind was not his fault. Adam and Eve disobeyed in light of the fact that their disobedience would cost them their preternatural gift of incorruptibility, and it was only just that God followed through in withdrawing his gift with authority. That the rest of mankind experiences the fallout is the fault of Adam and Eve, who willfully did that which they knew would cost them their gift, and then from their own corruptible bodies generated the rest of mankind.

In short, you misunderstand the Catholic theology behind grace and the entrance of suffering into the lives of mankind.

 

[Touchstone]

Alright, so we agree on the premise that the Catholic God is not particularly morally obligated to relieve or prevent any suffering.

If the suffering are not particularly entitled to relief and God chooses to relieve some but not all, why would that be immoral? How would it be God’s fault that the unrelieved suffering might insist that they are entitled, and feel wronged due to their own insistence? Is that not akin to a child crying because he did not get a baseball while attending a game, when the team has the resources to give every child a ball?

That would definitely be true. Deliberately inflicting undeserved suffering is an injustice. That in itself would render God less than all-good.

I guess it’s good we can agree on that, but that was not the point of the illustration. Instead the point as that God is responsible (responsible in the sense of humans rendering judgment on his goodness or evilness) for the choices he makes. Given a room with “20 afflicted”, or a world with “200 million desperately afflicted”, what do you choose, with the powers you have. It matters not, just here, how the afflictions came about. That is a different question. But given the prospects of the afflicted and your resources and ability to do something or nothing about it, what do you do?

God comes off as someone with an evil and perverse set of priorities in that case. If you were in that situation, what would you do? I understand the Christian response that "we don’t know the whole picture, and perhaps there’s a really good other reason God would rather that Timmy NOT get a miracle to even ALLEVIATE his suffering from a growing tumor in his five year old brain, and we just don’t know it. Well, maybe. But that’s not in evidence for us, and judging by what we DO have in front of us, as charitably as we might, God is a cruel monster. If he didn’t grant Padre Pio’s little patient her eyesight, it would be less monstrous, because then at least Timmy, or rather, since he’s only 5 years old, maybe his parents would not have the burden, the crushing, cruel burden of hearing from the Catholic Church that God smiled with favor on the little girl in Padre Pio’s care, and miraculous healed her eyes, so RELIEF IS POTENTIALLY AVAILABLE, BUT GOD PREFERS THAT TIMMY NOT HAVE IT.

If, in the experiment, some sort of triage were done, and there was a limited supply of treatments – just 4 kits, then the suffering of those who are denied it at least is not compounded by the insult of the administrators’ caprice; it is explained that there are only four treatment kits, and the best rationale that could be developed is that the youngest should get the available treatments, on the basis that it saves as much as remaining life as can be had with the resources available.

That doesn’t cure the 16, but it also does not insult them, cruelly, or deny them the dignity of some explanation why they are denied when others are favored.

In God’s case, he can heal everyone and anyone he wills. And he just sprinkles capricious and few miracles around, and the rest can just watch, told that yes it CAN happen, just not to you, for reasons God won’t divulge, and which you don’t merit knowing. This is a massive moral failure on God’s part, a streak of cruel, evil caprice. It is not diminished by the fact that we don’t know the whole picture. That just is part of the cruelty, an instrument of further suffering God visits upon men.

That would be true considering the person delivering the relief was the very person that delivered the affliction. In the case of God, the affliction of mankind was not his fault. Adam and Eve disobeyed in light of the fact that their disobedience would cost them their preternatural gift of incorruptibility, and it was only just that God followed through in withdrawing his gift with authority. That the rest of mankind experiences the fallout is the fault of Adam and Eve, who willfully did that which they knew would cost them their gift, and then from their own corruptible bodies generated the rest of mankind.

In short, you misunderstand the Catholic theology behind grace and the entrance of suffering into the lives of mankind.

This is fraught with problems, but I’ll hold off, since I wasn’t speaking to Original Sin here, or the justice, or lack of justice in God’s “guilt by association” or “guilt by lineage”. I was only speaking to the caprice of God’s dispensation of miraculous healing. It’s cruel and capricious in its delivery, and only serves to further the despair of those few that God does choose to miraculously heal in his caprice. Aunt Martha’s goiter is “all better!”, praise God, and this God can’t be bothered by five year old Timmy with his faithful parents praying unceasingly by his bedside for help, reflect, anything that can save, or even just mitigate the suffering and destruction of that little boy’s body and life.

