Speedkill

From, where else, Agape Press:

Many mysteries surrounded the virus [HIV], making the formulation of a public health policy difficult. Yet one thing was crystal clear: men practicing homosexual sex were at risk and in danger.

In the 1980s, the CDC chose a course of action partly medical and largely political. To avoid offending gay activists, it did not invoke its prerogative to close down gay bath clubs…

Damn those gays and their bath clubs. Why can’t we just shut them down?

Bizarre.

Christian MD: Dangerous Eugenics Research Being Funded With Taxpayer Dollars

(AgapePress) – The executive director of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations (CMDA) says taxpayer dollars are going to fund a dangerous area of scientific research. The National Institutes of Health has given a grant of nearly three-quarters of a million dollars to Professor Maxwell Mehlman, a scientist at Case Western University, to assist him in studying the genetic enhancements of human beings.

Did you know Christians have their own medical and dental association? Me neither. No doubt to fight back against the horde of godless dentists trying to…I don’t know, I’m sure they’re doing something bad.

I also wasn’t aware that genetic enhancements are the same thing as eugenics.

Dr. David Stevens of the CMDA says Mehlman is a known leader in the field of transhumanism, an area of study that the Christian doctor says has “creating a post-human future” as its goal. The quest of transhumanism, he explains, is to move into that future “by first connecting human beings to computers, essentially creating cyborgs — part human, part computer.”

But the transhumanists’ ultimate objective, Stevens asserts, is “to be able to live forever by downloading your brain into cyberspace.” He says the U.S. government is highly interested in this far-out field of study, and particularly in the area of human genetic enhancements.

I think that’s is a bit beyond what Mehlmen is doing now. They neglect to mention that the goal of the study is “to figure out how to ethically use human subjects in experiments whose ultimate goal would be to ‘to enhance “normal” individuals — to make them smarter, stronger, or better-looking.’” Suddenly the CMDA’s concerns seem a bit less urgent.

The dangers of this line of inquiry and its logical progressions are numerous, the Christian doctor points out. One frightening scenario, he suggests, is the potential “arms race” that could develop between nations vying to be the first to create a race of super-smart, super-strong, enhanced human beings for use as soldiers.

You know, I thought those movies were a bit too violent and dark for the kind of Christians who run Agape and apparently the CMDA. Guess not.

Since I’ve been gone for the past week, I’ve missed some things. One of those things is a flyer for Tracy Velasquez that was distributed in Bozeman. New West has a story and a picture of the flyer. Velazquez has a response here.

The flyer is pretty bad. I understand what Velazquez was going for; she wants to highlight women’s issues. The flyer, however, is a terrifically bad attempt at it. Rather than running on women’s issues, she’s running on gender. There’s a big difference. The flyer groups Republican and Democratic representatives together, voting record and positions be damned. It’s identity politics. The New West story makes this point pretty well:

Observers say it’s an obvious ploy by Velazquez to encourage X chromosome voters to vote for her because she, like them, is a woman. But is it a tactic that will energize Democratic voters or turn them off? Is it politically correct to use gender as a wedge issue when it is considered offensive to similarly try and part voters along issues of race, religion and sexual orientation? “As a woman, I’m offended,” said a voter who, until the flyer arrived, had been undecided.

Velazquez makes this point in her defense:

I understand my opponent thinks women’s issues don’t matter to my house district. Perhaps he doesn’t understand that here in Montana, and in America, there is a lot in play this time around that women would like a say on. Some of these issues include:

…

Is it divisive to say that women deserve representation? Not any more than it’s divisive to say that race and class played a role in the pitiful response to Hurricane Katrina. These are tough issues. And, unfortunately, this is a zero-sum game: nineteen more women every two years to get to a 50-50 Congress by 2020 means nineteen less men every two years.

I realize that ellipse cuts out most of the substance of her response, but I’ll get to it in a second. It seems like Velazquez wants to claim that women can’t be represented by men. Which is rather absurd. The ellipse cuts out examples in support of her claim that women are not properly represented. She lists this, for example,

-Values. There is a gender gap in America when it comes to what men and women believe on important issues. A January 2006 Gallup Poll showed that 62% of American women, versus 53% of men, want our troops to come home from Iraq by the end of 2006. Only 34% of women approve of President Bush’s handling of Iraq, compared with 53% among males; three-fifths of women disapprove of Bush’s handling of the economy, while only half of men disapprove. (Bloomberg, April 2006). In a separate February 2006 poll, 64% of women are dissatisfied with the direction the country is going, compared with 53% for men. The fact is, women see the world a little differently than men – and we deserve to have women representing our world-view.

