Here is more about moral ethics, using the embryonic stem cell research controversy as the case study. In other words, I am going to give you some general moral and ethics guidance, and you can see how to apply that moral guidance to the specific example of embryonic stem cell research.
The first point that I want to make, stated as a principle that everyone should strive to follow, is this: When alternative actions are available, always start first with the most morally and ethically conservative position, and if that is not successful, move step by step toward the more questionable, also known as the “slippery slope.”
If I had a sketch pad capability here I’d draw a picture that on the left side has the label “Most morally conservative and highly ethical option.” On the right side I’d label the diagram “Totally slippery slope that could lead into very unmoral and unethical options.” I’d actually draw what looks like that wintry icy slippery slope where at the bottom are outlines of rocks that represent decisions and options of potential moral and ethic breakdown.
So then in the middle of the picture you can draw some columns, unlabeled and empty, just like a blank spreadsheet, and they represent the possible actions that are increasingly morally and ethically questionable, those options you have not yet identified or if you have, you have not yet pursued.
Let’s use a mundane example of how to use this chart. Suppose you wish to obtain a house in which to live. Your first choice ought to be the highly ethical and moral option, the far left column, of purchasing or building a house. Your first choice is the most moral and ethical purchase of a house at a good price with all legal and ethical requirements totally fulfilled. That should, obviously, be your first thought of action. However, suppose you totally lack any morality or ethics and still need a house? This would be the extreme right hand column. You might get a gun, kill the occupants of the house that you want, and move into their house. That is the opposite extreme of the highest morality and ethics, which is to purchase a house using good and fair bargaining and honest merchandising and legal safeguards. The opposite of that is to covet someone else’s house, kill them, and take their house.
In business most normal people of course start with the highly moral and routine transaction of seeking a house that one can legally and fairly purchase. However, in this society, increasingly people have some twists to the most ethical option, which are some of those blank columns in the middle. For example you could collude with the real estate agent to cheat the home seller of some of their home’s value. That would be a column that is nearer to the ethical best of honest bargaining and purchase, but has inched toward the slippery slope. People today are, sadly and incorrectly, much more comfortable with such options that are not of the totally correct, but are one or two steps toward the slippery slope. Another example is to obtain a house that you could not afford in return for doing something legally or morally questionable, such as you receive the house at a reduced cost because you engaged in something like industrial espionage for someone. That’s another step toward the slippery slope. Yet another example of stepping toward the slippery slope is to jack up house prices, or, conversely, trash a neighborhood so that you behind the scenes manipulate the desirability of the community within which the house you want resides.
In the “old days” of classic capitalism no one would have even thought of those options. People built houses and people bought as much house as they wanted and could afford, and that was that. But in these wily and “make a killing” and “get the most for yourself” modern mindsets, far more people think that shady steps that are toward but not totally on the slippery slope are morally and ethically “fair game.” They think these are options that the “free market” ethos endorses as being acceptable in ethics.
So that is an example that is easy to understand of how to understand where one individually is, or where society is, for any given issue on the total ethics/morality-to-total slippery slope of moral/ethic breakdown continuum of options.
Now, let’s use this chart as an example regarding embryonic stem cell research. But before diving into it, let’s look at the decision that is one step in front of the one now being discussed. At some point when it was discovered that infertile women could receive implanted embryos, one did not start with the most conservative position. The most conservative position would have been to create two and only two embryos and implant both of them. If both became viable the lady had twins. If one failed the other would develop and the lady would have a child. If both embryos failed it is like a miscarriage where for some reason birth circumstances just were not naturally correct. That is what should have been the standard procedure and there should not have been “bank vaults” of numerous embryos which are planted and “culled” like weeds in a field. Thus one would not have the embryos lying around frozen “which are just going to get thrown away anyways” in the first place if the most highly moral and ethic standard was followed in the first place. People did not think through the entire ethics and morality of the scientific gift of embryo creation and implant in the first place, which is to stick to the natural model in the first place. The natural model is one embryo and, often two, as is common when a woman has twins. Embryonic creation and implantation should have stuck to that model.
This is why the Catholic Church opposes these procedures because they perceive, correctly, that it leaped in one bound from a loving and desirable fixing of a medical condition (infertility) to factory line manufacturing of throw away embryos. If people had gone for the most conservative moral and ethical implementation, as I describe here, in the first place, the Church would have been much more able to tolerate the medical goodness of what is being attempted. However, in one leap embryonic development and implanting left the natural model and made embryos throw away commodities. That was a grave moral and ethical lapse, and put everyone squarely into the slippery slope of sin.
So that is an example of how individuals and society ought to be able to start with the most conservative moral and ethic position and thus prevent further disastrous ethics down the line. If ethics were followed in the first place we’d not have those “poor embryos that are just going to remain frozen or tossed out anyways, so let’s conduct experiments on them” argument.
Likewise, when researching any illness or infirmity one should always start with the most conservative moral and ethical options and as they either result in steps toward a cure, or do not pan out, then cautiously step one increment at a time toward the “right” side of the chart. We have lost years of research on NON-embryonic stem cell research (much of which, doctors attest, look more promising in results today than do the embryonic sources) because people decided to dive into the middle, even the total slippery slope side, before fully exploring the first and ultimately, most likely, productive research options. There should have been massive funding of adult stem cell and non-embryonic (such as umbilical cord) research for the past several decades rather than the immediate embrace of the embryonic route. The terrible irony is that if the more moral and ethical choice were made from the start and vigorously funded, Michael J. Fox and other celebrity sufferers and advocates of progress toward cures might actually have been seeing some progress in those cures today.
People might respond to me, “Well, we should try all options at the same time.” Be real, please. You know that funding is fought over and scarce and not all options can be funded, especially as this balloon economy is imploding. An abundance of funding should have been poured for the past twenty years or more into the most conservative ethic and moral options, research into non-embryonic stem cell and other sources of cures, rather than starving what ultimately will probably be the most successful route, discovered only after so much of the country, including Nancy Reagan, can only think of the most morally questionable route to help the suffering and think that this is the highest ethics.