But God demurs. They can suck on their despair. Everything will be made in the Great Bye and Bye. Trust us. Really. It’s all for the best – you just don’t understand, you parents of this boy writhing in agony in his hospital bed. God really is good – look at what he did for Aunt Martha’s goiter, after all. It was miraculous.

He’s a monster, if we’re honest, and not sycophants surrending to a cruel tyrant.

-TS

 

[davidv]

I guess it’s good we can agree on that, but that was not the point of the illustration. Instead the point as that God is responsible (responsible in the sense of humans rendering judgment on his goodness or evilness) for the choices he makes. Given a room with “20 afflicted”, or a world with “200 million desperately afflicted”, what do you choose, with the powers you have. It matters not, just here, how the afflictions came about. That is a different question. But given the prospects of the afflicted and your resources and ability to do something or nothing about it, what do you do?

God comes off as someone with an evil and perverse set of priorities in that case. If you were in that situation, what would you do? I understand the Christian response that "we don’t know the whole picture, and perhaps there’s a really good other reason God would rather that Timmy NOT get a miracle to even ALLEVIATE his suffering from a growing tumor in his five year old brain, and we just don’t know it. Well, maybe. But that’s not in evidence for us, and judging by what we DO have in front of us, as charitably as we might, God is a cruel monster. If he didn’t grant Padre Pio’s little patient her eyesight, it would be less monstrous, because then at least Timmy, or rather, since he’s only 5 years old, maybe his parents would not have the burden, the crushing, cruel burden of hearing from the Catholic Church that God smiled with favor on the little girl in Padre Pio’s care, and miraculous healed her eyes, so RELIEF IS POTENTIALLY AVAILABLE, BUT GOD PREFERS THAT TIMMY NOT HAVE IT.

If, in the experiment, some sort of triage were done, and there was a limited supply of treatments – just 4 kits, then the suffering of those who are denied it at least is not compounded by the insult of the administrators’ caprice; it is explained that there are only four treatment kits, and the best rationale that could be developed is that the youngest should get the available treatments, on the basis that it saves as much as remaining life as can be had with the resources available.

That doesn’t cure the 16, but it also does not insult them, cruelly, or deny them the dignity of some explanation why they are denied when others are favored.

In God’s case, he can heal everyone and anyone he wills. And he just sprinkles capricious and few miracles around, and the rest can just watch, told that yes it CAN happen, just not to you, for reasons God won’t divulge, and which you don’t merit knowing. This is a massive moral failure on God’s part, a streak of cruel, evil caprice. It is not diminished by the fact that we don’t know the whole picture. That just is part of the cruelty, an instrument of further suffering God visits upon men.

This is fraught with problems, but I’ll hold off, since I wasn’t speaking to Original Sin here, or the justice, or lack of justice in God’s “guilt by association” or “guilt by lineage”. I was only speaking to the caprice of God’s dispensation of miraculous healing. It’s cruel and capricious in its delivery, and only serves to further the despair of those few that God does choose to miraculously heal in his caprice. Aunt Martha’s goiter is “all better!”, praise God, and this God can’t be bothered by five year old Timmy with his faithful parents praying unceasingly by his bedside for help, reflect, anything that can save, or even just mitigate the suffering and destruction of that little boy’s body and life.

But God demurs. They can suck on their despair. Everything will be made in the Great Bye and Bye. Trust us. Really. It’s all for the best – you just don’t understand, you parents of this boy writhing in agony in his hospital bed. God really is good – look at what he did for Aunt Martha’s goiter, after all. It was miraculous.

He’s a monster, if we’re honest, and not sycophants surrending to a cruel tyrant.

-TS

The faulty premise at the beginning of all of this is that God is doing nothing. How could you possible know this?

 

[LogisticsBranch]

Picking up where I left off on page 10. It seems to me that Christians are being attacked so I have decided to share with everyone the American Association Advancement for Science (AAAS) which has the scientific journal SCIENCE. I fully support Christian scientists and so does the AAAS so I must state that science doesn’t destroy religon.:

Testimony of a Young Christian Scientist
By Elisabeth Pain
February 20, 2009

In some ways, Imre Miklós Szilágyi is not a typical early-career scientist. One thing that makes him atypical is a rich portfolio of early accomplishments. Last November, when he was still in the final year of his Ph.D., the rectors of Hungary’s universities ranked him the brightest under-30 scientist in the country. He is “far ahead of the average student or young researcher of his age in motivation and systematic work,” writes György Pokol, one of Szilágyi’s two Ph.D. supervisors, in an e-mail to Science Careers.