I think she’s taking a good point about gender differences and extrapolating it incorrectly. 47% of males agree with the 67% of females on Bush’s handling of Iraq. Which suggests we can find males that agree with females on this issue. And that’s the important point. It’s more likely for a female candidate to agree with other females on the issues, but that doesn’t really matter when we’re looking at individual candidates. We can compare Phillips and Velasquez and decide who to vote for without basing our vote on what gender they are. Perhaps if you’re a male you’re more likely to agree with Phillips and if you’re female you’re more likely to go with Velasquez. It’s just that that’s irrelevant when you’ve looked at each candidate and compared their views to your own. We’re looking at overall numbers here. If a woman looks at her current representative and sees that she agrees with him, is she still not properly represented because he’s a man and she’s not? Taking the focus off the issues and putting it on gender leads to that conclusion.

Velasquez’s points are reasons for encouraging more women to run as candidates. They’re reasons for making people who don’t already take women seriously as candidates do so. But they do not allow us to ignore the merits of individual candidates in favor of voting by gender. Nor do they justify the inflammatory nature of the flyer. The other side of the flyer is on the right track. Too bad this side has overshadowed it.

I have nothing useful to post today, but I thought I’d take on Wulfgar’s rebuttal from the Montana blogosphere abortion debate that wasn’t. I’m still pro-choice, but I’m going to see how well I can make a (moderate) case for the other side. This is the main part of Wulfgar’s comments, minus the first and last paragraphs:

In presuming how the opponents will react, Eric states with no reservation that human life begins at conception. His argument unfolds such that all such life is to be equally valued, with no regard for whether we are discussing a two-celled blastocyte, or, presumably, a twenty-year-old serial killer. I point to the possible occupation of the young person in my example to highlight a glaring flaw in Eric’s blatant appeal to the human emotional attachment we feel to each other; simply put, it is based on our relationships by experience. Indeed, we value our children, born or unborn. This does not apply, apparently, to the children of an enemy we are at war with. Nor do these warm and fuzzy feelings of value apply to the children of another, should that child become a criminal monster to our way of thinking.

Eric, having established (in his mind) that life begins at conception, and that all life must be valued equally, asserts even a further right to the unborn: that all human life “deserves living”. He asserts overtly that the unborn are owed life; and from the process of his argument, that all humans are owed (deserve) life. I don’t need to waste a great deal of exposition explaining how this is ludicrous. US law does not hold that all humans are owed life, and rather asserts that some humans are owed death. The law holds that individual humans have a right to live, given that they pose no threat to another, impede the rights of another, or that their death may further the goals of supporting the earlier statements of security and justice. We legally accept collateral damage; we legally accept capital punishment and we legally accept abortion for these very reasons. We accept these things because they stand to promote the liberty, security and justice for living American citizens.

In order to witness the probable injustice, we must address the facts of biology. Women bear children. God and themselves willing, they carry that life for nine months. That is a medical condition, a fact of biology, and as such must be private between a woman and her doctor. If it is decided that this child is a significant threat to the justice she can legally expect, then she is well within the accepted bounds of US law to ask for the termination of that threat. To suggest that the law would be better by demanding she bear the child to term is an abomination. That suggests that the rights of women are subservient to the rights of the unborn, and as such is a total rejection of accepted American norms and freedoms. Furthermore, it makes a woman a virtual slave to society’s unfair devotion to the unborn.

Wulfgar skirts the issue of where life begins in favor of other arguments. His arguments, however, are flawed. First, Wulfgar is right to say that not all life is considered equal. If you impede on someone else’s freedoms without justification, it is considered just for you to be punished. What we have to decide is whether there is justification for the restriction of a woman’s rights during pregnancy. Wulfgar rejects justification outright, calling restrictions an “abomination.” We sometimes deem it necessary to curtail the rights of someone based on choices they make, however. If you murder someone, you lose freedoms by being put in prison. If you steal something, maybe you’re required to do community service. If you sign a contract, you must follow it or face a penalty. These situations essentially make someone subservient to the rights of another. It would be an abomination if this subservience did not depend on a choice made by the individual and was not in proportion to the consequences of such a choice. The contract situation would essentially become slavery, for example. Now, with regard to becoming pregnant, the woman clearly has a choice, except when raped. This choice is made while fully aware of the consequences of such an action. So this situation fits something like the contract situation; a choice has been made and it entails certain consequences. The question becomes should those consequences (creating and bringing to viability a human being) override certain rights of the mother.

