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Stem Cell Problems Slow Research
Jeremy Erwin writes: "George W. Bush essentially closed the door on the creation of new human embryonic stem cell lines by restricting the funding to 60 existing cell lines, most of which are covered by patents of one sort or another. But now it seems that most of these cell lines were cultured using mouse cells, possibly infecting the stem cells with murine viruses. The FDA, concerned that cross species organ transplantation may hasten the spread of such viruses, has all but banned the practice. According to this Washington Post article, this could make it difficult, if not impossible to use stem cells in human clinical trials."
That would explain the unexpected cheese craving....
Je t'aime Stéphanie
(I'm joking of course)
In the USA, that is.
There is absolutely no reason to panic.
You can create new stem call lines, they just don't qualify for federal funds. They need to be privately financed by the biotech sector.
Perhaps they should eat more fresh fruit!
They just pushed off the impending philisophical debate, basically.
the US is realy ego-centric dont you think.
life, the universe and everything? = 42
Uh, that's only if they use federal funds.  If they don't use federal funds there are NO restrictions.
Nice F.U.D.
That has to be the stupidest thing I have ever seen our government do. How the hell can you patent something that's ALIVE! I can just see myself getting a letter from XYZ Big F***ing biotech firm stating that during my last physical they found that cells in my body violated several of their "key patents" and I have to report for immediate removal. But if I was born befor the patent was issued, wouldn't that be Prior Art??
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
It's important to note that Bush's administrative authority here only covers the applications of federal money in research. His decision will hurt research by many scientists, but doesn't prohibit anyone in the private sector from doing what they want with stem cells. That would require bills to be passed by the Congress.
Bush's move (provided that it lasts) will impede the growth of knowledge and lead to even more privatization and patenting of important fundamental research. It's fairly certain that big medicine will continue to develop new lines of cells, as the payoffs for genetic technologies may be tremendous.
I'm upset that we can't destroy embryos but at least abortion is still legal.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
why mode down a fact. i meen realy it is a fact
the caholic church only unband galalo in 1990.
life, the universe and everything? = 42
... that by the time stem cell products are ready for human clinical trials, Duh-bya will be out of office, and we'll have someone in office who can make decisions based on rational thought, not on what a bunch of religious fanatics tell him in between his golf game and his afternoon nap.
And to all the right-wingers who will no doubt jump on this post saying "The Democrats aren't any better George W. Bush made a carefully thought-out decision blah blah blah," I say: BULLSHIT. Your anointed princeling has made an off-the-cuff decision that will condemn millions of people suffering from terrible diseases to an early and unpleasant death.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
If you want to start planting stem cells into live people, you're going to get a patent on the process that helps you fight the disease. Once you are at that stage in the process, you should be privately funded.
Federal research dollars are supposed to go to basic science. This "compromise" allows the scientists to do ALL the basic research that they want on the tax payer's nickel.
If they want to start destroying embryos and doing human clinical testing, well, let the private sector pick up the tab.
There is no reason that these researchers are entitled to tax payer dollars.
It's also my belief that God purposely created man as scientifically-minded, inquisitive creatures. In order for us to carry out His work on Earth, scientific innovation must not be suppressed.
George Bush, in an effert to do what he believed was moral, in fact suppressed innovation. Stem Cell research has fantastic potential to improve quality of life for generations to come
.To not allow scientific research and discovery, rather than being the "morally correct" choice, is the exact opposite. To not use our God-given gifts of intelligence and curiosity when they could be used to help humans, is truly the morally incorrect choice.
- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!
he posted at an AC so his score starts at zero. read the faq
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
... that thinks Bush is just a puppet for the (christian) religous zelots in power? Does he even understand what 'seperation of church and state' means? He's pushing the stem cell scientists to pack up and move to another country that isn't lead by a complete idiot.
-IO
www.damnit.org
Tim
Bush made his decision about the funding for stem cell research several weeks ago. After his decision, no one went to check out the status of those stem cell lines? Did Bush even look at any info on these 60 stem cell lines, or did he just happen to pick that option out of the hat of options he was considering? My tax dollars at work eh?