Another characteristic that sets Szilágyi apart from most other scientists is that he is motivated to do well in science by a desire “to bring glory to God’s name.” This religious faith “has given me the ambition to achieve more and more in all fields of life, including science.” This faith-based ambition has spurred Szilágyi to develop some worldly, savvy approaches to his scientific career. Szilágyi’s particular blend of science and faith makes him not just an interesting scientist but also an interesting example of how faith and science can coexist.
A scientific career in the making

Szilágyi started studying chemical engineering in a 5-year master’s-degree program at Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME). In his 3rd year, he received a scholarship from General Electric, which allowed him to work under the supervision of György Pokol and János Madarász in his university’s Department of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry. The project’s goal was to improve tungsten production processes for light sources. “Doped tungsten production is … quite an old technology, and dozens of scientists have studied it,” he says. “However, we managed to explain several previously not well understood reactions and features.”

He earned his M.Sc. degree in chemical engineering, with honors, in 2004, then went on to do a Ph.D. at the University of Szeged, focusing on the preparation of tungsten oxide nanosystems using colloid chemistry. Soon, family issues intervened and he was forced to return to Budapest, where he continued work with his two undergrad advisers, broadening his earlier research to include new applications. In 2007, he won a 2-year research-fellow position within István Hargittai’s Materials Structure and Modeling Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences at BME, which has allowed him to continue his doctoral work without worrying about funding. He submitted his Ph.D. thesis just last month.

Szilágyi didn’t stick to research during his Ph.D. He also engaged in education and service work, helping to develop a new analytical chemistry curriculum for M.Sc. students and running the department’s scanning electron microscope. He also collaborated extensively with industry. These industry experiences enriched his C.V., taught him some new career skills–“and meant also some extra money, which I can use for research purposes … or as extra salary,” he says.

Today, he counts 11 peer-reviewed publications, with four more in the pipeline, and acts as referee for four specialty journals. Last year, he received both the top Hungarian Scopus award and the Perkin Elmer– International Confederation for Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry Young Scientist Award. “His career so far has developed in a near-ideal way,” Hargittai writes in an e-mail to Science Careers. “He will next need to go abroad and gain research experience in an entirely different environment–and he has plans for doing exactly that.” Szilágyi will spend the next couple of years working on complex nanostructures using atomic layer deposition at the University of Helsinki with a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship from the European Commission. His wife, a musician, will accompany him.

Divine inspiration

When asked what makes him such a successful young scientist, Szilágyi puts “the blessing of God as the first and most important key of success” for him. But Szilágyi has never waited for miracles to happen. Instead, he has taken a very savvy approach to developing his career. “I am very active and proactive in managing my career,” Szilágyi says, always planning one or two steps ahead. As an undergraduate, Szilágyi made sure he obtained the university grades, research publications, student conference prizes, and fluency in foreign languages he knew he needed to enter grad school and win several prestigious scholarships and awards. While matriculating for his Ph.D., he complemented the research publications on his C.V. with a book chapter, five conference proceedings articles, and 32 conference presentations so that he could find a good postdoc. And already he is planning to write grant proposals while in Helsinki. “The goal is that I should have funding immediately after finishing this fellowship so that I could start my own research group” at BME, Szilágyi says.

Szilágyi uses the same kind of strategy–deciding first where he wants to be and then figuring out how to get there–to publish his research. “If I notice an interesting feature on a measurements curve, or if I find an interesting problem in the literature, I imagine what kind of paper I could make out of it. I determine where I should publish it. These all determine the experiments that are needed to characterize properly the materials, the phenomenon … for a certain level of journal,” he says. Only then does he start working on the actual experiments. “As a result, usually the majority of my measurements will be published.”

He also has a knack for entering useful collaborations. “I always scan the abstract book of the conferences and search any possible option for future cooperation: Does somebody work with the same material, the same application, the same equipment? If yes, then we can compare our material, which is good for one paper. We can do our measurements on each other’s material, which can result in another paper.” In his own words, Szilágyi’s always trying to yield the “largest effect with the least invested energy.”

