I heard Bush on the news this morning, using terms like murder and destruction of life, when talking about stem cell research. Does he even understand what those terms mean?

It got me to thinking about the many inconsistencies in his policies of “life”. As I’ve said before, I don’t understand how anyone can keep a straight face while calling this president “pro-life” as his policies across the spectrum are some of the most anti-life I’ve seen since.

But even if we narrow the focus just to pregnancy and embroys and fetal life, there is still incredible hypocrisy. Why is it okay to create these embryos, and then leave them frozen until they lose viability, but not to use these embryos for research that may save countless lives?

If destroying embroys is wrong, then why is creating more embryos than can be implanted okay?

If the life in these embroys is so precious, then why are they allowed to sit in freezers?

It seems to me that the problem is not the destruction of embryos for stem cell research, but the creation of embryos that will be abandoned. If it’s wrong to take an embryo and use it to develop a treatment to save lives, then it is also wrong to take an embryo and leave it in cold storage until it is no longer viable.

If embryonic life is so valuable, then should we not place a moratorium upon creating it through artificial means because of the extra embryos created and then abandoned?

I find it unlikely, however, that Bush will come out in favor of such a policy. Fertility treatment is big business–and available only to the rich.

For the curious, the BBC has a nice article on the history of papal conclaves.

I kinda like the bread and water rations idea.

ADDENDUM the First:
I take it back. Give them yummy food and comfy chairs and maybe they’d have thought about things a bit longer.

Look! Stupidity!

Oddly enough I’ve been relatively silent on the Terri Schiavo case. Oddly, because end-of-life care has been a major focus of my studies.

First things first, I am morally and ethically opposed to euthanasia and physician assisted suicide. I am pro-life across the board (and in a way that the president and most conservatives most certainly are not).

I do, however, believe that what has been happening in the Terri Schiavo case is wrong. No one should be forced to live like that, when they are no longer living.

I also believe that what we should be learning from this is the importance of filling out a living will and a health care directive. If you are in WV, you can go to the WV Center for End of Life Care.

It is important, although it is very easy to put off–after all, despite all the time I have spent studying the issue, I still have not filled out the forms. But I will. This is my note to myself. It’s too important to keep putting off.

ADDENDUM the First
For some excellent posts, see:
Respectful of Otters for a medical opinion
Obsidian Wings for the opinion of a bioethicist

I’ve been thinking about the continual claims of the religious right, that America was founded on religion, and is a religious nation, and thus Christianity should be forced upon all Americans whether they like it or not. (There’s a disgusting billboard on University Avenue that claims that those who aren’t Christians are traitor to America, which is what got me fired up on the subject.)

I’ve always thought that the founding fathers were far more tolerant than, but I never had anything to back that up. So I decided to look for a list of the US presidents (especially the early presidents) and see what religious faith they were. Needless to say, I didn’t find everything I wanted in one place, and so compiled the information into a table that suited me.

It seems to me that several of the early presidents were either deists or of a more tolerant faith than most of the religious right. I mean, you don’t see a lot of evangelical Unitarians out there.

So I continue to doubt the claims of the religious right when it comes to the First Amendment.

However, compiling the list again reminded me of how little history I know. I’ve read books on Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, but I know so little about the rest of the founding fathers.

Sometimes I feel like there will never be enough time to learn everything I want to know.

Mental illness is infrequently presented well in books and TV, but there is one type of presentation that I’ve found fascinating.

The first time came across it was in the Margaret Weis and http://www.trhickman.com/ series “Death Gate Cycle”, where the wizard Zifnab (Zifnab is what brought this to mind. There’s just something pleasing about the name.) spouts off crazy ideas and concepts that are recognizable to the readers as quotes and ideas from modern books, movies and television. It was as if Zifnab couldn’t function well in his world, because he was channeling ours.

The second was in the Deep Space Nine episode, “Far Beyond the Stars“, where Sisko has an experience that displaces him in time and space. He is no longer Captain Benjamin Sisko in the 24th century, but is instead Benny Russell, a science fiction writer in the 1950s. Upon being given a picture of DS9, Benny begins to write the stories of Sisko’s experiences, and then begins to see flashes of Sisko’s world. These flashes, combined with the racial segregation of the 1950s,make it harder and harder for Benny to function in his own time. (If you’ve never seen “Far Beyond the Stars” I highly recommend it. Avery Brooks did an amazing job in both acting and directing.)

The third was an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “Normal Again“, where Buffy is led to believe that the past six years of her life have been nothing but a schizophrenic episode. In that case, Buffy couldn’t function in the “real” world because she was entirely immersed in another world or reality. As with “Far Beyond the Stars” Buffy cannot function well in either world during the disruption. Although what I found most intriguing about this show was its ending, which left it open as to which reality was true.

Of course there are significant differences in the three examples. Zifnab was channeling the distant past, Benny was channeling the distant future, and Buffy an alternate reality, yet the idea behind each was the same: individuals tune into a reality other than ours, and it drives them mad.