When deciding this question, we have to ask if the unborn’s right (if they have one) to life trumps the freedoms lost by the mother. In general, we hold people accountable for causing the loss of another’s life. We do not hold a person accountable in certain circumstances, including the victims culpability for a certain crime, accidents, and self defense. The unborn on the whole fail to meet any of those qualifications. On some occasions abortion could be considered self-defense, so it is possible to make an exception in cases where the life of the mother is at stake. Abortion is not an accident; miscarriages are accidents. The unborn have not committed any sort of crime for which they need to be held accountable. So, the unborn do not meet any qualification for the loss of their life. Now, the second thing we must decide is if the unborn deserve the same sort of protection as human beings. Human life is generally considered more worthwhile than the life of, say, ants, which we may end with impunity. The question becomes, is an unborn life on par with a human life? From conception, the unborn contain the instructions with which to build complete (and unique) human beings. The unborn are certainly “alive,” as they are at a minimum living cells. Barring extraordinary circumstances, they will develop into people. Those who bring up miscarriage as an objection to potentiality can justify murder in the same manner: it doesn’t matter than I killed him, an accident might’ve killed him later. Birth control is not an objection either, as it terminates pregnancies before the instructions are formed, meaning nothing that could be considered human was destroyed. The unborn have the code that makes us members of the human species and they are alive. They are worthy of the same protections as other human beings.

So, there’s my case. The unborn are clearly human beings, which are afforded a right to life unless certain qualifications are met. These qualifications are not met in an abortion. The person causing the loss of life is held accountable except in a few circumstances, which only occur in a few types of abortion, for which exceptions may be made. The woman has made a choice knowing the consequences of such a choice and in accordance with other situations in our society, must be made to surrender some of her rights as a result or face consequences on par with similar actions. This means prison time on the same level as first degree murder, except when raped or her life is at stake.

I wrote that pretty quickly, so I’m not sure if I’m entirely clear in parts. I think the main thrust is pretty clear, though.

In the paper today is a letter about abortion. It has these two interesting paragraphs:

The decision says, “If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant’s case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life is guaranteed by the (Fourteenth) Amendment.”

In the past 32 years, simple logic and the march of science have settled that question of personhood. Since it is seen growing from the moment of conception, it must be alive. Since its parents are people, reason would dictate that this fetus is not an alligator. but a little person.

Now, both of those points were certainly known in 1973. The problem is that person doesn’t simply mean something that’s alive with human DNA. After that comment, Roe v. Wade discusses what exactly “person” means constitutionally and come to the conclusion that it doesn’t include the unborn.

It is time to abandon that death-dealing (46 million lives lost) flat-earth decision and celebrate instead the God-given life-saving knowledge available in the 21st century.

I really don’t believe that people actually believe abortion is murder. Maybe they think they do, but they don’t seem to be taking it seriously enough. A few marches and a bit of harassment at clinics? I’ve seen more people chained to trees or gates than I have to the door of an abortion clinic. If you believe abortion is murder, this is the Holocaust 4 times over. This doesn’t justify civil disobedience? Maybe some property destruction? It seems bizarre to me that these people apparently watch people walk into a clinic with the purpose of killing someone and all they do is yell or hand them a pamphlet.

Matt and Wulfgar have put up posts answering a questionnaire for Democrats posted over at Rabid Sanity. I thought I might give it a shot as well.

1. What is going right with our country right now? This question is necessary because if we all agree on what is working, we won’t have to reinvent the wheel and waste time.

Generally, things are going fine. Our system of government is works well enough, civil liberties are generally respected, most people are getting by, etc. I don’t think there’s really a need to agree on what’s working, as there are fewer things that aren’t, so fleshing them out is easier and less time consuming.

2. What are the top three issues that need to be addressed in order of priority. You can’t say everything, because then nothing is a priority.