Where science and religion don’t meet

Szilágyi sees his religious faith and his research efforts as two complementary aspects of his life. Within the scientific environment, “I have some options where I can express my faith,” Szilágyi says. He directly referred to God both in the acknowledgements of his master’s and doctoral dissertations and while receiving his awards. He runs a Bible-study group for young adults, and together with a friend he founded a Christian scientific group.

But although Szilágyi’s views often lie far outside the scientific mainstream, he expresses those views only off-campus and in his personal time. For him, “the debate over evolution, design, creation, supernatural intelligence, etc., is not a scientific question in the first place but the collision of worldviews, the confrontation of materialism and idealism,” he says. He takes the Bible literally, but when he lectures on the subject–outside of work–he presents what he calls “the options” and indicates which one “to me … seems to be more probable.” But he insists that it is up to “everybody to make his or her own decision.”

“As a Christian who works in the field of science, I find it quite important to deal with the relation of Christianity and science,” Szilágyi says. But "I know that it is a minefield in today’s scientific life and can be quite dangerous for one’s scientific career. … Therefore, I do these activities absolutely separately from my university work. … I am very cautious and careful that whenever I am talking [about these issues] I do not represent my university.

“My belief is very important for my career because this is the first thing that gives me my motivations so that I could work hard and I could achieve the best I can,” Szilágyi says.
sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2009_02_20/caredit.a0900026

 

[ivebeenshown]

God comes off as someone with an evil and perverse set of priorities in that case. If you were in that situation, what would you do? I understand the Christian response that "we don’t know the whole picture, and perhaps there’s a really good other reason God would rather that Timmy NOT get a miracle to even ALLEVIATE his suffering from a growing tumor in his five year old brain, and we just don’t know it. Well, maybe. But that’s not in evidence for us, and judging by what we DO have in front of us, as charitably as we might, God is a cruel monster. If he didn’t grant Padre Pio’s little patient her eyesight, it would be less monstrous, because then at least Timmy, or rather, since he’s only 5 years old, maybe his parents would not have the burden, the crushing, cruel burden of hearing from the Catholic Church that God smiled with favor on the little girl in Padre Pio’s care, and miraculous healed her eyes, so RELIEF IS POTENTIALLY AVAILABLE, BUT GOD PREFERS THAT TIMMY NOT HAVE IT.

Party A has no obligation to perform favor F for any other party.
Party A has the ability to perform favor F any number of times for any number of parties.

If party A chooses to perform favor F for party B and not party C, how can it be said that party A has failed to meet its obligations?

In God’s case, he can heal everyone and anyone he wills. And he just sprinkles capricious and few miracles around, and the rest can just watch, told that yes it CAN happen, just not to you, for reasons God won’t divulge, and which you don’t merit knowing. This is a massive moral failure on God’s part, a streak of cruel, evil caprice. It is not diminished by the fact that we don’t know the whole picture. That just is part of the cruelty, an instrument of further suffering God visits upon men.

If we are not entitled to know the finest details of why God withholds his miracles for many, then how is it any failure on God’s part to divulge such information to us? Wouldn’t it only be some failure if he were obligated to fulfill such an entitlement of ours?

It’s cruel and capricious in its delivery, and only serves to further the despair of those few that God does choose to miraculously heal in his caprice. …] He’s a monster, if we’re honest, and not sycophants surrending to a cruel tyrant.

If we’re honest, and we understand that we would not be entitled to any healing miracle from our Creator, or knowledge of why we do not receive healing miracles from our Creator, then we can acknowledge that it is not cruel of Him to go beyond his obligations to mankind, and that if his doing so for some and not others makes us feel bad, then it is just our own jealousy and not His failure to meet any obligation which would lead us to call him cruel.

 

[tonyrey]

If everything is composed of isomorphisms of atomic particles everything must be subject to the same laws and limitations as atomic particles. Nothing cannot defy, for example, the law of conservation of energy. All events must be determined or indeterminate - and also purposeless - which rules out free will and rationality.
It takes faith to pin all your values and hopes (if you have any!) on the primacy of matter.

Correction: (Double negative!)
**Nothing can defy, for example, the law of conservation of energy.
**

 

[NeedImprovement]

wheels10:

Bottom line is that abortion is murder. It is the worst type of murder. This murder is performed by the people that should be protecting the child the most, the parents and the doctors that should be trying to save lives not destroy them.

There I must disagree with you, even if I accepted that abortion is a form of murder, then . . .

Well, if one does not accept that abortion is murder , it can only be because one does not accept that the child in his or her mother’s womb is a human being - a person.