"0101100101? It's just jibberish. *looks in mirror, gasps* 1010011010@!? AHHHHHH!!"
What is the moral value of a date? Either it is okay to create stem cell lines (all right, all right, "destroy embryos") or it is not. The fact that the cell lines were created (embryos destroyed) before W started paying attention to the subject has no relevance. And if it is not okay to create stem cell lines, then it cannot be okay to use them for research purposes.
And please don't tell me about how the net result will be fewer of these embryos destroyed. Frozen embryos are destroyed at fertility clinics every day, en masse, and W has not lifted even his pinky finger to stop that. Far more useful, in my opinion, is the approach now being taken by Harvard and Boston IVF, to use these embryos for research rather than simply dump them in the garbage.
-Renard
You can create new stem call lines, they just don't qualify for federal funds. They need to be privately financed by the biotech sector.
How long do you think it will take before that happens? Most likely within our lifetimes, I'd figure. Then that corporation would have a nice little monopoly on the stem cell lines, since they could most likely be protected as property of some fashion or another (patent or intellectual or other nonsense). Thank you Mr. Bush for quietly looking out for the coporate interest again.
Wonder if Mr. Gates has thought of using some of his money that way? Can you imagine MS StemCell XP? *huge shudder*
Electronic Frontier Foundation for online civil rights information
Why does it sounds like the USA
is the start and end to this sort
of research?
USA != The World
Please mention what country you
are talking about and dont make
me havto asume USA to be default
for eveything.
Uh, that's only if they use federal funds. If they don't use federal funds there are NO restrictions.
No, they still can't clone (but, since cloning isn't really producing geneticly identical clones, it's not really worth it)
Also, any new stem cell line will be patented and owned by the corporation, so you have to pay outrageous amounts of money to a corporation for the use of those lines.
Especially now, with the current lines validity in question, the Bush policy will drive stem-cell research, and the future of medice into the hands of biotech giants and away from the hands of the scientists, people and policy makers. Of course, it is questionable whether biotech giants will invest money into something if they don't get the government to pay for it, but given the possibilities of making shitloads of money, they probably will.
Erik
"You," Bite me.
"Each and every one of you." Bite me.
Are embryonic stem cells the only feasible method of curing what ails us? How does that jive with this research? Are there other non-embryo based stem cells that can be used?
It would seem that the fervor over this debate would die if there was some way to avoid using embryos altogether. Is it simply impossible to do this without them?
Dancin Santa
...have shown far more promise in terms of research. The fetal cells tend to be so maleable and flexible that they can grow wildly out of control with devstating consequences to the transplantee.
Adult stem cells aren't as maleable, but they ARE more stable and better able to target specific ailments. Also, there's only a miniscule chance of a human rejecting its own cells.
Besides, from all of the research I've seen, the stem cells contained in the umbilical cord of babies carried to-term are just as viable as those extracted from aborted ones. Why not concentrate your efforts on those, instead of making a reproductive issue out of the whole thing?
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
None of that's going to do any good anyway; you're not allowed to use the product for research.
- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!
The great majority of diseases that presently afflict human populations were (or, in many cases, continue to be) transmitted from both domestic and wild animals (nasties like influenza, HIV, ebola, and CJD included).
By their very nature, animals suitable for xenotransplantation are sufficiently close to humans for this transmission to be a very real risk, and direct transplantation afforts a hugely lower barrier to transmission than do the current (already viable) means (ingestion, animal bites, intermediate vectors, inhalation of aerosolized organisms, etc.)
This isn't to say that xenotransplantation shouldn't be done, only that great study and care is necessary for it to be performed safely.
Not every caution or limitation on the progress of science arises from reactionary luddism or religious zeal.
## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
Personally, if someone makes a bad choice, it's not really a big deal. Barring some irreversible errors, anything broke can be later fixed. Maybe not as advantagious as doing right the first time, but not an atrocity. In the later case...I'm much not quite as charitable. The person in question has a good indication of what the better course of action is, and then decides to do the opposite because it's easier, and then lie about it (badly). Obviously I'm speaking about someone specifically. But if they instead of consulting a higher power for guidance, just said, "Look these ideas, as promising as they seem, conflict with my faith in ways I find moraly objectionable. But more importantly in ways my political base will not tolerate, so we won't be funding them federally."