So modern people have, without their own conscious realization, settled their ethical and moral “homes” dangerously far into the slippery slope and don’t even realize that there is a scientifically valid approach that starts with the most moral and ethical scientific options first. Not to be too extreme, but it is like, well, “I need that house more than you, and I have a good reason, so I’ll just shoot you and take the house.” It no longer occurs to people, in the stem cell debate, to start with the ethical and moral equivalent of what should be the norm, which is to start with the most conservative scientific research position, to look at adult supplied research solutions, such as using the adults own stem cells, or from umbilical cords, skin cells, placentas, whatever. But no, everyone is immediately assuming that the only “cure” must come from embryos being experimented upon, researched and destroyed. I cannot understand how people cannot see this. Well, this is why I have explained using the “chart” approach how to better understand how it is that we are in this sorrowful position. I believe that if people had funded non-embryonic research from the very beginning fully and most vigorously that we’d have today the beginning of some of those much craved breakthroughs today. Instead people are actually cheering doing more embryonic “work” instead of realizing they’ve not funded the most likely cure routes at all. Who are REALLY the “compassionate” ones? If I had had it my way we’d have breakthroughs without using embryos by now. I don’t blame President Obama because the people just will not see until they fully crash on the rocks on the slippery slope, and when they look up from the crash, find there’s no cure that way either.
And by the way, here is my last thought about the “we are going to throw the embryos out anyway so let’s use them.” Not too long ago animal shelters sold or gave abandoned pets to medical researchers. "After all, the dogs or cats were going to be euthanized anyway, so let’s give them to laboratories for humanitarian research.” Pets were even stolen out of yards by people who sold them to animal laboratories, so great was the demand for dogs and cats to experiment on until they died. It was one of the great scandals of the 1970’s and an area of early activism. Pounds stopped, due to public outrage, giving abandoned pets “that are just going to be destroyed anyway” to laboratories to use them in experimentation. Using today’s logic, I guess we should have kept giving abandoned animals to research laboratories to experiment upon rather than stop that practice. So, sure, “Got embryos ‘anyway?’ Let’s experiment on them rather than ‘just’ destroy them.” When one has residents of a concentration camp anyway, and they are going to die anyway, why not do some good ‘humanitarian’ experimenting? That is the slippery slope of that thinking, and those of us old enough to remember the fight against using abandoned animals for laboratory experimentation, “since they are just going to die anyway” remember a higher ethical and moral society when people, repulsed, said “No,” even though those abandoned animals were “just destroyed.” Or, rather than waste those abandoned animal carcasses, why not skin "Fido" and "Kitty" and let the pounds sell euthanized dog and cat fur in order to raise money? That is the mindset of not wanting to just "throw out" embryos without "putting them to good use." Can you not see how repulsive the slippery slope is? I hope that you young people in particularly understand your ethical options more as I described the abandoned animal experimentation battle that took place before your time.
Showing posts with label ethics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ethics. Show all posts
Monday, March 9, 2009
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Why the faiths are conservative re: new ideas
Why the faiths are conservative regarding new ideas
Regular readers know that I am always watching the news or looking up topics of personal interest to me with one ear and one eye ready to receive an idea of an important topic or “case study” to discuss with you. Yesterday I got an idea of how to pull together and explain something that many find puzzling and that, as a result, has led them away from the orthodoxy of the Abrahamic faiths (Jewish, Catholic, Muslim). It is one of the primary reasons for the freefall that humans are in right now, one that must stop.
Many feel that, for example, the Catholic Church refuses to move with the times regarding ideas of science, also known as “progress,” and “spirituality,” also known as, well, heresy. Using the Catholic Church as an example it is alternately ridiculed, with the poster child for that being its condemnation of Galileo, and outright hated, for its perceived opposition to “medical procedures,” such as cloning, euthanasia, abortion, embryonic research. These same modern people who don’t understand and who criticize or at the very least have their faith diluted would also feel the same way about Islam and Orthodox Judaism and their equivalent conservatism, except of course the critics come from Christian heritage and thus marginalize the faith of the Muslims and Orthodox Jews (and certainly because of political correctness would think twice about taking on either group). So the Catholic Church is not only “fair game” to moderns who genuinely misunderstand and thus mock and hate, but it is also the last bulwark for western society against humans continuing their freefall and grave error.
When one asks the Catholic Church why yes to something and why no to something they cite scripture, doctrine and tradition. It is at that point that moderns shut their ears, roll their eyes and say, “Well, that is all out of date.” If the critics are kind they allow that maybe such rules and restrictions were “once valid” but are no longer. But here is the problem and I’ll give it to you in a series of specific examples so you can best understand. The problem is that humans never make the right decision when they first encounter a new idea or a new discovery and sometimes that error lasts with terrible results for decades and even centuries.
I want to first address myself to the most extreme of the liberals and peace activists who might be reading this. You and your cause for peace are the primary example I can cite. How many of you think that humans have ever made a good decision as the result of a new discovery in weapons? I think you would be the first to agree, due to your positions, that no great humanitarian breakthrough was ever achieved by the invention of the spear, sword, gun, cannon, bomb or missile. Put aside for the moment what conservatives will reply, which is that guns allowed people to hunt game and thus feed more people because one can equally argue in theory that this resulted in quick extinction of wild species and did not aid either agriculture or domestic animal husbandry. One can argue that weapons allowed defense against aggressors. But who had the weapons first? The aggressors are always the first to use weapons; not the defenders.
This is why the Bible states that humans must look forward to the time when metal is not used in swords, but in plows and pruning hooks. This is an example of where if anyone had gone to the Church for guidance as weapons are being developed, the Church would have been the first to question it and cite scripture. Notice how even in the bloody times of the Old Testament, the faithful fought with primitive weapons and no where are technology advances praised, even in the cause of conquering Canaan. Rather, the faithful won by their faith in God, their determination and zeal, and also through clever leadership and tactics. Yet they fell to the stronger Babylon, a military might, in time. So because the powers that be that develop weaponry never came to the Catholic Church for their “blessing,” we lack what would have been a shining example of what I am talking about, which is to see that the Church resists “progress” that it thinks will slip out of the control of human hands.