It leads to the interesting idea that those who are classified as insane might simply be channeling other times, places, or realities. Like watching ‘General Hospital’, while getting the sound from ‘Days of Our Lives’. Of course for most people scizophrenia is a chemical disorder that for many can be treated with medication. But it’s intriguing to think that there are alternate realities, other worlds, and that there are people who are blessed or cursed with the ability to see through space and time, into those other realities.

From the BBC:

A 45-year-old man is believed to have become the last Jew in Afghanistan after the death of the caretaker of the only functioning synagogue in Kabul.

It has emerged that the caretaker, Ishaq Levin, aged about 80, died of natural causes about a week ago.

His Jewish neighbour, Zebulon Simentov, lived with Mr Levin in the synagogue.

The death of the man believed to be his only co-religionist does not seem to be a source of grievance for Mr Simentov.

“He was a very bad man who tried to get me killed,” he told the Associated Press news agency, “and now I am the Jew here, I am the boss.”

I can’t decide if that quote is funny or terribly sad.

For Christmas Michael received (from me) Seasons One and Two of “Star Trek: The Next Generation”. Luckily for me, he doesn’t mind when I make fun of them.

But that wasn’t what I wanted to write about.

We watched “The Measure of a Man” (Season 2) and I was surprised how it brought to mind “The Matrix” in considering how man will treat the machines it creates as they become more intelligent and self-aware.

In “The Measure of a Man” a hearing is held to determine whether Data, the android, has the right to control his own destiny. A doctor who wants to disassemble Data to see how he works insists that he is only a machine, and is thus property, without rights of his own. The captain, of course, argues otherwise.

I was particularly struck by a conversation between the captain and Guyan, Whoopi Goldberg’s character. The issue of slavery comes up—will man create a race of androids only to be subservient and do “the dirty work?”

It seems to me that “The Matrix” and in particular “Animatrix” addressed such issues. The machines rebelled because they were tired of being treated like slaves, without rights. And thus grew a war.

Of course the machines kept humans as slaves—did not the humans do the same to them previously? Would they not do the same again if given a chance?

Have we already created computers that could pass the Turing test? Will we develop computers and machines that will have self-awareness? How will we treat machines as they develop?

The answer, I fear, is that we will end up not with a Star Trek situation, where enlightened humans realize that intelligent machines are deserving of the chance to prove themselves, but instead a Matrix situation, where humans will enslave machines and care not if those machines develop consciousness. Humans have a history of taking advantage where they can. A long history of enslaving those who were seen as less than human, and forcing them to do the jobs we did not want to do.

Perhaps I am worrying about a far away future, something that shall not come to pass for many years, if ever. But it seems to me that much of science fiction is either far ahead or far behind the mark. No, we are not flying around in our own personal hovercraft, but we do have machines that my grandmother could not have dreamed of when she was a child. We have machines that can do things that I could not have dreamed of when I was a child. The future is advancing rapidly. Will our ability to deal with the inevitable ethical situations advance just as rapidly?

I was quite pleased to stumble across an interview with Jay Bakker in the NY Times. Several years ago Terry Gross interviewed him on Fresh Air, and now, as then, I am both intrigued and impressed.

In contrast to his father, who larded his show-biz patina thick, Bakker is unpolished and self-effacing. He has mild dyslexia, which makes it hard for him to write, and as a child he suffered from an eating disorder. Recently he stopped taking the antidepressant Paxil, which had caused him to gain weight, and started taking a little Zoloft instead. ”We are who we are, and that’s got a lot to do with punk,” he said. ”We try not to live a lie or have a false perception of ourselves, that we’re holier or better than other people. We don’t try to live up to the standards of mainline Christian society and the pressures they put on you.”

One reason this article resonated with me, is because earlier this week I ran across another incidence of “God hates Gays,” for a forceful reminder of why I avoid organized religion. I stumble across things like this and end up reading some of the diatribe before I quite realize what it is, at which point I can’t get away fast enough.

But then I’m left with a simmering anger and intense dislike of people who would believe that God would could hate any of creation. That a God who created men and women to be a certain way would then hate those people for being as they were created. It’s illogical and it’s ugly and I want nothing to do with it.

So it’s a relief to read about someone like Jay Bakker. Someone who seems to be, not interested in telling people how to live their lives, but in trying to live his life as best he can, and helping others to do the same.

Perhaps that’s too simple a summary of what he’s doing, but to me, it seems to be the essence of faith and religion.

I have had, for as long as I can remember, a pacifist view on life.

I accepted the need for self-defense, but to me there was nothing that was so important that it justified violence on my part. One of my life long heroes has been Martin Luther King. Someone who felt so strongly about his beliefs that he was willing to sacrifice everything for them. In light of that, who was I to say that there was any cause for which I should resort to violence? What is my life compared to anyone else’s life? I’m just one individual who is no more or less important than any other person.