As concluded earlier

. . . The only rational conclusion that can be drawn from this part of your reply, and the terms you chose to frame your reply (highlights mine) -
Candide West:

. . . I don’t know of any **anti-abortion **

charity work. I’m not even sure how the catholic churches political position of being **anti-abortion **could be connected to charity, unless you consider **protest and political lobbying *to be charitable activities? Surely nobody’s definition of charity is THAT unselective?

. . . is that you don’t believe the child in the womb is a human being.

That would place you in direct opposition of both the Catholic religion and medical science.

Nope . . . .

Um … Yup actually – It can be concluded . You’ve just gone and confirmed that again in your reply to wheels10 quoted above.

And I’ll reiterate that it places you in direct opposition to medical science as well as in opposition to any faith derived ethics/morality.

 

[NeedImprovement]

Someone posted earlier
someone (you know who) on this thread:

In that case, I might think the sacking of Beziers by the holy cruisaders, on a mission from their God, and the 20,000 deaths that followed, of men, women and children, might be a good thing

What was perhaps intended as a Catholic slur (we don’t know for sure because this poster only replies according to his/her particular whims and refuses to elucidate sometimes I think several posters on this thread are going to give the Great Accuser a run for his money if it goes on much longer] ) , actually speaks favourably of Catholics.

First of all, I couldn’t find a source that only says 20,000 were slain at Béziers

Those I found say between 10,000 – 20,000 , or between 7,000 – 20,000 slain . But here’s where we should get scrutinous : The crusaders were after the Cathars (Catharists) .Guess how many Cathars there were at Béziers ? Well one source puts the estimate at just over 200 and the other says less than 500 . So who were the rest - the larger number of those slain ? What ??? Predominantly Catholic you say ? Well, here’s a couple of excerpts followed by several links to the references :

On 22 July 1209 the Crusader army arrived at Béziers on the periphery of the area in the Languedoc where Cathars flourished. There were believed to be around 200 Cathars in the town among a much greater population of sympathetic Catholics

On 21 July, the crusaders reached Béziers and demanded that the Cathars in the popularion be handed over. This was refused even by the Roman Catholics of the town. The tradition of Cathar strength in this town went back to 1167, when they murdered their vicomte, Raymond-Roger I de Trencavel, in revenge for one of his knights having killed a Cathar. In return the vicomte’s son, Raymond-Roger II, had the town ransacked in 1169. Domingo de Guzmán and Pierre de Castelnau had attempted to confront the popularion in 1206.
On the afternoon of 22 July, the town launched a sortie which, when forced back into the town, was closely pursued by a band of the crusaders. Once inside the walls of the town, the crusaders seized Béziers within an hour. Immediately there began a mass slaughter of Catholics and Cathars, alike. When asked by one of the crusader warriors about the possible killing of Catholics along with the heretic Cathars, Arnaud-Amaury is supposed to have delivered his nefarious statement “Kill them all! God will recognize His own!” . . .

wuhstry.wordpress.com/2011/03/18/the-albigensian-crusade/

catharcastles.info/beziers.php?key=beziers

What I can’t figure out , is why we should approve of an atheist leaving some inflammatory droppings on a thread on our behalf. I mean, if the Catholics slaughtered at Béziers far outnumbered the Cathars slaughtered , and we got over it , why do we need an atheist- who wasn’t even there, trying to remind us of it (for whatever[still a mystery] reason )?

Moreover, those Catholics at Béziers seemed to have gotten that part right – the part where our Blessed Lord tells us [John 15:13] “ No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
Neighbors willing to die to defend you – arguably a significantly better deal than we get today in most neighborhoods.

Yet, even those figures from Béziers are surpassingly dwarfed by the 42-46 million innocent children who are slain in their mother’s wombs worldwide every year.

 

[NeedImprovement]

I don’t think anyone has said it quite as succinctly as tonyrey did concerning science and morality.

tonyrey:

Science without morality is a recipe for disaster.

It serves this thread well, and as a summation it remains unsurpassed.

All the proofs are there , and if there is anything all these self-proclaimed “atheists” coming on to this thread as instigators should be showing us , it’s : Be thankful for our Catholic faith , because. . . well . . . now we can read some of the posts on this thread and have an idea of the outlandish alternatives which take its place in confused minds that lack a true sense of conviction on vital issues .