It is now easier to understand why the Church resisted-but no where near as much as they have been demonized-new understandings of the solar system. In fact it was a Catholic deacon Copernicus who was primary in this understanding and he was never censored. But the Galileo example is used to the point of nausea and so let me address it head on. If you read the Bible from front to end-the whole text-you will see that it is filled with praise and glory regarding the heavenly bodies, the stars, the moon, the sun, the sky itself and planets that moved (though at that time they did not understand that was what they were). However, there is a vast difference between the praise the Bible heaps on the planets and what humans are tempted to do. In the Bible it is understood that the heavens are not only the glory of God’s creation and to only be praised accordingly, but they are also practical gifts. All three of the faiths used a lunar based calendar and the moon is praised in the Bible and the Qur’an for its giving of light and a timetable for humans. Thus the scriptures, written in pastoral and agricultural times, are the first to admire the practicality of the warmth and light of the sun, the light and clock of the moon, and the beauty of the stars in determining the seasons by which humans live.
However, right in the scripture next to the praise of the heavenly bodies is stern warning not to use them for occult purposes, for fortunetelling and witchcraft. This is because it is God’s word, obviously, but why is it God’s word and why would God have such a warning? Again, it is the reason that humans never use such “discoveries” for the correct purposes. The Church was fine with people looking through these new optics called telescopes and as I said, Copernicus himself was of the Church. The problem is that during centuries that was rife with astrology and occult beliefs, the Church is very cautious about new “discoveries” that seem to challenge humanity’s responsibilities and purview and God’s realm. So long as the earth remained the center of the solar system and all the rest was put there due to God’s mercy in creation and his gift of practical goodness of light, heat and time management for humans, God’s word was easier to understand and follow. However, once people started talking about the sun being the “center” of everything, the Church as a body understood to its core what it has known about humans since the beginning: “Oh, oh.” The Church realized that human nature being what it is, new discoveries are never chalked up to even more glory and understanding of God; they are seized upon by power brokers, both occult and secular.
This is why the knee jerk reflexive position of the Church is to deny and stall with certain scientific discoveries. Astronomy is a particularly important example through the centuries because it not only seemed to make confusing what the Bible teaches (not that the Bible is a science text but the idea the sun is put there for the benefit of humans by God) but there is always the occult temptation of astrology: to actually benefit and harm people according to godless “rules.” This is also why the Church is rightfully cautious about new sources of "spirituality." For example, the Freemason organization was at one point in good standing and acceptable to the Church. However, it was easy to see where a fraternal interest in mysteries such as numbers, the universe, architecture and other solid interests took a turn to the arcane and the occult. That is the problem: when humans succumb to the subtle temptation of ego, where they view themselves as mini-wizards because like Saurman in the "Lord of the Rings" they get to close to the objects of their study. They stop being students and admirers of God's creation and start thinking they are the one who "really" understand and "wield" the power. When organizations cross that line that is why and when you see the Church disapprove of the faithfuls' participation... they see it not in terms as a "rival" to their "old fashioned" ways but recognize another of the countless times humans fall into the temptation of their own discoveries into harmful usage for both the faithful and everyone else.
So in this generation we have the great crisis of eroding value of life by humans versus what is life affirming doctrine by the Catholic Church. This battlefield is called “medicine.” The Catholic Church is portrayed as being unkind opponents to “medical advances” to “save lives.” (Though obviously an abortion never saved the life of the aborted baby), but I will confine my comments to embryonic research and so forth. Let’s look at how great human history in the ethical use of new discoveries of “medicine” by looking at three examples. The first example is the discovery of tobacco. Native Americans cultivated tobacco for ritual use, not for habitual smoking in recreation. Humans quickly latched onto tobacco for recreational use and became addicted for generations. That would not be a good example of a bad use of a medical discovery in and of itself except for one little detail. As recently as the 1940s and 1950s humans marketed cigarette smoking to the public as “healthy,” as a health improving and promoting activity. Three hundred years after the discovery of tobacco as a product for smoking humans were increasing their pushing of it as a health remedy, rather than recognizing at all its dangers. Those of you old enough to remember can recall along side me how many years of battle it has taken to get public recognition that no only were cigarettes not adding to one’s health but they were the source of much of the illness in the population at large and cutting lives drastically short. So tobacco is an obvious example of why humans never seem to get the big “discoveries” right.
The second is one that is less well known by young people today, but it involves radioactivity. When radioactivity was discovered, it was actually viewed as, yes, you guessed it, a medical advance, and I don’t mean its use in diagnostic x-rays and so forth. Look back in the history and you will find that humans quickly decided that radiating each other promoted good health. People were given doses of radiation as tonics, not for the targeted use that it now has, with the greater safety controls. Just like tobacco people immediately thought that radiating each other with radioactive particles would somehow give them “better health” and “cure illnesses.”
How could people be so stupid? Well, consider this. During the time of the discovery of radioactivity there were people, mostly British, who flocked to Egypt because they were fascinated with the culture and discoveries and mystique. And what did they do? They decided to dig up the bodies of mummified people, grind it up into dust, and take it as-you guessed it-health tonics. Yes, at the turn of the century wealthy people ground up and ate the remains of mummies. It’s not like someone told them, “Hey, mummies have a lot of vitamin Xyz so it is good for you.” Humans all on their own make the most terrible and scarily occult decisions imaginable. All of it comes back to the temptation, just as in the Garden of Eden, to “become like God” and control life. It is not so long after this that a few decades later someone had a close encounter of the wrong type, probably as bush meat, with monkeys or apes in Africa and HIV/Aids made the jump from the simian blood stream to humans. That is why the Bible has such a long list of unclean animals. Look at the example of the prohibition from eating birds of prey such as falcons and eagles. Look at the worry today about avian flu jumping from birds to humans from wild bird populations, just as HIV/Aids did from simians. Everyone knows that is the reason pork is prohibited, because of the dangers of poorly cooked pork and the disease (remember swine flu?)