1. Our current war on terror strategy. This includes things like the war in Iraq, the Patriot act, the NSA spying conundrum, etc. Iraq is obviously the biggest part of this. It’s costing us trillions and has rolled back some of the gains made by the war in Afghanistan (which could have been prosecuted better in places, but we can’t underestimate the value of depriving al Qaeda of essentially their own country). A lot of blood has been shed already there, with the potential for more. The potential for success (defined as a stable and democratic regime) seems low, but I still have some hope left. At home, civil liberties are being sacrificed in the name of the Patriot act (as a caveat, the whole act is not bad, but has quite a few worrying provisions) and warrant-less wiretaps.

2. Our national discourse. I’m young, so I can’t really say if it’s always been like this, but our national discourse is pathetic. The media is a major part of this. Being more concerned with making money than informing us, they put vacuous pundits on television to scream at each other and demonize the other side. When they aren’t doing that, they’re doing pointless horserace coverage or engaging in unenlightening he said-she said reporting. Don’t get me wrong, there are good reporters (print, mostly), but we’re steeped in these worthless human interest stories and mind-numbing pundit shows that get us nowhere. To get more, we can turn to ideological opinion magazines, but the content is uneven. It’s not all the media’s fault, though. There’s obviously a market for this crap. Too many people just don’t care. Voter turnout is pathetic. How many people can name their Congressional representatives? The people that do vote have problems as well. Rather than voting based on policy, they’re swayed by looks, emotion, or appeals to a shared faith. Some think their religion is a sound basis for policy. Perhaps worse, some lazily vote for whatever party they decided they were a part of long ago. No one’s perfect, but it’s not that hard to educate yourself. It’s not that hard to learn about how politicians manipulate voters and try to correct for it. Then there are the partisans of both sides. Godless hippies who hate America vs. corrupt corporate fatcats bent on turning this country into a theocracy? I don’t think so. Oh, but I can’t blame the people who have turned off politics for doing so. Look at who they have to vote for. Politicians who care about their special interest checks more than the people they serve. Cynical manipulations of the voting public. The belief that they should intervene in private family tragedies. Principle thrown to the wind to get elected (or the misguided belief that it will get them elected). This is something of a catch all, but it’s all related and it’s something we need to fix (of course, I don’t have the answers).

3. Health care. I hesitate to put this here because I have recurring philosophical questions about this side of liberalism. Still, our current system is bloated and inefficient. It works for the rich, but leaves out the poor. Whether this means getting government completely out of it or moving to a system of universal government care, I’m not entirely sure. Something has to change.

3. We have been fighting the War on Poverty for 40 years. Have we made any progress? A follow up; What is working, and what isn’t working?

I’d say we have. As Wulfgar pointed out, our definition of poverty is much higher than third world definitions. That’s excellent. We still have many homeless and others who are struggling. I honestly don’t have strong opinions here. Things like unemployment insurance, welfare, etc are good programs, but they won’t pull people out of poverty on their own. I’m still unsure of exactly how much help we should give to people, but I think helping people who want to make a better life is a noble goal.

4. Is terrorism (as identified with Osama bin Laden) a threat to this country? What should we do about it if it is, and if it is not, why not?

In the sense that it could cost us a significant number of lives, yes. I can’t recommend Dying to Win enough. I think we have solutions, but they’re not simple to carry out. We need to get out of Saudi Arabia and stop pointless ventures like the one in Iraq. To do this, we need to be energy independent. The current generation of al Qaeda isn’t going to be swayed by those remedies, but it’s creating more terrorists that’s our biggest problem. Like Matt said, keeping them away from more destructive weaponry than commercial aircraft is a priority. It’s also pretty clear that we need to engage the people of the Middle East and explain ourselves better. Debate, not propaganda, can help them understand us and hopefully get them on our side.

5. Are there any Republican programs that you agree with? If so, which ones?

Opposition to gun control and affirmative action are generally Republican ideas and I agree with those to a certain degree.

So, there we have it. For all I write about religion on here, you might think I put something to do with that in my top three issues. Science policy, too. Certainly I think secularizing our political discourse is good and that fits in number 2. Global warming and science policy in general are probably number 4.

I’m normally not one to pick on conservatives who are pro-death penalty and anti-abortion. There’s enough wiggle room if you condition your position on innocence for me to find better things to do. This statement from Bush, however, doesn’t seem to have that nuance:

“You believe as I do that every human life has value, that the strong have a duty to protect the weak and that the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence apply to everyone, not just to those considered healthy or wanted or convenient,” Bush told the anti-abortion marchers.