Formation of Conscience (Veritas Splendor)

The rule of law presumes that there is a standard for all, that there is an established right and wrong which we can come to perceive, but cannot change. This is what Thomas Jefferson meant when he wrote in the Declaration of Independence that “We hold these truths to be self-evident . . . .” There is a God-given reality which includes the great moral truths. We perceive these truths and through our consciences “legislate” them for ourselves, but we do not and cannot establish them or alter them.
It follows from what has been said that we must form our consciences. In other words, we have an obligation to come to know the truth. “Conscience has rights because it has duties.”

Consciences need to be informed and reformed , otherwise they become deformed. We can see firsthand how those without the faith stumble on these matters which require a sense of conviction. Be sure to notice guys, how they all have their different ways of tiptoeing around the fact that between 42 million and 46 million little innocent children are slain in their mothers’ wombs every year. This issue is central .

As Blessed Mother Theresa of Calcutta said,

"But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child - a direct killing of the innocent child - murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?”

She just tells it like it is – pure truth. Here’s another quote from her

(Mother Theresa – “Notable and Quotable,” Wall Street Journal, 2/25/94, p. A14)
“America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father’s role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts – a child – as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters” And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners. Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being’s entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign."

Blessed Mother Theresa’s acts of charity towards the sick and dying and homeless rate up there with things unrivaled , so does her charity towards the little ones in the womb in danger of being aborted:

From our children’s home in Calcutta alone, we have saved over 3,000 children from abortions.

. . . but some people posting here just don’t “get it” about charity and abortion, do they ?

 

[NeedImprovement]

Returning to tonyrey’s summation -

Science without morality is a recipe for disaster.

Let’s look at several other real-life examples which bear out his summation - similar to the example given of Alfred Nobel , concerning just what happens , when the power of science is clutched in the hands of the depraved; beginning by confirming that the perverse fruit we’re considering bears no trace of speculation or theory - just the cold hard facts from (dysfunctional) working models:

Science when misused can be disastrous. Do you know why the Nobel Prize was set up? That’s because the inventor of dynamic & ballistic was so disillusioned to see his invention meant to used in mining and building project become military weapons.

Heard of genetic profiling and genetic discrimination? It could be a threat to future generation to come, and that include your children and your grandchildren.

. . .

I am in this industry. I know how corrupted it can become.

Unfortunately, Dr. Jerome Lejeune’s name didn’t seem to come up on any of the linked references to scientist with religious convictions ergo ethics … (might’ve missed it) , but as the father of modern genetics, he deserves more than honourable mention here . And continuing with DeepBlueSea’s reference to genetic profiling and genetic discrimination (to which some unknowledgeable reply said “potentially”) : This isn’t “potentially” it is already a reality. Dr. Lejeune labels it “chromosomal racism”. In the US, the abortion rate of those children receiving a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome is 92% . Dr Lejeune said:

“The temptation to kill by abortion these small people afflicted with disease (Trisomy 21) is contrary to moral law; and genetics confirm this conclusion. This moral law is not arbitrary”

“Chromosomal racism is brandished like a flag of freedom. …That this negation of medicine, of all the biological brotherhood that links mankind, is the sole practical application of the knowledge of Trisomy 21 more than breaks my heart.”

An excerpt from the explanation of how he got started on that track , in the words of his daughter, Clara Lejeune Gaymard :

Clara Lejeune Gaymard, daughter of French geneticist Dr. Jerome Lejeune, who discovered the cause of Down syndrome and whose cause for canonization was opened in 2007, vividly recalls the day that this devastating reality hit home for her family:

“I remember it so clearly. I was 10 years old, and, one day, [Dr. Lejeune] came home for lunch. The day before, on television, there was a movie about a family where a woman had a child with Down syndrome, and she wanted to abort, and she couldn’t do it then. After, there was a debate about abortion of the diseased children… A boy came to his consultation with his mom, and he was crying, and my father said, “Why are you crying?” And his mother said, “He saw the movie, and I couldn’t stop him crying.”…Then he jumped in my father’s arms, and he was only 10 with Down syndrome. He said, “You know, they want to kill us. And you have to save us, because we are too weak, and we can’t do anything.” [My father] came back home for lunch, and he was white, and he said, “If I don’t protect them, I am nothing.” That’s how it started. And then his career came down. He didn’t have money for his research. He was like a pariah, and so on, but he accepted that because he thought he was doing that which was his duty. “