Of course what would Jesus say about not lifting a finger to save a man from death, reguardless of that man's character? I would think if you're going to be prolife you would have to do it all the way. It seems dishonest to be prolife for a speck of undifferentiated cells, but not a whole person who might not be an admirable individual, but real none the less. I don't think asking people to be internally consistant is too much.
Normally, I'd protect and horde my Karma by posting AC, but I'd like to see other peoples thoughts without having to hunt for them.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
Poor Bush... he's hates his own kind I believe. Saying "stop" to all fellow embryos.
If saving your precious hide requires methods similar to those used in nazi germony by that insane doctor THEN THE HELL WITH YOU. Please die from your diseases faster.
1. Bush's policy applies only to federal funding (NIH - National Institutes of Health funding basically). It has no impact on private funding. Private biomediacal research is huge is the US.
2. Stem cell lines are innovative not because they are cell lines, but because they are embryonic stem cell lines. Cell lines are central in medical research. No drug or therapy can progress to human trials until its effects in vitro (that is, on cells in a dish) have been assessed. There are hundreds of established, standard cell lines that are used for this purpose.
3. It is totally beyond my comprehension how this debate has come to focus on the destruction of embryos. Embryos are destroyed by the hundreds daily. Many fertility clinics require clients to agree to terms that amount to: 'We will create embryos, implant them within you, and any spares will be destroyed in five years if you don't come back asking for them'. Whether or not federal funds can be used for stem cell research, multitudes of embryos are being destroyed daily. This decision has no impact whatsoever upon that fact. The number of embryos 'destroyed' as a consequence of embryonic stem cell research will never be more than a miniscule proportion of the total number of stem cells destroyed.
... that people wishing to perform research on stem cell lines are leaving the United States to go to Great Britain - basically to avoid the influence of religious based persecution ??
You are effing whacked! I particularly like the link.
When politicians try to become bioethicists without a solid knowledge of the underlying science, these things are going to happen.
By blocking future federal funds for newly created (and non-contaminated) stem cells, Bush has assured that nearly all major US innovations in stem cell research will be created by biotech companies. These companies will undoubtedly patent their work, and be more motivated to extract the greatest possible profits from their work (as they have to turn a profit on their investment), while publicly funded research generally requires federal access to patented techniques at little to no cost. Non-federal users of university patents generally don't have to pay as much for licenses, because the universities a) don't have to turn a profit, and b) don't have to repay the initial investment.
In addition, Bush's decision has not prevented unused in vitro embryos from being destroyed. They simply get thrown out now, rather than having their stem cells extracted for research purposes.
When a child dies, parents have the option to donate their organs to save others. When an embryo is destroyed, the Bush decision doesn't enable "parents" to do the same thing.
A list of those who are opposed to stem cell research should be kept, then when they contract a disease that can be treated with a stem cell derived cure, they should be refused treatment.
Buy Hex-Rated Stuff, fight the DMCA!
Perhaps we should just do away with any laws of right and wrong, that way I can put a bullet in your phat head. You people are beyond help and I give up on you.
I am going to make a SETI-like project. It's going to be open source... SIBH: Search for Intelligence in Bush's Head. We monitor the brainwaves of our George and filter out all stupid peaks. The initial brainwaves we start looking fo match an IQ of 70. Once found, we move to 80 and so on.
They used the mouse cells because they were necessary for the human stem cells to grow. There is some unknown process or chemical that the mouse cells provide.
So if new stem cell lines were allowed, it still wouldn't help, because the mouse cells still have to be used, right? The article makes it sound like the restriction to old stem cells is causing the problem, but what is the alternative? If we still have to use the mouse cells, then even if new stem cell lines were allowed, we'd still have the problem.
Name one single war that would still have happened, if religion didn't exist.
I thought so.
