Shots Across the Bow

A new favorite. If you check the links section, you will find I've added a new one. I just started reading James Lilek' blog The Bleat and it is a definite keeper. Check out this bit about a radical U of Cal professor:

She regarded all marriages as oppressive to women and bad for children, since they acculturate children to accept marriage as a viable concept for organizing society. We’re not talking about making marriages more equal - who could argue? - no, we’re talking about abolishing marriage entirely. How this would be accomplished, I didn’t hear - as part of my daily regimen of wife-oppression, I had to run upstairs and change the baby’s diaper while making supper, and I was a bit distracted.

As the father of six, I can attest to his authenticity.

"Bitch" about covers it. As noted by William Quick, apparently, Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation, Bitch)is annoyed by the inconvenience of 9/11.

"I just felt, like, everyone was overreacting," Wurtzel told a Canadian journalist last week about her experience being near Ground Zero on Sept 11. "People were going on about it. That part really annoyed me."

I hear she has a movie coming out soon. Maybe she should ask Robert Altman about the wisdom of "annoying" your audience.

Cloning pets and kids Charles Murtaugh writes in this piece from the National Review Online that

What the copycat news made me realize is that if given the chance, I probably would have cloned Gina. And in this realization is the silver lining for those of us opposed to human cloning: The very harmlessness of cloning pets throws into sharp relief the evils of cloning children.

He makes the point that since pets are property, cloning them is OK, but since children are not property, cloning them is not OK.

He goes on to say that:

A cloned child, made rather than begotten, is a pet: His or her "breed" picked out for its "unique characteristics" just as a border collie is chosen for its intelligence and a poodle because it doesn't shed much hair.

Does his distaste for a "made" child extend to the eradication of genetic defects through prenatal gene therapy? These potential therapies are applications of the same techniques as cloning. Is a child whose spina bifida is repaired prior to development a "pet?" How about a neonate with sickle cell anemia? Does one genetic repair make him or her a "made" child?
OK, so maybe Charles is willing to make an exception for therapeutic purposes. How about more frivoluos purposes?
The techniques used to repair genetic defects could also be used for selection of specific traits; hair color, eye color, athletic ability, intelligence, shedding(baldness), etc. All of the sudden, we are back to his "pet" analogy, with children being made to order.

Murtaugh's argument would seem to rule out all genetic engineering, which begs the question, if genetic engineering results in a child who is less than human, then why are we pursuing it at all?

His argument fails because it is based on a false premise, that cloning a creature makes it property. Whether a creature is property or autonomous is a function of what it is, not how it was made. The process of selecting for certain characteristics will not lessen a child's humanity, whether done over generations of breeding, ie evolution, or in one generation with the biochemical equivalent of a scalpel. This is what may prevent us from travelling the "slippery slope" that most foes of genetic engineering fear. If humanity comes from what you are, rather than where you come from, or how you were made, then many of the ethical considerations vanish.

So why not just say that and get it over with? Simple. The statement above recognizes an essential humanity inherent in a prenate. I don't need to go into what that would entail for the pro-choice crowd.

In order to avoid recognizing a simple truth, folks will continue to perform feats of logical prestidigitation rivalling that of Oolon Colluphid

Pardon me buddy, but do you have the time? I'm surprised we haven't heard that the world will end at this time.

For one minute Wednesday night, time will stand on its head and we will be in perfect chronological symmetry.
The time and date will read the same backward as forward in the Gregorian calendar....
"A mirror day like this is a good opportunity for reflecting," said Mark Saltveit, editor of The Palindromist magazine.
Palindromes are strings of numbers, words or sentences that read the same backward or forward.
Wednesday evening, the time, day, month and year will align: 8:02 p.m., Feb. 20, 2002.

By the pricking of my thumbs...Something wicked this way comes.

more information on the Palestinian attack from Ha'aretz and an interesting proposal from an unusual source.

This week, Abdullah surprised again. In an interview with Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, Abdullah spoke of a draft speech he has prepared for the upcoming Arab summit in which he would propose full normalization of relations with Israel in exchange for a full withdrawal from the territories.

Would the Arabs really keep this promise if Israel withdrew to her boundaries prior to the 1967 Six Days War?
Would the Israelis be willing to trust the Arabs?
Would either side accept peacekeepers to enforce the agreement?