Thus the holy scriptures are far from being naive or backwards and if anything HIV/Aids, swine, avian flu and "mad cow disease" demonstrate why God prohibited certain foods and food preparation practices. As another example, one point of pride of the Qur’an is that it reveals the existence of atomic matter, for example, over a thousand years before atoms were “discovered” by humans. Scripture is neither ignorant of science or naive. Today we have astronomers studying “what kind of sun is needed to support planets that could support life.” Yet the Church is mocked and demonized because the Bible teaches that the sun is a gift from God to humans to do what? I can’t hear you? The sun is a gift by God to humans to support human life.
Here is another example of how humans just can’t seem to get it right. How good did humans do when they “discovered” electroshock therapy for use in psychiatry? I mean, does anyone want to watch a rerun of “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest?” I know what I am talking about because my former father in law was, way before I met him, given electroshock therapy. It was brutal, it was scarring and while it supposedly “cured” one ailment to use the expression “the operation succeeded but the patient died” would be quite appropriate. I’m told that nowadays they call it something different and that it “really works” for “certain patients,” and I knew one such patient in the hospital where I interned. But let me tell you, if there is not an early warning poster child of a horrible misuse of a medical “breakthrough” I don’t know what a better one is.
Look at how ridiculous humans are at even trying to identify the great “curative foods.” One year coffee is bad and the next year coffee is good. We can all list the “good foods” and “good vitamins” and the “bad foods” and the “bad additives,” but wait a minute, can we? Can we really do that? Is not vitamin C the greatest thing one year, then discovered to cause heart problems if taken over a certain dose the next year, and then the year after that it is great again with no mention of the heart problems? And do we not see headlines “Vitamin C does not cure cancer” as if anyone with a brain ever thought that it did? But humans, like eating the mummy dust a mere one hundred years ago, want to make themselves gods and goddesses. They think that there are magic answers (found in science, of course) to all medical and spiritual “problems.” And now we find that we don’t even mind pushing around the cells of a human embryo in a laboratory and call that being “advanced” and “kind” and “being a humanitarian.” Yet those who discover ways to accomplish the same without being ethically challenged are marginalized, unfunded, not given publicity, and told “Well, yes, but your cure won’t be in time to save that celebrity with Parkinson's disease.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_J_Fox
That, my friends, as my end of year message for what has been another year of the downfall of humanity, is the reason the Orthodox Jews, the Muslims and the Catholic Church are the bastions of caution about “discoveries” and “breakthroughs” in “medicine” and “spirituality.”
Regular readers know that I am always watching the news or looking up topics of personal interest to me with one ear and one eye ready to receive an idea of an important topic or “case study” to discuss with you. Yesterday I got an idea of how to pull together and explain something that many find puzzling and that, as a result, has led them away from the orthodoxy of the Abrahamic faiths (Jewish, Catholic, Muslim). It is one of the primary reasons for the freefall that humans are in right now, one that must stop.
Many feel that, for example, the Catholic Church refuses to move with the times regarding ideas of science, also known as “progress,” and “spirituality,” also known as, well, heresy. Using the Catholic Church as an example it is alternately ridiculed, with the poster child for that being its condemnation of Galileo, and outright hated, for its perceived opposition to “medical procedures,” such as cloning, euthanasia, abortion, embryonic research. These same modern people who don’t understand and who criticize or at the very least have their faith diluted would also feel the same way about Islam and Orthodox Judaism and their equivalent conservatism, except of course the critics come from Christian heritage and thus marginalize the faith of the Muslims and Orthodox Jews (and certainly because of political correctness would think twice about taking on either group). So the Catholic Church is not only “fair game” to moderns who genuinely misunderstand and thus mock and hate, but it is also the last bulwark for western society against humans continuing their freefall and grave error.
When one asks the Catholic Church why yes to something and why no to something they cite scripture, doctrine and tradition. It is at that point that moderns shut their ears, roll their eyes and say, “Well, that is all out of date.” If the critics are kind they allow that maybe such rules and restrictions were “once valid” but are no longer. But here is the problem and I’ll give it to you in a series of specific examples so you can best understand. The problem is that humans never make the right decision when they first encounter a new idea or a new discovery and sometimes that error lasts with terrible results for decades and even centuries.
I want to first address myself to the most extreme of the liberals and peace activists who might be reading this. You and your cause for peace are the primary example I can cite. How many of you think that humans have ever made a good decision as the result of a new discovery in weapons? I think you would be the first to agree, due to your positions, that no great humanitarian breakthrough was ever achieved by the invention of the spear, sword, gun, cannon, bomb or missile. Put aside for the moment what conservatives will reply, which is that guns allowed people to hunt game and thus feed more people because one can equally argue in theory that this resulted in quick extinction of wild species and did not aid either agriculture or domestic animal husbandry. One can argue that weapons allowed defense against aggressors. But who had the weapons first? The aggressors are always the first to use weapons; not the defenders.
This is why the Bible states that humans must look forward to the time when metal is not used in swords, but in plows and pruning hooks. This is an example of where if anyone had gone to the Church for guidance as weapons are being developed, the Church would have been the first to question it and cite scripture. Notice how even in the bloody times of the Old Testament, the faithful fought with primitive weapons and no where are technology advances praised, even in the cause of conquering Canaan. Rather, the faithful won by their faith in God, their determination and zeal, and also through clever leadership and tactics. Yet they fell to the stronger Babylon, a military might, in time. So because the powers that be that develop weaponry never came to the Catholic Church for their “blessing,” we lack what would have been a shining example of what I am talking about, which is to see that the Church resists “progress” that it thinks will slip out of the control of human hands.
