Tag Archives: biology

Burying the Truth

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Once again, I feel compelled to tell you all about a serious mistake in logic and ethics that one of my favorite bands, Brother, has made. You may recall that I have thrice (here, here, and here) pointed to their "Concert for Cures" tour. Well, they now have a whole page dedicated to it, and it's full of misconceptions and misinformation. Let's flood them with corrections.

"'If, as the scientific community agrees, there's a real chance to cure not just diabetes, but Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, spinal injury, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis…and the list goes on, then let's get serious and bring it on', says Richardson. 'And let's not drive stem cell research underground by leaving it to private companies to fund. Let's give scientists in our public institutions the resources they need to make the breakthroughs the world so desperately needs.'"

First, be clear about scope. Are we talking about stem cells in general, or embryonic stem cells in particular? Next, define "real chance". Last I checked, embryonic stem cells haven't done squat and adult stem cells have been showing promising results. Lastly, stop begging the question. This is not merely a matter of whether we support scientific progress or not. It's about whether we want progress at any moral or ethical cost.

Anybody Game?

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I am here today to go on the record with my bewilderment with opponents of embryonic stem cell research.

Here’s how I understand stem cell research: Fertilize an egg and let it divide a few times. Take the resulting clump of cells and use them to see what kinds of tissues you can grow on command. Repeat until you get something useful. Put cotton in your ears while Christians scream at you for being a genocidal maniac.

So who wants to respond to this?

Evolution

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Coinciding nicely with a discussion
about evolution and intelligent design between Jerry and Theomoroph, here are
two interesting stories.

Evolutionism
and the Limits of Science
Interview With Professor Mariano Artigas (Zenit)

Science marks a key achievement in human history, says a philosopher who nevertheless warns of an “imperialism” that tries to judge everything through the sciences. Mariano Artigas, a member of Brussels’ International Academy of the Philosophy of Sciences and of the Vatican’s St. Thomas Pontifical Academy, has just published a book on evolutionism and its relationship with philosophy and religion. Entitled “The Frontiers of Evolutionism” and published by Eunsa, the book states that there are questions that science cannot resolve. Artigas, a professor of philosophy of nature and of sciences at the University of Navarre, spoke with ZENIT.

Engineering
God in a Petri Dish
By Kari Lynn Dean

On a steep, narrow street above Chinatown works Jonathon Keats, a tweed-suited, bow-tied 32-year-old who, with assistance from a phalanx of scientists, is genetically engineering God in his apartment. Advisers to Keats’ organization, the International Association for Divine Taxonomy, include biochemists, biophysicists, ecologists, geneticists and zoologists from the University of California at Berkeley, the Smithsonian and other institutions of scientific repute. The mission: to determine where on the phylogenetic map — the scientific tree of life — to put God.

Aesthetics and Evolution

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Science is often more artistic than many people, both within and outside of the humanities would believe. Physicists and mathematicians in particular look for "elegance" as a key factor in deciding a theories worth. In many ways, this is just an extension of Ockham’s razor: the simpler explanation for the same phenomenon is best. Elegance generally evokes images of clean, simple lines, and so dovetails with Ockham rather nicely.

This sense of aesthetics is a good thing and ties in with human cognition very closely–I doubt that we could purge ourselves of this even if we wanted–but it does get oddly distorted in some debates. For your consideration I present an article on evolution and intelligent design and how some prominent advocates of Darwinism may have gotten in a rhetorical jam over their critiques of, for instance, the eyeball and the panda’s thumb. This is from Touchstone Magazine’s special edition on Darwism and Intelligent Design from this summer.

Bunkum

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I’ve often heard from atheists that the Bible doesn’t stand up to academic scrutiny.
If they don’t trust the Bible, I imagine they wouldn’t waste their time discrediting
the Book of Mormon. DNA evidence casts doubt (duh!) Mormon claims that
Israelites emigrated to the Americas 2,600 years ago, with the now-extinct Lamanites
and Nephites becoming the ancestors of American Indians. (Thanks, Relapsed
Catholic)

This article made me think. What sorts of scientific research would cast doubt on
orthodox Christian beliefs? How would we respond? I invite my readers to come up
with answers to both hypothetical questions.