One little rabbit in this hat that the article fails to mention is that Abdullah also requires that Israel recognize the "right of return" for Palestinian refugees. This is an issue that Israel cannot afford to budge on, and Abdullah knows it.

Sounds to me like another worthless offer, similar to the ones Arafat has been offering for decades now.

Listening to the radio this morning, I heard Hallerin Hill, the local talk radio titan, ask an interesting question.

"Should gay couples or singles be allowed to adopt children?"

I got out of range of the station before much discussion, but Hallerin was laying out the positions on both sides. On the one hand, he said the kids would be better off when any sort of family than staying in foster homes or an orphanage. On the other hand, wouldn't allowing gays to adopt amount to an endorsement of the gay lifestyle?

Here are my thoughts.

First, homosexuality is abnormal. This is not a religious conviction or a moral judgment, but a statement of fact. The primary function of the sex drive is to facilitate repoduction. When that drive manifests in such a way as to hinder successful reproduction, then it is functionally abnormal.

I know that the 'official' position of psychiatrists is that homosexuality is no longer considered an abnormal psychological condition, but that change in designation was based more on political and pragmatic factors than on science. The sex drive is so integral to our psychological makeup that once it has formed, it cannot be altered without a tremendous effort. The question became whether that effort was warranted. As society became more accepting of homosexuality and the stigma lessened, we reached a point where the treatment caused more trouble than the problem.

OK, homosexuality is an abnormal expression of sexuality.

So what?

The more gay men there are out there, the more women there are available to turn me down for a date next friday. That is the extent of homosexuality's impact on my life.

So, should gays be allowed to marry? Certainly! They are persons and have every right to enter into a civil contract if they want to. Now churches should not be pressured to perform the ceremony, or recognize the couples as married if it is against their beliefs. It's a wall, not a one way street.

Should gays be allowed to serve in the military? Sure!
While I was in the Navy, we had a kid on board who turned out to be gay. I don't think anybody knew he was gay, and I never heard any rumors one way or the other. He was a good watchstander who did his job well, was friendly and well liked.
He was caught in the showers with a partner, and was off the ship within 48 hours.
We were sorry to see him go, but at the same time, knew that he had to go. Not because he was gay, but because he broke discipline. There were rules, and he broke them. Had he told us he was gay, I am relatively certain that 80%of us in the department wouldn't have cared.
My point is that the mere presence of homosexuals in the military is nowhere near as disruptive as it is portrayed to be. There are issues that have to be addressed, but they are mainly issues of personal responsibility. They don't allow men and women to have sex while aboard ship, although it does happen, and the same rules should apply to homosexuals as well.

Should gays be able to adopt children? Yes.

The only question that should apply is this: Which causes more damage to a child; to be shuffled around between orphanages and foster homes, or to be raised by a gay couple?

I don't know the answer to that question. Being bounced around is certainly traumatic and can be punishing to the child, but we also have to consider the impact on the child's sexual development of being raised by a sexually abnormal parent. My gut tells me that a home with two loving parents, regardless of their sexual orientation, has to be a better place than a foster home or an orphanage.

The SupremeCourt pt2 They are hearing a case on school vouchers today. Apparently in Cleveland, where the case originated, the vast majority of the slots are in religious schools. Opponents of the program say that this amounts to government subsidizing of religious instruction.

I have a few problems with these people.

1. The vouchers are available for any school, religious or not that is willing to meet the state criteria. The fact that most of the schools willing to meet the criteria are religious schools is not an act of the government, but of the schools.
   
2. The parents can choose any participating school. They are not limited to religious schools.
   
3. The First Amendment does not mandate complete separation of church and state; but does say that the state may not treat one religion preferentially over another. The voucher program passes that test, and should be held constitutional.
   

As a practical matter, a national voucher program could sound the death sentence on public education. Opponents are telling the truth when they say that once the good students are skimmed off, the public schools will be left with the worst students, and less money. Unfortunately, this is going to happen anyway. Public education stopped being about the kids a generation ago. While spending on education has increased, actual monies spent on students has decreased. More and more of the school budget is taken up with administrative costs, and other overhead. As a result, the quality of education has dropped off dramatically.