. . . There is a cruel irony in the timing of this legislation; just as life has never been better for those with Trisomy 21, the French governments proposes measures which may lead to their extinction.
Scientists in America and Europe are closing in on groundbreaking therapies to make the learning and memory of those with Down syndrome completely normal, yet parents who have received a pre-natal diagnosis of Down syndrome are not likely be told this by their health professionals. In the United States, the abortion rate for those receiving diagnosis is 92 percent.
Parents will not be told of the full, satisfying lives people with Down syndrome are leading now–how they are participating in sports, work, media, social events, and relationships. It is more probable that they will hear a coldly clinical list of symptoms and dire prognoses about Down syndrome without reference to the promising research which may make the cognition and memory of those with Down syndrome normal within a decade, or their growing list of accomplishments.
Instead, these vulnerable parents will be frightened by those whose prejudices against those with disabilities have been called by Lejeune, “Chromosomal racism.” The century-old specter of eugenics has once again reared its ugly head in Europe.

uscatholic.org/blog/2011/05/pre-natal-genetic-testing-threatens-lives

But sadly, it doesn’t even end there.

lifenews.com/2012/06/14/british-bioethics-council-gives-ok-to-three-parent-embryo/

A British ethics committee has recommended going forward with creating human embryos with 3 genetic parents. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics, an independent body that considers issues in biotechnology and medicine, has found the genetic engineering technique is ethical and should move forward even though the technique is currently against the law in the United Kingdom.

Here’s a link to a very engaging read about Dr. Lejeune, describing some of the reasons why he is being considered for canonization ;about how he fought/exposed fraudulent media campaigns , and continued in the face of insolent persecution from some of his depraved colleagues. Jerome Lejeune , Apostle of Life

 

[NeedImprovement]

This next real life (dysfunctional) working model is where the rubber really hits the road :

Almost 16 years ago, Dr. Frederick T. Zugibe M.S., M.D., Ph.D., FCAP, FACC, FAAFS , explains that through genetics and forensics …

“The question as to when human life and personhood begins has been made a controversial issue because the proponents of abortion do not want it to begin at least before the first 24 weeks of gestation. There, however, should be no controversy because the scientific facts are incontrovertible…”

Imagine the technological advances which are at our disposal today, even within those last 16 years, which support unequivocally the scientific testimony of human personhood in the womb from the moment of conception. Now contrast that against what experts from the scientific community were saying as far back as 1981 (April 23-24) when they appeared before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee to provide their testimony ,responding to the question : **When does human life begin **?

• Dr. Micheline M. Mathews-Roth, Harvard medical School, gave confirming testimony, supported by references from over 20 embryology and other medical textbooks that human life began at conception.
• “Father of Modern Genetics” Dr. Jerome Lejeune told the lawmakers: “To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion … it is plain experimental evidence.”
• Dr. Hymie Gordon, Chairman, Department of Genetics at the Mayo Clinic, added: “By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception.”
• Dr. McCarthy de Mere, medical doctor and law professor, University of Tennessee, testified: “The exact moment of the beginning of personhood and of the human body is at the moment of conception.”
• Dr. Alfred Bongiovanni, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, concluded, “I am no more prepared to say that these early stages represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty … is not a human being.”
• Dr. Richard V. Jaynes: “To say that the beginning of human life cannot be determined scientifically is utterly ridiculous.”
• Dr. Landrum Shettles, sometimes called the “Father of In Vitro Fertilization” notes, “Conception confers life and makes that life one of a kind.” And on the Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade, “To deny a truth [about when life begins] should not be made a basis for legalizing abortion.”
• Professor Eugene Diamond: “…either the justices were fed a backwoods biology or they were pretending ignorance about a scientific certainty.”

Over 30 years ago … ! …… with the technology available at that time , medical science stood up to say, “Abortion is a lie.” Science finally confirms what the Church has been saying forever.

Indeed tonyrey : Science without morality is a recipe for disaster. Nothing brings this reality home more poignantly and horrifically than the senseless slaughter of all these millions upon millions of little ones in their mothers’ wombs annually:

Abortion defies both morality and the “incontrovertible facts” of medical science.

So , you people who support abortion or remain conveniently indifferent: Just what do you think your beliefs (of lack thereof) are founded on ?

Maybe you really have been duped by the perpetual media blitz and social indoctrination, while others may simply find it more “convenient” to believe the lie.