Some mythical "god" didn't give us sentience, we EVOLVED based on sound evolutionary principles of surivial of the fittest, which means the strongest, most powerful are "selected" to pass on their genes. To deny George W's will is to challenge his rightful place as the alpha male of the human species, and to deny evolution itself.
For these reasons and more, don't listen to the religious right; stem cell research must be stopped.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
And another :)
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same guy who did the other
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"George W. Bush essentially closed the door on the creation of new human embryonic stem cell lines by restricting the funding to 60 existing cell lines"
Bush only restricted the use of US Federal Funds in regards to stem cell research. People using private funds can still do whatever they want with stem cells, and given the lucrative market for medical techniques/products derived from such reasearch, they will do so.
Or seek private funding within the US to continue their work...
I would like to see a higher percentage of computer-related articles.
We are in the middle of one of the biggest and most amazing social revolutions in history. More than 100,000 very well-educated people have decided to form a loose brotherhood and sisterhood to give the world a complete computer operating system. There are many stories in that!
I like the general science topics, but I think there should be more about software development. Many of the big issues aren't being discussed enough, in my opinion. For example, there needs to be a more vigorous debate about computer language development, in my opinion.
Bush's education improvements were
ssia
Right, and all research is done in the USA. Thanx for the update.
It's OK for serial murderers to eat their victims, but only if the victims were killed before August 16th. If it was after August 16th, the victims may not be eaten...
create an organization that will support stem cell research and oblige it not to patent its research results. If enough people agree with you on the harmful effects of private patents and wish to support unpatented research, money will flow to the organization, and scientists will follow the money.
However, by funding research that is morally questionable/debatable, the government would spending tax dollars against the will and moral beliefs of (some of the) people paying those taxes.
I consider myself non-religious (agnostic at best), but I fully respect the rights and beliefs of the religious (whether fanatics or not). Just as it would be wrong for the government to impose a religion on me, it is wrong for a government to impose values (i.e. fund research) that goes against the morals, ethics, and values of those who are religious.
I fully support biotech firms privately researching in the effort to make money. Capitalistic virtues have been the driving force behind many innovations and research, whether in technology, medicine, or otherwise. Thus, I would not support the aforementioned fictious organization, but I would fully support your right to voluntarily fund that organization. In fact, instead of spending tax dollarson federally funded research, the government should give the money back to the people, and let the people decide with their checkbooks whether or not to support private or public research.
Cloning will kill embryos, (They are babies when we want them, and embryos when we don't.)
Another reason for embryos is test tube babies. A lot of embryos have to be discarded because of complications.
Some day people will want a custom built cloned child. They will probably discard one that doesn't have pretty eyes or birth-defects.
With current technology, most cloned animals die shortly after death, as the body slowly breaks down. So obviously a cloned human is going to suffer because the system will not be perfected for awhile.
Clones would be abused as property to make our lives better at their expense.
Think further into the future when clones do exist. If we can clone a perfect soldier, or perfect housekeeper, can we feel comfortable when we abuse/kill them, because they are a comodity that can be replaced in a lab?
Anyone who's seen Blade Runner knows what I'm getting at. Will cloning just make us devalue life? Should clones in essence be our slaves? Are they going to have citizenship? Already we value the life of the mother above the one of an aborted baby.
We are going to rationalize cloning to ignore our real problems of gluttony, sloth, greed, vanity(custom building of embryos), --hell, maybe even lust, when we can design sex slaves.
I can understand the moral delimma of cloning/abortion -- The value of life. Where do we draw the line?
As a student of Molecular Biology, and of Computer Science, i would have to say that all things considered, the comming biological revolution, is going to impact our lives in far more profound ways than the Information revolution.
Put it this way, to your average Joe Blogs, information technology is synonomous with Quake III and internet porn, whilst Biotech will let him 1) get fits without exercising, 2) keep 'it up' into his 90's and beyond, and 3) pobably let him live another 50 years.
Of course all this would have been impossible without the Information Revolution, as the volumes if information in the human genome to large for humans to fathom.