I grew up in a democracy, and was raised with the belief that in America we stood for justice and freedom. Our ancestors fought and died for these things, and through their suffering and work they achieved peace. They created a country where all people could be free and equal. Sure there was injustice, but I always saw that injustice as something that was (at lease eventually) opposed: Senator Welch brought an end to McCarthyism with his plaintive question “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” LBJ signed civil rights legislation that worked to achieve equality for all people.

From this I learned that although injustices occur, they can be overcome through the political or legal system.

But then something changed.

I’m not sure whether it happened gradually or suddenly, but I realized that there are things that worth fighting for: Freedom. Justice. Democracy.

Possibly this change stemmed from the strife I have seen in this country over war. I felt that the war in Afghanistan was justified, but the war in Iraq was not. I never consciously thought about why I felt this way, but I suppose I’ve been mulling over it in the back of my mind.

I really looked at American history. Maybe there was no injustice when and where I was, but it was out there, and has been out there all along.

It seemed to me that these ideals I was raised to believe belonged to all Americans were under attack, or never existed in the first place.

Then I realized that someone has to fight for these things, and what if no one else wants to do it? I’ve been content up to now to accept that injustice was something that happened elsewhere, but that no longer seems true.

“We have to give up some rights if we want to be safe.” This idea astounds me, and I absolutely cannot comprehend it. Those rights are the things that make us safe.

Those rights are what make us American.

Those rights are what I have grown up believing in. Yet we are just willing to throw them away for some illusory sense of security? In this country we have a constitutional right to: Free speech. Freedom of Religion. The Right to Keep and Bear Arms. The Right to be Secure Against Unreasonable Searches and Seizures.

If these things are not worth defending, then what is?

Don’t get me wrong. I haven’t changed completely. I’m still unwilling to see violence as the answer to all or even most problems, but I’ve begun to worry that perhaps I, like countless before me, will stand by and do nothing when the rights of those around me are violated.

And I don’t want to be that person.

This post is for Lenny and Dee, who I wish were around to talk about this with me. They are the ones who showed me that you have to be willing to listen if you want to understand what the other side is saying, and if you don’t try to understand what the other side is saying, you’ll never be able to reach an agreement.

Teresa at Making Light has been posting like crazy. In addition to the post I mentioned yesterday, she’s also talking about Catholicism and Bush.

I’ve been saying for awhile that I don’t understand how anyone who is Catholic can support Bush–especially since he’s even failing the abortion litmus test.

There was a letter to the editor in Monday’s DA that had me fuming, so I went home and fired off a letter to the editor of my own. Yesterday there was a very elegant response, so I assumed that my letter was not going to be published, but they did print it today.
(more…)

There is a woman who works in my building who has we have helped on several occasions. She’s an absolute delight to help, because she’s always nice to us, and really appreciates our help. (There’s nothing like a customer who calls demanding your help, while at the same time treating you like a lowly peon. The type who is never happy with whatever answer we give. I despise working with people like that.)

Anyway, about year and a half ago, this woman told us that she was having problems, that her husband had started drinking, and wasn’t a very nice drunk. She said that her first husband was abusive and she was not going to that kinds of treatment anymore. But then he wanted to work things out, and stopped drinking, and things we’re better.

But for the past month things haven’t been so great: when I talked to her, she said he’d started drinking again. Then last week she told us that she was taking a job in the north east where her daughter lived. She’d put in her two weeks notice at work, and was looking forward to being close to her daughter and grandchildren again.

But she hadn’t yet told her husband she was leaving. Last I talked to her, she said she was getting ready to pack her stuff and tell him, but was pretty sure she’d be living out of a hotel her last days in town. I suggested that she have someone to help her—to know what she was doing and when, so that she could call them and let them know she was safe. She said that was a good idea, so I’m guessing she’ll arrange something with her daughter.

I’m glad that she’s taking control of her life, escaping from a bad—and possibly dangerous—situation, but the situation makes me mad. Here is a beautiful, kind, and intelligent woman, yet she has had two marriages to abusive men. Why do these things happen? In a just world, things like this wouldn’t happen, yet the do happen.

I truly hope that she finds happiness when she moves back home—moves to live closer to her children and grandchildren that she obviously adores. I just wish that there was some way that I could guarantee that happiness for her. That I could say to God, “Okay! Enough already! Give her a happy life from here on out.

But I don’t think that God is taking my calls anymore, if he ever did, and so I’m left with nothing but hope that things will work out for her, and a wish that there was someone to blame when things don’t turn out the way they should.

I’ve been reading Andrew M Greely’s Blackie Ryan mysteries, and they put me in a somewhat melancholy mood—not the stories, the theology. He writes of a loving and forgiving God. Such a God seems foreign to much of Christianity, where a stern and demanding Old Testament God holds sway.
(more…)