Remember the death panels? Sure you do. Sarah Palin running off at the mouth. Ya know how those people are- either dishonest or dumb. There is no such thing embodied in any legislative initiative… or is there? Government Control Leads to Denial of Care suggests that the very nature of the beast lends itself to rationed care; particularly for the elderly. Quoting:

From the Daily Mail, October 13: "A grandfather who beat cancer was wrongly told the disease had returned and left to die at a hospice which pioneered a controversial 'death pathway.' Doctors said there was nothing more they could do for 76-year- old Jack Jones, and his family claim he was denied food, water, and medication except painkillers. He died within two weeks. But tests after his death found that his cancer had not come back and he was in fact suffering from pneumonia brought on by a chest infection."

Doctors said so. Jump back. Who are you to dispute an authority? Especially one so well versed in the science of medicine. There are pioneers in everything including pathways to death. The human mind is marvelously innovative. Now we know two things. There was no death panel. We also know that people die and they die in America which has a different system of health care and one which favors those with better health plans or simply any plan at all. But there is something else worth looking at. Reasoning Through the Rationing of End-of-Life Care is a Science Daily article. From the article:

ScienceDaily (2010-01-21) — Acknowledging that the idea of rationing health care, particularly at the end of life, may incite too much vitriol to get much rational consideration, a professor of neurology called for the start of a discussion.

There we go again. Professor of neurology. Authority. Oh well, we listen to Professor Olegt don't we? John Freeman, M.D., Lederer Professor Emeritus of Pediatric Neurology and a faculty member of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, authored an opinion piece this very month in the Journal of Medical Ethics, which was directed at the Obama administration. It asks Obama "to consider rationing end-of-life care as an initial step towards healthcare reform." Now he did not use the term death panel but…

HT: Paul

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Why “ClimateGate” Ain’t Nothing is a symptom of a deeper societal problem- a compulsive desire to direct the lives of individuals and business enterprises based on dogma that is unfalsifiable. The debate is over, declared a politician, not a scientist. Global warming is a fact, fact, fact. Just ask scientists who have looked into the data. They wouldn't lie. Or would they?

It doesn't matter to Chris Mooney who describes the revelations, contained in emails authored by scientists, as a "nasty, ugly sideshow." It is ugly. Deception is unattractive. But far from being a sideshow the scandal is relevant to what matters most- the credibility of supporting data and the integrity of those supplying the data.

Mooney makes his blind allegiance to dogma plain when he asserts that "no matter what a few scientists may have said in emails, we have to go to Copenhagen and deal with our warming, melting planet."

Right Chris. Head on over to Copenhagen with your fingers in your ears and blinders shielding you from any inconvenient facts. There's no point in an author, best known for a book loaded with political polemics, getting bogged down with sideshows having to do with the authenticity of scientific data.

HT: Salvador Cordova

No Smiting is the title of a New York Times book review by Paul Bloom. The review is notable for a number of reasons. It is a focal point around which we are able to contrast differing views of the world begining with the perspective of Robert Wright, author of the book The Evolution of God. Because the review is rich in material, around which discussions can be centered, I'll break this into two distinct blog entries. This one will focus on the page you can link to and a follow-up, coming shortly thereafter, will focus on the following review page, Kindly confine any comments on this blog entry to the first page of the review. I'll start with an analysis of the first paragraph:

God has mellowed. The God that most Americans worship occasionally gets upset about abortion and gay marriage, but he is a softy compared with the Yahweh of the Hebrew Bible. That was a warrior God, savagely tribal, deeply insecure about his status and willing to commit mass murder to show off his powers. But at least Yahweh had strong moral views, occasionally enlightened ones, about how the Israelites should behave. His hunter-gatherer ancestors, by contrast, were doofus gods. Morally clueless, they were often yelled at by their people and tended toward quirky obsessions. One thunder god would get mad if people combed their hair during a storm or watched dogs mate.

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Chuck Colson wrote a commentary titled The Proper Role of Science. Although I agree with his general thrust I have some minor reservations about it. For example, increased grants for research go beyond embryonic stem cell research although that is included. Since abortion was recently debated in another thread I wish to focus the attention of this blog entry on other points. I know stems cells and abortion can be debated separately but the same underlying values mark the differences of the two sides. Quoting Colson:

As Nancy Pearcey and I write in our book, How Now Shall We Live?, scientism has its roots in Darwinism. Tufts University professor Daniel Dennett writes that Darwinism, rightly understood, is a “universal acid” that dissolves away all traditional moral, metaphysical, and religious beliefs. For if humans have evolved by a material, purposeless process, then there is no basis for believing in a God who created us and revealed moral truths, or imposing those moral views in any area of life.

Dennett is using a common tactic—using science as a weapon to shoot down religious faith. The standard assumption is that science is objective knowledge, while religion is an expression of subjective need. Religion, therefore, must subordinate its claims about the world to whatever science decrees.

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Cass Sunstein has been selected to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Here is one view of Sunstein and here is another. He has supporters and detractors representing a broad part of the political spectrum. Surprisingly he has some support from conservative sources. I think there is much truth in this quote from the WSJ article:

In other work, Mr. Sunstein has developed the concept of an "availability cascade" — the way in which ideas gain prominence simply by being prominent, until we take their truth for granted.

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Why teaching evolution is dangerous is the title of an unheroic blog entry. From the blog:

Ed Darrell points out the competitive advantage this gives the rest of the world and how local the problem of Creationism is.

I rarely label a statement as a lie even though I might believe it is and rarely use the term liar but will make an exception in this case. Many have peddled the lie linking increasing adherents to Intelligent Design to a loss of competitive advantage for America vis a vis the rest of the world- in the educational, scientific and economic spheres. In the past I've gently corrected these misapprehensions by pointing out some simple facts.

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The following essay was written by Jim Madden and the views/arguments contained within do not necessarily reflect the views of Mike Gene. Mike Gene hosts such essays simply to provoke thought and promote discussion and communication.

Often proponents of ID will argue that a certain kind of teleology is necessary for objective morality. A good example of this can be found in Ben Wiker's book, Moral Darwinism: How We Became Hedonists:

If we, as a part of nature, are ultimately derived from purposeless material forces, morality should be defined as moral Darwinism has defined it. If, on the other hand, we are ultimately the result of an intelligent designer, morality must follow that design. (p. 30)

In my reflections below, I raise some concerns about the claim that ID can play a role in grounding an objective morality, but considering a distinction between two types of teleology made by traditional philosophers.
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