It is now easier to understand why the Church resisted-but no where near as much as they have been demonized-new understandings of the solar system. In fact it was a Catholic deacon Copernicus who was primary in this understanding and he was never censored. But the Galileo example is used to the point of nausea and so let me address it head on. If you read the Bible from front to end-the whole text-you will see that it is filled with praise and glory regarding the heavenly bodies, the stars, the moon, the sun, the sky itself and planets that moved (though at that time they did not understand that was what they were). However, there is a vast difference between the praise the Bible heaps on the planets and what humans are tempted to do. In the Bible it is understood that the heavens are not only the glory of God’s creation and to only be praised accordingly, but they are also practical gifts. All three of the faiths used a lunar based calendar and the moon is praised in the Bible and the Qur’an for its giving of light and a timetable for humans. Thus the scriptures, written in pastoral and agricultural times, are the first to admire the practicality of the warmth and light of the sun, the light and clock of the moon, and the beauty of the stars in determining the seasons by which humans live.
However, right in the scripture next to the praise of the heavenly bodies is stern warning not to use them for occult purposes, for fortunetelling and witchcraft. This is because it is God’s word, obviously, but why is it God’s word and why would God have such a warning? Again, it is the reason that humans never use such “discoveries” for the correct purposes. The Church was fine with people looking through these new optics called telescopes and as I said, Copernicus himself was of the Church. The problem is that during centuries that was rife with astrology and occult beliefs, the Church is very cautious about new “discoveries” that seem to challenge humanity’s responsibilities and purview and God’s realm. So long as the earth remained the center of the solar system and all the rest was put there due to God’s mercy in creation and his gift of practical goodness of light, heat and time management for humans, God’s word was easier to understand and follow. However, once people started talking about the sun being the “center” of everything, the Church as a body understood to its core what it has known about humans since the beginning: “Oh, oh.” The Church realized that human nature being what it is, new discoveries are never chalked up to even more glory and understanding of God; they are seized upon by power brokers, both occult and secular.
This is why the knee jerk reflexive position of the Church is to deny and stall with certain scientific discoveries. Astronomy is a particularly important example through the centuries because it not only seemed to make confusing what the Bible teaches (not that the Bible is a science text but the idea the sun is put there for the benefit of humans by God) but there is always the occult temptation of astrology: to actually benefit and harm people according to godless “rules.” This is also why the Church is rightfully cautious about new sources of "spirituality." For example, the Freemason organization was at one point in good standing and acceptable to the Church. However, it was easy to see where a fraternal interest in mysteries such as numbers, the universe, architecture and other solid interests took a turn to the arcane and the occult. That is the problem: when humans succumb to the subtle temptation of ego, where they view themselves as mini-wizards because like Saurman in the "Lord of the Rings" they get to close to the objects of their study. They stop being students and admirers of God's creation and start thinking they are the one who "really" understand and "wield" the power. When organizations cross that line that is why and when you see the Church disapprove of the faithfuls' participation... they see it not in terms as a "rival" to their "old fashioned" ways but recognize another of the countless times humans fall into the temptation of their own discoveries into harmful usage for both the faithful and everyone else.
So in this generation we have the great crisis of eroding value of life by humans versus what is life affirming doctrine by the Catholic Church. This battlefield is called “medicine.” The Catholic Church is portrayed as being unkind opponents to “medical advances” to “save lives.” (Though obviously an abortion never saved the life of the aborted baby), but I will confine my comments to embryonic research and so forth. Let’s look at how great human history in the ethical use of new discoveries of “medicine” by looking at three examples. The first example is the discovery of tobacco. Native Americans cultivated tobacco for ritual use, not for habitual smoking in recreation. Humans quickly latched onto tobacco for recreational use and became addicted for generations. That would not be a good example of a bad use of a medical discovery in and of itself except for one little detail. As recently as the 1940s and 1950s humans marketed cigarette smoking to the public as “healthy,” as a health improving and promoting activity. Three hundred years after the discovery of tobacco as a product for smoking humans were increasing their pushing of it as a health remedy, rather than recognizing at all its dangers. Those of you old enough to remember can recall along side me how many years of battle it has taken to get public recognition that no only were cigarettes not adding to one’s health but they were the source of much of the illness in the population at large and cutting lives drastically short. So tobacco is an obvious example of why humans never seem to get the big “discoveries” right.
The second is one that is less well known by young people today, but it involves radioactivity. When radioactivity was discovered, it was actually viewed as, yes, you guessed it, a medical advance, and I don’t mean its use in diagnostic x-rays and so forth. Look back in the history and you will find that humans quickly decided that radiating each other promoted good health. People were given doses of radiation as tonics, not for the targeted use that it now has, with the greater safety controls. Just like tobacco people immediately thought that radiating each other with radioactive particles would somehow give them “better health” and “cure illnesses.”
How could people be so stupid? Well, consider this. During the time of the discovery of radioactivity there were people, mostly British, who flocked to Egypt because they were fascinated with the culture and discoveries and mystique. And what did they do? They decided to dig up the bodies of mummified people, grind it up into dust, and take it as-you guessed it-health tonics. Yes, at the turn of the century wealthy people ground up and ate the remains of mummies. It’s not like someone told them, “Hey, mummies have a lot of vitamin Xyz so it is good for you.” Humans all on their own make the most terrible and scarily occult decisions imaginable. All of it comes back to the temptation, just as in the Garden of Eden, to “become like God” and control life. It is not so long after this that a few decades later someone had a close encounter of the wrong type, probably as bush meat, with monkeys or apes in Africa and HIV/Aids made the jump from the simian blood stream to humans. That is why the Bible has such a long list of unclean animals. Look at the example of the prohibition from eating birds of prey such as falcons and eagles. Look at the worry today about avian flu jumping from birds to humans from wild bird populations, just as HIV/Aids did from simians. Everyone knows that is the reason pork is prohibited, because of the dangers of poorly cooked pork and the disease (remember swine flu?)