I graduated from one of the local private schools, the Webb School of Knoxville. Webb is a college prep school, and there is an increased emphasis on academics there, while maintaining a full spectrum of extra-curricular activities. The required courses were demanding, and exceeded the public school requirements. I am certain that the education I received there was significantly better than what most kids get through public schools. I know that it is possible to receive every bit as thorough an education in a public school as at Webb, but the difference is at Webb, you can't help but get it. At a public school, you have to search it out.

But, when it came time for me to send my kids to school, I went to an open house at Webb. They had a series of letters written by exchange students who had spent a year at Webb, after they had returned home. They were primarily from European countries; if I remember correctly, Denmark and germany were two. The letters struck me as they all contained variations on the same comment. "I chose to participate in the exchange program to experience a different culture. Even though I was behind my other classmates when I returned, it was worth the trip."

Think about that. A private college prep school, one of the best in the region, and these kids were behind their classmates when they returned to their public schools in Europe.

This battle is already over, folks. Public education has become ensnared in politics, and is gone. Let's do what we can to get our kids out of this mess, before we lose an entire generation.

The Supreme Court decided yesterday that it is OK for our kids to grade each others homework.

America is officially senile!

How in the hell did this get to the Supreme Court? We just spent hundreds of thousands of dollars over grading HOMEWORK!

Surely our lawyers and our courts have mush weightier issues to deal with.

Who says the Olympics are boring? Certainly not Victoria Liljenquist, who is quoted predicting a UFO flyby sometime today.

"The Brotherhood of Light will make their presence known on Thursday, February 21 over the Olympic city," said Victoria Liljenquist of Phoenix, Arizona.

Since she arrived in Utah a week ago Liljenquist has been talking with scores of reporters -- and anyone else who will listen -- about her prediction of a friendly fly-by of space travelers.

"I pinned them down -- between noon and 5 p.m.," said Liljenquist.

Darn, I'll be at work.

I've added a PayPal button to the left over there, not because I expect to be paid for this, but because if one of you is moved to do so (yeah, right) I wanted to make it easy for you. I've also paid to remove the ad above, more to support Blogger than anything else.

Ain't I a prince?

Shameful This piece of trash appeared in the Washington Post, and refers to a memo writen by Ralph Reed

"We are a loyal member of your team and are prepared to do whatever fits your strategic plan," Reed wrote in an Oct. 23, 2000, memo obtained by The Washington Post.

"In public policy," he wrote, "it matters less who has the best arguments and more who gets heard -- and by whom."

No comment needed.

And there was much rejoicing! (yea)Shots Across the Bow will soon be faster, smarter, funnier, and all around wonderful.
Why?
I'm finally upgrading my computer. From a P1 @133Mhz to an AMD XP @1.8Ghz From 14.4k to 56k modem. From 2G to 60G hard drive.
WooHoo!

Darwin and ethics pt2 Ananda Gupta responded to my critique in an e-mail. I got his permission to post portions of his response here, as he makes a very good case for his point of view. Fortunately, I make a better case for mine!*grin*

Ananda
"Morality flows from spirituality" appears to be an unargued premise of yours (not that I have a problem with all unargued premises, see below). It is up to you to show that this is a real dilemma, that biology and spirituality are the only possible bases for moral knowledge. Of course I deny that it is a real dilemma. I believe there are moral truths and moral facts, in the same sense that there are mathematical truths and mathematical facts. Yet mathematical facts do not depend for their plausibility or coherence on the existence of a god.
In particular, I think that certain moral statements ("it's wrong to torture children for fun", to take an obvious example) are self-evidently true, and therefore do not depend on interpretation of divine will, biological observation, or anything else.

While I certainly agree it is wrong to torture small children for fun (it should only be done for profit), this position is not axiomatic, but is based on biological necessity. Any species which recklessly wastes its young is destined for extinction, so there is a biological imperative which lies behind "women and children first!"

You say you believe that there are moral truths and equate those truths to mathematical facts. Unfortunately these moral truths are, without exception, either based on biological necessity or cultural biases.
Here is my challenge to you. Present one moral truth which does not arise from biological necessity, and is universal in scope, applying to all cultures throughout history. Even your example of torturing children falls short of this test, as unwanted children have been tortured, enslaved, and killed in many cultures.