(Perhaps a reason we could feel a little sorry for some of the atheists posting here and why we might remember to pray for them too ; reminding ourselves that they are without the force with which our faith drives our sense of conviction. Some of them may even have to convince themselves over and over again of what they claim they believe on these threads.)

 

[Sair]

If we’re honest, and we understand that we would not be entitled to any healing miracle from our Creator, or knowledge of why we do not receive healing miracles from our Creator, then we can acknowledge that it is not cruel of Him to go beyond his obligations to mankind, and that if his doing so for some and not others makes us feel bad, then it is just our own jealousy and not His failure to meet any obligation which would lead us to call him cruel.

Yet by such a standard, we judge any human who has the ability to prevent or alleviate the suffering of another to be negligent - at best - if they do not act, even if the suffering party is a stranger. Ironically, if a religious believer acts benevolently towards a stranger, it is taken to be evidence of the positive effects of faith in this apparently capricious god who can bestow or withhold his assistance as he pleases, without any justification, only because he’s a god…

 

[Sair]

This next real life (dysfunctional) working model is where the rubber really hits the road :

Almost 16 years ago, Dr. Frederick T. Zugibe M.S., M.D., Ph.D., FCAP, FACC, FAAFS , explains that through genetics and forensics …

“The question as to when human life and personhood begins has been made a controversial issue because the proponents of abortion do not want it to begin at least before the first 24 weeks of gestation. There, however, should be no controversy because the scientific facts are incontrovertible…”

Imagine the technological advances which are at our disposal today, even within those last 16 years, which support unequivocally the scientific testimony of human personhood in the womb from the moment of conception. Now contrast that against what experts from the scientific community were saying as far back as 1981 (April 23-24) when they appeared before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee to provide their testimony ,responding to the question : **When does human life begin **?

• Dr. Micheline M. Mathews-Roth, Harvard medical School, gave confirming testimony, supported by references from over 20 embryology and other medical textbooks that human life began at conception.
• “Father of Modern Genetics” Dr. Jerome Lejeune told the lawmakers: “To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion … it is plain experimental evidence.”
• Dr. Hymie Gordon, Chairman, Department of Genetics at the Mayo Clinic, added: “By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception.”
• Dr. McCarthy de Mere, medical doctor and law professor, University of Tennessee, testified: “The exact moment of the beginning of personhood and of the human body is at the moment of conception.”
• Dr. Alfred Bongiovanni, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, concluded, “I am no more prepared to say that these early stages represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty … is not a human being.”
• Dr. Richard V. Jaynes: “To say that the beginning of human life cannot be determined scientifically is utterly ridiculous.”
• Dr. Landrum Shettles, sometimes called the “Father of In Vitro Fertilization” notes, “Conception confers life and makes that life one of a kind.” And on the Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade, “To deny a truth [about when life begins] should not be made a basis for legalizing abortion.”
• Professor Eugene Diamond: “…either the justices were fed a backwoods biology or they were pretending ignorance about a scientific certainty.”

Over 30 years ago … ! …… with the technology available at that time , medical science stood up to say, “Abortion is a lie.” Science finally confirms what the Church has been saying forever.

Indeed tonyrey : Science without morality is a recipe for disaster. Nothing brings this reality home more poignantly and horrifically than the senseless slaughter of all these millions upon millions of little ones in their mothers’ wombs annually:

Abortion defies both morality and the “incontrovertible facts” of medical science.

So , you people who support abortion or remain conveniently indifferent: Just what do you think your beliefs (of lack thereof) are founded on ?

Maybe you really have been duped by the perpetual media blitz and social indoctrination, while others may simply find it more “convenient” to believe the lie.

(Perhaps a reason we could feel a little sorry for some of the atheists posting here and why we might remember to pray for them too ; reminding ourselves that they are without the force with which our faith drives our sense of conviction. Some of them may even have to convince themselves over and over again of what they claim they believe on these threads.)

Is it also considered a mortal sin to refuse donations to charities that operate in countries where hundreds (if not thousands) of born children die every day, in agony, from malnutrition while their parents look on helplessly? Apparently not, since charity is often refused, with full Christian sanction, on the basis that adults have access to condoms.

I mean, really - even Peter Singer, who is reviled by Catholics the world over for his views on abortion, has argued convincingly that citizens of developed nations have a moral obligation to give at least a quarter of their income to impoverished countries - and he pratises what he preaches.