As far as the stem cell reseach? well lives will be spent in misery and lost due to this decision, and the religious right will be strenghthed as now they have something to rally against. Life goes on.
Come on... who is the last mouse you saw die of the plague?? I think we're more at risk NOT being part mouse. oh... and you gotta see this bag! Really!
It doesn't really matter. The Japanese have okayed all forms of human cloning and stem cell research, provided the egg/sperm donors o.k. it. And many will. So even if the US isn't doing it, the japanese are. Japanese women are better looking anyway, so more power to 'em. :-)
The USA is descending into a pit of christian fundamentalism.
From here (in essentially post-christian northern europe), it's slightly scary - we've got muslim fundamentalists with bio weapons on our right, and christian fundamentalists with nukes on our left. Neither of them are particularly pleasant to deal with.
Of course, Russia may join the E.U. in approx 10 years. then we'd be able to wipe out the muslims, ally with China, and impose a decent socialist rule on the U.S. instead of the stinking fascistic stuff that's currently the norm in america.
More garbage FUD in the disinformation category. As many have already pointed out, this only applies to federal funding of stem cell research. It **does not** I repeat, categorically, **does not** prohibit stem cell research.
Cripes.
Derek
All the big drug companies (I know folks at Glaxo-Smith-etc) have labs in several countries, so that if regulations change in one country, their huge investments are not that much at risk- they just conduct research on different projects according to what is permitted where. The recent GWB decision mostly will result in certain projects taking place abroad, and will guarantee that smaller companies cannot participate as easily, since they can't fork over for the licensing like the big boys can and can't spring for labs in a bunch of countries.
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
There was a article in the national post a few weeks back (a canadian paper). The point of the article was that a group of researchers found stem cells in regular skin tissue and were able to grow them using a petri dish with a small electrical current (not using mice). They also performed some preliminary tests to see if the stem cells could grow into other kinds of tissue (brain cells) and had sucess.
The overall points are:
-You don't need to use embryos to get stem cells (removes the religious problem).
-You don't need to use animals to grow the cells (no xenobiology).
-There is a high possibility that adult stem cells perform as well as embryonic ones do.
One common argument in favor of a zygote's not being a life is the argument that it is just a ball of cells. This same argument is carried further to early stage fetuses before the nervous system is developed to the extent of anything resembling consciousness. [some take it even further. I am trying to summarize a variety of arguments quickly here and have probably not captured every nuance. Please do not quibble unless you think there is some way of phrasing it that is especially useful]
Recently, findings were published from a study which entailed injecting live human fetal cells into a developing monkey fetus brain. The experiment was a success in that the human cells developed fully and were incorporated into the monkey brain... huh? When the researchers were killing these monkeys, did they give any thought to the notion that they were killing a being with partial but fully developed human nervous system?
Am I taking sides in this issue? Well, you decide after I tell you where in the middle I stand. Between what isn't a human life and what is a human life there is a vast grey area. Clearly we need to draw a line somewhere, but wherever we draw a line we are going to be able to find seeming "inconsistencies". But draw a line we must. I am in favor of drawing a more conservative line that errs on the side of preserving more of what "might be" humans, because I think devaluing humanity is a slippery slope. Is this an inconsisten position? Not more than any other. But is it a "costly" position in terms of "humanity"?
We know that there are plenty of scientists among us who would be perfectly willing to experiment on human adults or children in the name of science. Certainly we'd get the best results that way, and the cost of a small number of botched experiments would be more than made up for by the millions of lives improved and saved with our new knowledge. If we experimented on volunteers, what's the diff? Most/many scientists give at least lip service to the supposed ethical problem they see with experimenting on actual human subjects. Well, limits on fetal research or stem cell research are simply a small extension to the "keep off the grass" area. The cost is less knowledge about human biology, only more slowly developing cures to defects and frailties. But defects and frailties are part of what makes us human. What we have in common with our ancestors is that we are mortal. We live, we love, we die. (interesting: I'm applying the leftwing/romanticized/artsy view of humanity, liberal arts if you will, as opposed to the cold calculations of cost-benefit... now who is the hypocrite?) What if we could eradicate death... should we? Really?