Thus the holy scriptures are far from being naive or backwards and if anything HIV/Aids, swine, avian flu and "mad cow disease" demonstrate why God prohibited certain foods and food preparation practices. As another example, one point of pride of the Qur’an is that it reveals the existence of atomic matter, for example, over a thousand years before atoms were “discovered” by humans. Scripture is neither ignorant of science or naive. Today we have astronomers studying “what kind of sun is needed to support planets that could support life.” Yet the Church is mocked and demonized because the Bible teaches that the sun is a gift from God to humans to do what? I can’t hear you? The sun is a gift by God to humans to support human life.
Here is another example of how humans just can’t seem to get it right. How good did humans do when they “discovered” electroshock therapy for use in psychiatry? I mean, does anyone want to watch a rerun of “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest?” I know what I am talking about because my former father in law was, way before I met him, given electroshock therapy. It was brutal, it was scarring and while it supposedly “cured” one ailment to use the expression “the operation succeeded but the patient died” would be quite appropriate. I’m told that nowadays they call it something different and that it “really works” for “certain patients,” and I knew one such patient in the hospital where I interned. But let me tell you, if there is not an early warning poster child of a horrible misuse of a medical “breakthrough” I don’t know what a better one is.
Look at how ridiculous humans are at even trying to identify the great “curative foods.” One year coffee is bad and the next year coffee is good. We can all list the “good foods” and “good vitamins” and the “bad foods” and the “bad additives,” but wait a minute, can we? Can we really do that? Is not vitamin C the greatest thing one year, then discovered to cause heart problems if taken over a certain dose the next year, and then the year after that it is great again with no mention of the heart problems? And do we not see headlines “Vitamin C does not cure cancer” as if anyone with a brain ever thought that it did? But humans, like eating the mummy dust a mere one hundred years ago, want to make themselves gods and goddesses. They think that there are magic answers (found in science, of course) to all medical and spiritual “problems.” And now we find that we don’t even mind pushing around the cells of a human embryo in a laboratory and call that being “advanced” and “kind” and “being a humanitarian.” Yet those who discover ways to accomplish the same without being ethically challenged are marginalized, unfunded, not given publicity, and told “Well, yes, but your cure won’t be in time to save that celebrity with Parkinson's disease.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_J_Fox
That, my friends, as my end of year message for what has been another year of the downfall of humanity, is the reason the Orthodox Jews, the Muslims and the Catholic Church are the bastions of caution about “discoveries” and “breakthroughs” in “medicine” and “spirituality.”
Monday, August 11, 2008
More about guardian angels
I thought of another analogy to help you to better understand and appreciate the presence of your guardian angel, even though you cannot sense them or dialogue with them as you can with God.
Imagine if every single human birth always took place as twins. So you, each of your parents, your grandparents, your neighbors, your friends, your co-workers, the President of the USA, absolutely everyone who had ever been born had a real twin.
And then imagine if one day one twin from every pair dropped dead (so the earth's population would suddenly be halved) and your twin died, your mom's twin died, your dad's twin died, each and every person you know or saw had their twin die. If you can imagine how bereft and agonizing that would be, that is the best human oriented analogy I can think of regarding how it would feel if there were no guardian angels. The sudden feeling of "your other half" being gone and everyone feeling and experiencing the same thing would expose a silence that would be unbearably painful.
Therefore, it helps you to think of guardian angels as individually and collectively providing an unintelligible but very real background "white noise" that even though unappreciated does protect every human-even one who is not a believer and is very distant from God-from actually feeling what it would be like to have no sense of God in your life or in the world at all.
So the guardian angels provide a connectivity to the reality to God that is like a constant white noise that one is totally unaware of, but would find unbearable if it were suddenly gone. That is why I thought of that every person having a twin analogy where everyone at once would lose their twin. Notice I am careful to make the analogy so that it's not "soul mate" or other romantic twin. A guardian angel is like a constant open line to God, even if you don't believe in God and even if you do not realize you have the line. But subliminally you hear that there is an inviting open line always open, so you are never really "alone." This is why the worldwide every person twin dropping dead analogy works fairly well for this analogy, because it would be as if each person's "other half who knows me best of all and is always there for me, and has been with me from the womb" open phone line to God suddenly went dead. (That's not to say, of course, that guardian angels are necessary for you to pray to God or to dialogue with him. I'm just describing what it would feel like if there were no guardian angels using these analogies). Many twins who have lost their twin to illness or accident can tell you what that feeling is like. So you can extend that understanding to imagining if what if everyone experienced and felt that loss simultaneously, and thus imagine what a world without guardian angels would be like. Again, I'm not saying that angels are anything like humans so they are not your "twin." This is only an analogy in order to invoke in a human reader the closest human equivalent sensation of what it would feel like if guardian angels did not exist for humans at all.
So guardian angels provide a very important contribution to not only one feeling reinforcement of one's faith and of God's love for you, but they also provide what could be described as without exaggeration, an important balance and emotional stability. I cannot even describe to you how erratic and demented people would behave if they had the emptiness of NOT having a guardian angel. Without guardian angels there would be a rather nihilistic silence that it would take incredible faith and balance to fight against. So God's conception gift to each human (and thus to humanity as a whole) is a guardian angel. They provide a real connectivity of white noise openness that humans don't feel but would find unbearable if it were suddenly not there! But you don't have to worry, since God will always provide.
I do have to give one caution. As you know, humanity is grappling with some severe ethics challenges, with cloning, stem cell research, animal and human combination cells and "donor children" being recent examples. Those of you with any responsibility in these areas (and the public at large) must remember that God will not allow humanity to manipulate itself into inhumanity. Do not be complacent in your assumptions about what lines God will draw regarding souls and guardian angels to a newly formed human being. Be very careful about assuming you know what he will do if you push it too far. God can do MANY things more than you can imagine, and I guarantee that if you push the boundaries and worse, assume that "no soul or angel is present" or that there "is a soul or angel present and all mighty you is manipulating it" that humanity (to say nothing of your own soul) will be in trouble, big trouble, like you cannot even imagine. Trust me on this; you don't want to find out how right I am on this point.