I don’t see how that doesn’t apply to people on death row.

I’ve always been a bit in the middle regarding this debate. On the one hand, there are quite a few studies correlating aggression and violent game play. On the other, there’s no evidence (though this doesn’t mean that it isn’t having an effect) that it’s actually affecting violent crime statistics, as we see from the decreasing crime statistics. We also have to factor in the fact that video games seem improve certain mental abilities of kids. How to reconcile all that? I found this point in post from Cognitive Daily interesting:

Kirsh puts all this evidence together to argue that violent games should have a more dramatic affect on aggressive behavior in early adolescence compared to mid and late adolescence. However, Kirsch also acknowledges that there are many other contributors to aggressive behavior, including gender, family, peers, school, and personality. Each of these other contributors may vary differently across adolescence — for example, susceptibility to peer pressure peaks at around age 15, just as physical aggression is beginning to diminish. And while there are significant gender differences in violent and aggressive behavior (boys are much more aggressive than girls), there does not appear to be a gender difference in the impact of video game violence.

Some researchers, such as James Garbarino, suggest that most kids can handle one or two of these risk factors for aggressive behavior, but once several of them are combined, the likelihood of aggressive behavior increases dramatically. Perhaps only when video game violence is studied in the context of many different risk factors — and the other known phenomena related to adolescent development — will its true impact be known.

What Garbarino suggests seems like the right idea. The loss of other risk factors could explain the fact that we don’t seem to be seeing the effects of violent video games manifesting themselves outside of these studies. I’m hardly a psychologist, though.

Another salient comment follows:

I’d like to add one more recommendation myself — that researchers also not treat all video games the same. As recent research has suggested, not all video game violence is created equal, and a careful study will also take different types of video game violence into account.

Certainly true. Rome: Total War may have plenty of violence, but it’s qualitatively different from Halo.

I haven’t commented on anything from Agape Press in a while, so here we go. They mention a survey from the CDC on homosexual activity:

(AgapePress) – According to a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more women are experimenting with homosexual activity.

The report was based on data collected in 2002 in the National Survey of Family Growth. It found 11 percent of women said they had had a sexual experience with another woman. That is compared to 4 percent of women who said the same thing in a 1992 survey.

Younger women, however, were even more likely to experiment with homosexuality. According to an article in the Washington Post, 14 percent of women in their late teens and 20s claimed to have had a same-sex experience.

They go on to attribute that to it being “hip.” So far, nothing wrong. They end with this:

However, when it came to self-identifying as homosexual, the percentages of the U.S. population that appear to be homosexual was as small as in other surveys — only 2-3 percent, according to the CDC study.

Doesn’t this conflict with all the comments made by the AFA and Agape about homosexuals converting kids to their sexual orientation? I mean, if we all have “sinful hearts,” gay sex ought to be awfully enticing.

Plus, with the declining morality of American youths (what else could increasing experimentation imply?), gay sex is really the only conceivable bulwark against the mass conversions embracing our sinful hearts must lead to. Yet, the increase in experimentation indicates decreasing revulsion in this area and no corresponding increase in actual homosexuals.

It seems to me the AFA has some thinking to do.

That seems unlikely, of course.

Bill O’Reilly tells us why businesses should love Merry Christmas:

Every company in America should be on its knees thanking Jesus for being born. Without Christmas, most American businesses would be far less profitable. More than enough reason for business to be screaming “Merry Christmas.”

As I wrote last December, Christmas is very much a commercial holiday. It always has been. Since the primary tradition was invented by elites basically to calm down the masses, rampant consumerism can certainly be seen as the meaning of Christmas. It diverts the attention of the masses from important matters to things like Xboxes.

But, I’m beginning to sound like some sort of Marxist, so I’ll stop there.

Of course, someone should inform Bill that the gift-giving tradition driving holiday season profits has little to do with Jesus. In fact, with or without Christianity, it’s conceivable that the winter solstice festivals would have been civilized, so to speak, in the same way as Christmas has been. Without paganism, there’s no reason to think Christianity would have created Christmas or that it would need the creation of a sort of “folk identity” that led to Santa Claus and gift giving.

(via ThinkProgress)