What I find disturbing is the insanely egotistical drive for prolonging the lives of those close to us that this medical research represents. If prolonging and improving human life is your goal, well dig deep and save the children of Africa. If prolonging and improving your life is the goal, I have trouble joining in. Or maybe it's the "Nazi-scientist's" pursuit of knowledge for its own sake without regard to the humanity of the subjects that disturbs me. Or maybe these scientists are just buried in their research and don't even want to think about the issues, and it bothers me that they draw a conclusion without much thinking? Or maybe there is some merit to my suspicion that politics plays a role and if it's "conservative" they hate it and if it's "liberal" they like it, for what else could explain the way the two sides seem to line up?
I don't expect you to instantly come around to my postions here, but I hope you walk away realizing that there is more to think about here than "oh, the other side just doesn't get it". I, for one, think I've shown that I get a lot more of it than you do.
I defy anyone to explain to me how (as W would have it) it can be okay to finance research on human stem cell lines that were created before a certain date (date of W's speech?), and verboten to finance research on stem cells created after that date.
If scientists can live with a ban on experimenting on humans, they ought to be able to live with an only slightly more liberal definition of what is a human. Different people have different opinions and we reach middle ground in the political arena. I'd guess that Bush doesn't think he knows all the answers either, but realizes there are solid pros and cons and powerful political forces on both sides, and his decision was a compromise--generally, the ability to compromise is extolled as a virtue, you will recall.
...and your analogy is asinine as people continue to die and donate their bodies for medical educational purposes. Imagine if no-one could be dissected if they died after 2001 what the state of medical education would be like by, say, 2020 when the boomers really start dropping like flies. But, of course, you'll never need to worry because YOUR doctor has already been trained, right? Think beyond your own lifetime.
To those on the left, the only reason for living is to enjoy living in the now. That means, basically, take no thought for the generations to come, whether they'll have as much freedom, opportunity, safety, health, etc. as those living now do, or, at least, subordinate those concerns to the primacy of those already living.
Hence, abortion on demand, by the millions in the USA, one of the richest and most secure nations in the history of the planet for women, who nevertheless choose to abort purely for their own convenience. (I'm not talking about abortions that are medically necessary here.)
The right generally dismisses the bright, shiny object known as "instant gratification" in favor of instilling beliefs, systems, etc. that it believes most effectively transmits civilization and culture to subsequent generations.
To those on the right, abortion and, by extracting stem cells, destroying (even frozen) embryos that might be saved before being otherwise destroyed (and, yes, saving such embryos does happen, there are people alive today who once were frozen embryos slated for destruction), contributes to a reduced regard for life in civilization.
Clearly those whose right to life are being advocated in favor of, by the right, and yet will die due to being aborted or destroyed, will never vote Republican, will never be taxed to fund a missile-defense system, will never contribute to their local Baptist church, will never buy loads of Proctor & Gamble products (to pick four stereotypical examples of why right-wingers supposedly advocate various positions). Yet the right expends vastly more energy and takes much bigger risks trying, mostly in vain, to save these voiceless, often faceless, human beings than does the left in saving animals, trees, the environment, and so on, even though all the right asks for is laws restricting individual choice in abortion on demand and such, while those on the left insist that every one of us change our way of life vastly (stop emitting greenhouse gases, which means "stop breathing", by the way; stop generating trash; stop doing business; etc.).
Those on the right believe that fundamental human values are life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the ownership of property, and that only civilization, including the presence of some sort of military to defend those rights, is sufficient to ensure that future generations will get to enjoy them as we do.
Those on the left act, generally, out of the assumption that, either those rights just naturally sprang forth from the ground (hence their general disregard for those who fought and died to carve them out, e.g. the USA's Founding Fathers) or that they're unimportant in the first place ("but those embryos are just clumps of cells" -- a statement that is 100% true of each one of us, as the scientists of Nazi Germany would explain if they were still around, given that there's no clear, scientific point at which we become more than a clump, other than conception).