Imagine if every single human birth always took place as twins. So you, each of your parents, your grandparents, your neighbors, your friends, your co-workers, the President of the USA, absolutely everyone who had ever been born had a real twin.
And then imagine if one day one twin from every pair dropped dead (so the earth's population would suddenly be halved) and your twin died, your mom's twin died, your dad's twin died, each and every person you know or saw had their twin die. If you can imagine how bereft and agonizing that would be, that is the best human oriented analogy I can think of regarding how it would feel if there were no guardian angels. The sudden feeling of "your other half" being gone and everyone feeling and experiencing the same thing would expose a silence that would be unbearably painful.
Therefore, it helps you to think of guardian angels as individually and collectively providing an unintelligible but very real background "white noise" that even though unappreciated does protect every human-even one who is not a believer and is very distant from God-from actually feeling what it would be like to have no sense of God in your life or in the world at all.
So the guardian angels provide a connectivity to the reality to God that is like a constant white noise that one is totally unaware of, but would find unbearable if it were suddenly gone. That is why I thought of that every person having a twin analogy where everyone at once would lose their twin. Notice I am careful to make the analogy so that it's not "soul mate" or other romantic twin. A guardian angel is like a constant open line to God, even if you don't believe in God and even if you do not realize you have the line. But subliminally you hear that there is an inviting open line always open, so you are never really "alone." This is why the worldwide every person twin dropping dead analogy works fairly well for this analogy, because it would be as if each person's "other half who knows me best of all and is always there for me, and has been with me from the womb" open phone line to God suddenly went dead. (That's not to say, of course, that guardian angels are necessary for you to pray to God or to dialogue with him. I'm just describing what it would feel like if there were no guardian angels using these analogies). Many twins who have lost their twin to illness or accident can tell you what that feeling is like. So you can extend that understanding to imagining if what if everyone experienced and felt that loss simultaneously, and thus imagine what a world without guardian angels would be like. Again, I'm not saying that angels are anything like humans so they are not your "twin." This is only an analogy in order to invoke in a human reader the closest human equivalent sensation of what it would feel like if guardian angels did not exist for humans at all.
So guardian angels provide a very important contribution to not only one feeling reinforcement of one's faith and of God's love for you, but they also provide what could be described as without exaggeration, an important balance and emotional stability. I cannot even describe to you how erratic and demented people would behave if they had the emptiness of NOT having a guardian angel. Without guardian angels there would be a rather nihilistic silence that it would take incredible faith and balance to fight against. So God's conception gift to each human (and thus to humanity as a whole) is a guardian angel. They provide a real connectivity of white noise openness that humans don't feel but would find unbearable if it were suddenly not there! But you don't have to worry, since God will always provide.
I do have to give one caution. As you know, humanity is grappling with some severe ethics challenges, with cloning, stem cell research, animal and human combination cells and "donor children" being recent examples. Those of you with any responsibility in these areas (and the public at large) must remember that God will not allow humanity to manipulate itself into inhumanity. Do not be complacent in your assumptions about what lines God will draw regarding souls and guardian angels to a newly formed human being. Be very careful about assuming you know what he will do if you push it too far. God can do MANY things more than you can imagine, and I guarantee that if you push the boundaries and worse, assume that "no soul or angel is present" or that there "is a soul or angel present and all mighty you is manipulating it" that humanity (to say nothing of your own soul) will be in trouble, big trouble, like you cannot even imagine. Trust me on this; you don't want to find out how right I am on this point.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Embryo screening ethics
Read this article about how a husband and wife created eleven embryos, screening for a breast cancer causing gene (one that is truly persistent and life threatening), selecting the embryo for implantation that was guaranteed to not have the gene. This is not casually done, since the woman's family has suffered from cancer due to this gene effect.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article4232383.ece
***
OK, now let's cut through the spewing from both sides. One side will be very alarmed at the ethics and "playing God" factor. The other side will hate on the "religious Bible thumping" side thinking they want the little babies to have cancer. Sheesh.
I'm not going to render an easy formula for you to follow; that's the challenge of humanity, to decide how to continue being humans. But I will tell you that you cannot solve the problem without realizing one factor.
Read this snip from the article:
“We had been through his sister being ill, so it was something we had seen first hand. I thought this was something I had to try because, if we had a daughter with the gene, and she was ill, I couldn’t look her in the face and say I didn’t try.”
This is the mother saying she would feel guilty if she had a baby who developed the cancer, who then as an adult, the mother would have to tell her that she could have cured it but didn't try. Er, um, you wouldn't have that conversation. The child that would have had the cancer is now not going to be born or be alive at all. It's not like you did a body swap for the same person. You've decided not to let the person who would have the cancer become alive at all, in order to have a completely separate and different sibling be the one chosen to become alive. You can't have an imaginary conversation with the child that you decided not to have at all.
Now, I'm not being hard on the mother, but if we are to have this ethics discussion at all, people need to have a clue that they are not talking about a "cure." They are opting not to bring to life a person who has this gene. They are opting to bring to life a sibling who does not have the gene. It's not like you did a body and soul swap to "cure" the cancer in the baby you would have had anyway. That's biological idiocy, and understandable in how the mother needs to rationalize her decision in her own heart, but people who plan to have a thoughtful discussion on either side of the issue need realize that the embryo "not selected" is the entire life not lived. People may decide they can live with that kind of system for truly dire genetic conditions, but they need to be factual about it and not romanticize it.
I really hope that she is not so spiritually unaware that she thinks God has one and only soul hovering in the waiting room while she chooses an embryo, and that one soul goes into the "chosen cancer free body." Um, nope, that does not happen. Each of those embryos would have received their own individual selected soul (selected by God) upon each one coming to life. God doesn't set aside a soul to give to the next available body. So when that embryo was not selected, that soul would never come to life. Instead, a soul just for the embryo that is selected comes to life. So she'd not be having the cozy chat with the "soul that would have been born anyway" telling her offspring that she made sure "that soul got a cancer gene free body." Nope.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article4232383.ece
***
OK, now let's cut through the spewing from both sides. One side will be very alarmed at the ethics and "playing God" factor. The other side will hate on the "religious Bible thumping" side thinking they want the little babies to have cancer. Sheesh.