Ananda
And, of course, evolution as it is taught today does not deny spirituality. To the extent that religious figures make scientific claims (such as that Jesus had no mortal father), science has something to say, but in terms of purely spiritual claims (such as that Jesus died to redeem our sins), no branch of science will pass judgment. Lots of people believe in God and also believe that evolutionary theory is true.

Science, particularly biology, assumes that naturally occurring processes can explain everything about our world, and that 'supernatural' events, ie 'creation', are not required. My position is that if we are nothing more than highly evolved animals, and there is no spiritual presence, then all behaviors must spring from biological origins. There is no other option available. We are either natural or supernatural. In the first case, our ability to reason comes only from the way our brain is constructed, the way it processes information, which was shaped by natural selection. Therefore any 'higher truths' we come up with are constructed on that same basis, and subject to the same limitations. In the second case, our thought processes are not limited by our animal instincts, as they are also influenced by some supernatural presence. The problem here is that once we allow for the existence of a supernatural presence, we have aboandoned our basic assumptions about science.

Ananda
Note that if natural selection is not a complete explanation for the evolution of man, the conditional above does not establish that there is a higher power (that would be the fallacy of affirming the consequent -- in variable form, it would be: a implies b, b, therefore a)....That doesn't stop people from asserting it, though, when what they really mean is: "If natural selection is not a complete explanation for the evolution of man, then either there is a higher power, or there's another part of the
explanation unrelated to a higher power that we haven't discovered yet, or it's all just a great mystery so we might as well say there's a God who designed us all and call it quits."

And excluding your last sentence, this is my position. Finding flaws in current theory does not mean I reflexively embrace creationism, although I am faced with that charge more often than not. As you point out, disproof of one statement is not proof of its opposite.

Rich
If there are behaviors in the human animal which cannot be explained through the evolutionary process, then that indicates that another process, one independent of biology, is at work. This places the entire foundation of modern biology at risk.>

Ananda
I would say it puts the entire foundation of sociobiology, or evolutionary psychology, at risk. Not the same thing at all.
What you are saying is something like "If there are astronomical phenomena not explained by Einstein's theory of relativity, then that indicates something else is at work, and all of physics is at risk." But of course all of physics is not at risk; just that sector of theoretical physics that holds to Einstein's theory of relativity (as opposed to, say, the Copenhagen interpretation, or of some other theories altogether). Note that I am not equating evolutionary theory with relativity theory -- evolutionary theory is far more grounded and well-supported. Rather I am comparing evolutionary psychology, a field whose claims are much more controversial, with relativity.

If psychology is not based upon biology, then what is it based on? Psychology started as an observation of behaviors, with an attempt to find the origins of those behaviors in life experiences. Once again, I am back to my quandry: If our identity, our self awareness, is nothing more than the product of our biology, then our psychology must also be a product of our biology, and therefore subject to the actions of natural selection, which means that our behaviors are subject to the same evolutionary pressures as our genetics are.

Ananda
Just because people disagree about the answer to a question doesn't mean there isn't one. And moral questions get resolved.

Moral questions do get resolved, but most often at the point of a sword. The 'higher' truth is determined by the group with the most power, the ultimate expression of Darwinism. It's hard to base moral absolutes on the exercise of power.

My companion page, Strafing Runs has a couple of essays on this very point, if anybody is interested in reading more.

My thanks to Ananda for a very stimulating exchange.

A little levityThree little boys were concerned because they couldn't get anyone to play with them. They decided it was because they had not been baptized and didn't go to Sunday School. They went to the nearest church, but only the janitor was there. One said, "We need to be baptized because no one will come out and play with us. Will you baptize us?" "Sure," said the janitor. He took them into the bathroom and dunked their heads in the toilet bowl, one at a time. Then he said, "Now go out and play."
When they got outside, dripping wet, one of them asked, "What religion
do you think we are?"
The oldest one said, "We're not Katlick, because they pour the water on you.
We're not Bablist because they dunk your whole body in it. We're not
Methdiss because they just sprinkle you."
The littlest one said, "Didn't you smell that water?"
"Yes. What do you think that means?"
"That means we're Pisscopalians."

And so we end another broadcast day. God, I love this stuff. If only I could get paid for it!*grin*