Instead, the fundamental values on the left do not have to do so much with life and liberty as with the "right" to enjoy the fruits of another man's labor, the "right" to take the life of an innocent who cannot speak for himself if it serves some short-term convenience, and so on. Left-wing propaganda therefore tends to portray what scientists call "life" as merely a happy accident, something to which no being has any real right, unless, let's say, that being happens to be on death row in a state whose governor is the Republican candidate for President. (This also explains why those in the right can seem insanely opposed to scientific pursuits such as SETI or teaching evolution -- even when those opposing these things are scientists! It's not so much the teaching of theories that's really bugging them, it's the indoctrination of children into the notion that life isn't a fundamental right given to us by God, a view the right believes is, itself, regardless of whether God actually exists, necessary to the preservation of a free society over many generations.)
So, to the left, it just doesn't matter one whit that embryos, fetuses, or perhaps even terminally ill children, elderly, and, someday of course (if we do go down the left's road), adults might be sacrificed to the gods of medical necessity, if not medical convenience. As long as the valuable research springs forth, one would think, the destruction is worthwhile, but even results aren't necessary -- the left claims 100% success is required only for things like missile defense, never for things like abortion on demand (wasn't that supposed to reduce unplanned pregnancies over time?) or welfare (aka the "war on poverty", which did for poverty what the "war on drugs" did for drug use in the USA).
That is, in 50 years, if there are no substantial benefits arising out of research on embryonic stem cells, despite President Clinton (#44, aka Hillary) reversing Bush and forcing American taxpayers to fund the creation and destruction of millions of embryos to a) create vast quantities of stem cells for "research" and b) further inoculate the American public against the notion that conception might signal the beginning of life, I can assure you there will be no apology from those on the left for the millions of lives sacrificed for no real good. (But remember, boys and girls, we can't go building a missile-defense shield to prevent real enemies from even bothering to build vast numbers of real nukes, unless we can prove, before even conducting research and testing, that such a shield would, when attacked simultaneously by every nation on earth plus UN, NATO, and Greenpeace, exhibit a 100% success rate! Never mind that we aren't killing human beings to research such a shield. In fact, I wonder if we could convince the left to build the shield if we could find a way to use aborted fetuses as crucial components in the research? JUST KIDDING -- the Right would never tolerate such a thing anyway.)
After all, the ideology of the left is much closer to that of those who have murdered tens of millions of innocents adults, children, and fetuses in the 20th century alone -- a feat that so-called "religious persecution" did not come anywhere near to matching in all the 20 centuries that preceded it. (Of course, most successful religious persecution is actually carried out as government-sponsored persecution shrouded in the garb of religion, just as this century's massacres have been carried out by governments claiming they're communist, socialist, whatever. There is, however, a much greater distance between murder and Christ than between murder and Marx, which may explain why followers of the former run out of steam following a murderous tyrant more quickly than followers of the latter. In the extreme cases, the idea that killing everyone lets God sort them out is dangerous, but is not nearly so, due to its more-obvious illogic, than the left's version, namely, kill everyone who doesn't agree everyone should be made equally poor.)
The tyrannical mind-set of the left is so pervasive in this world that even those on the right accept it, in at least limited form, in their own thinking. That's why even prominent "conservative" news organizations, like Fox News, don't have frequent interviews with survivors of abortion attempts, people who've used firearms (even just "cocking", if that's the right word, a shotgun) to defend their life, loved ones, and/or property, and so on. That's why Bill O'Reilly says things like "Republicans don't want lower-mileage cars" instead of something vastly closer to the truth, namely, "Republicans don't want to cram artificially low-mileage cars down the throats of the car-buying American public".
In that context, and given the fact that the politically active tyrants tend to care less about ideology than about control of power and money (which explains why abortion advocates and advocates of embryonic stem-cell research go hysterical -- witness the vicious treatment of Presidents who cross them here -- over mere withdrawal of federal funds for their "pet projects", despite the fact that vast amounts of private funds are at hand to fund such activities -- because they can't control the populace as effectively when funded by charity, however substantial it might be, compared to when they're funded by force, i.e. tax dollars), it's not surprising that this debate has been largely framed as "George Bush decides the fate of stem-cell research", often leaving out key words such as "federally-funded" and "embryonic".