I'm not going to render an easy formula for you to follow; that's the challenge of humanity, to decide how to continue being humans. But I will tell you that you cannot solve the problem without realizing one factor.
Read this snip from the article:
“We had been through his sister being ill, so it was something we had seen first hand. I thought this was something I had to try because, if we had a daughter with the gene, and she was ill, I couldn’t look her in the face and say I didn’t try.”
This is the mother saying she would feel guilty if she had a baby who developed the cancer, who then as an adult, the mother would have to tell her that she could have cured it but didn't try. Er, um, you wouldn't have that conversation. The child that would have had the cancer is now not going to be born or be alive at all. It's not like you did a body swap for the same person. You've decided not to let the person who would have the cancer become alive at all, in order to have a completely separate and different sibling be the one chosen to become alive. You can't have an imaginary conversation with the child that you decided not to have at all.
Now, I'm not being hard on the mother, but if we are to have this ethics discussion at all, people need to have a clue that they are not talking about a "cure." They are opting not to bring to life a person who has this gene. They are opting to bring to life a sibling who does not have the gene. It's not like you did a body and soul swap to "cure" the cancer in the baby you would have had anyway. That's biological idiocy, and understandable in how the mother needs to rationalize her decision in her own heart, but people who plan to have a thoughtful discussion on either side of the issue need realize that the embryo "not selected" is the entire life not lived. People may decide they can live with that kind of system for truly dire genetic conditions, but they need to be factual about it and not romanticize it.
I really hope that she is not so spiritually unaware that she thinks God has one and only soul hovering in the waiting room while she chooses an embryo, and that one soul goes into the "chosen cancer free body." Um, nope, that does not happen. Each of those embryos would have received their own individual selected soul (selected by God) upon each one coming to life. God doesn't set aside a soul to give to the next available body. So when that embryo was not selected, that soul would never come to life. Instead, a soul just for the embryo that is selected comes to life. So she'd not be having the cozy chat with the "soul that would have been born anyway" telling her offspring that she made sure "that soul got a cancer gene free body." Nope.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
One example of sad but justifiable abortion
Because people are so polarized on the subject, many cannot understand how I can believe that abortion should be considered a "legal" medical procedure, but how it is morally wrong and virtually no one should have an abortion. Here is an example, to help you to understand, of where I feel that it is a rare but justifiable case where the couple has no choice but to have an abortion.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-hospital25-2008may25,0,1940964.story
snip
Wang Xiaohong's leg was crushed when her house collapsed. The 23-year-old is two months pregnant and the fetus is injured. Her husband touches her leg lovingly. "We'll accept the doctor's advice and have an abortion," says Jiang Donghai, a 24-year-old factory worker, sitting on his wife's bed. "It's devastating to have the earthquake take our baby."
The couple got married just two days before the earthquake. She had quit her job, their house was destroyed, and now they've lost their baby. "But there's a nice open window there with sunshine and fresh air," he says. "And we feel lucky to be alive."
***
This is a personal tragedy of epic proportion, but this couple is blessed because they are not "rationalizing" that "it's not a life, it's just a fetus." They have a baby who has been injured by the earthquake and is thus a victim of the earthquake. They live in a country that allows only one child per couple. The mother is severely injured and the baby that she is carrying is injured. They are not Americans with access to surgeons who may be able to operate on a fetus, and they certainly have no resources to care for a severely crippled child should the baby even survive the remainder of the pregnancy and the treatment that the mother must have (her crushed leg) if she herself is to survive. So they really have no choice and should be viewed with loving compassion in this most difficult choice, and prayers that the mother will recover and that she will be healthy enough to bear a child in the future that this couple so clearly desperately want and would love. In this case the doctor is using ethics and understanding in his or her recommendation to give the mother the best chance for recovery and to be pragmatic about the odds of the child's survival in the context where a couple has only one opportunity to be parents.
I hope you find this example of my logic and feelings on this subject helpful and join me in prayers for this couple and all others who face painful loss of their children due to the earthquake and its aftermath of medical injuries and complications.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-hospital25-2008may25,0,1940964.story
snip
Wang Xiaohong's leg was crushed when her house collapsed. The 23-year-old is two months pregnant and the fetus is injured. Her husband touches her leg lovingly. "We'll accept the doctor's advice and have an abortion," says Jiang Donghai, a 24-year-old factory worker, sitting on his wife's bed. "It's devastating to have the earthquake take our baby."
The couple got married just two days before the earthquake. She had quit her job, their house was destroyed, and now they've lost their baby. "But there's a nice open window there with sunshine and fresh air," he says. "And we feel lucky to be alive."
***
This is a personal tragedy of epic proportion, but this couple is blessed because they are not "rationalizing" that "it's not a life, it's just a fetus." They have a baby who has been injured by the earthquake and is thus a victim of the earthquake. They live in a country that allows only one child per couple. The mother is severely injured and the baby that she is carrying is injured. They are not Americans with access to surgeons who may be able to operate on a fetus, and they certainly have no resources to care for a severely crippled child should the baby even survive the remainder of the pregnancy and the treatment that the mother must have (her crushed leg) if she herself is to survive. So they really have no choice and should be viewed with loving compassion in this most difficult choice, and prayers that the mother will recover and that she will be healthy enough to bear a child in the future that this couple so clearly desperately want and would love. In this case the doctor is using ethics and understanding in his or her recommendation to give the mother the best chance for recovery and to be pragmatic about the odds of the child's survival in the context where a couple has only one opportunity to be parents.
I hope you find this example of my logic and feelings on this subject helpful and join me in prayers for this couple and all others who face painful loss of their children due to the earthquake and its aftermath of medical injuries and complications.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