Nor is it surprising that, even in a story that clearly includes the pertinent information, many here (highly-modded-up, I'll point out) scream as if Bush is the stupidest President in history simply because he refuses to use force, i.e. the same "men with guns" that "liberated" Elian so he could return to being the property of the State of Cuba, to force every American taxpayer to fund a form of research many of them would, if they knew the facts rather than just the left-wing-media hype, find repugnant.
So, yes, this is a religious issue. The left is upset because their religion requires them to make sacrifices to their gods by forcing fellow citizens to part with their hard-earned property and money so as to fund whatever those gods claim is most important Right Now.
Meanwhile, the right is still upset because our society still celebrates abortion on demand as if it's the only means by which women can celebrate being "equal", having "choice", etc. So much for the use of the word "choice", when most who favor it in the context of abortion oppose it in the context of the ordinary citizen deciding whether to fund embryonic stem-cell research.
In the end, given the fact that even prominent "pro-life" Republicans have trouble opposing the continued use of stem cells newly extracted by destroying viable embryos, it's unlikely Bush's decision will long stand, and impossible that it'll shut down research on embryonic stem cells, any more than the US prohibition on slavery will keep that activity shut down worldwide.
Ultimately, in another 100 years or so, anyone with diseases such as Parkinson's, taking medication to alleviate or eliminate their suffering, will have to live with the fact that their added comfort and longer lives resulted from the unwilling sacrifices of many who never got a chance to voice their opinions on these issues, never got to vote, and never got to research harmless and moral ways to achieve the same results, perhaps even faster. Just as we Americans (especially those who are white) are constantly told that their country was "built on the backs of slaves", there'll be a guilt factor. (Of course, among several big differences are that at least the slaves had a shot at escaping, and, in the meantime, they got to live. I wonder: why wasn't it okay to enslave people, given that they were all going to die anyway, just like most frozen embryos? Hmmm....)
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
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well said.
It's strange that some people think that just because W made the decision to restrict _federal_ funding for any more stem cell lines, that there will be no more research. Private biomed companies are free to do all the research they want WITH THEIR OWN MONEY.
The public school system has done a fine job of teaching the tired old New Deal argument that if you don't want tax money to pay for something, you must be against it.
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. -- Aldous Huxley
You're SO correct (whoops: I mean "right"). People on the right all oppose stem cell reasearch and people on the left are for it. That is SO true. And it all boils down to this: "leftists" are evil, selfish, and thoughtless. Whereas, people on "the right" would NEVER sell out the future for the here and now: not even if the stockholders demanded it. They value all life, and are deeply compassionate about other human beings.
Clearly, the crux of this debate is that people on the left lack any values at all: they're basically nihilists in disguise. They would rather EAT YOUR BABIES and RAPE YOUR WOMEN as soon as spit on you. Not like anyone on the right: they have values up the wazoo. And what's more, they are the RIGHT values: I mean, there's just no debating that. Like, check this brilliant point of yours out:
---("but those embryos are just clumps of cells" -- a statement that is 100% true of each one of us, as the scientists of Nazi Germany would explain if they were still around, given that there's no clear, scientific point at which we become more than a clump, other than conception---
Totaly! (well, except for the fact that everything is alive before cocneption as well). There is totally no difference in the moral interests of a stem cell with no nervous system and a baby. But a chicken, incredibly more advanced in every way than any stem cell, is of no moral worth at all: it has no moral interests. Why can't people just understand that? I mean, it says so in the freakin' Bible, which must make it 100% true even if (as you say) God doesn't exist! But I mean, everytime I think about anything I don't like: boom- it's JUST like the Nazis. The Nazis were so totally leftist! Social Darwinism, Anti-Semitism, military facism: those were like the biggest leftist plots ever!
---It's not so much the teaching of theories that's really bugging them, it's the indoctrination of children into the notion that life isn't a fundamental right given to us by God,---
Have to take issue with you on this one: not all rightists are religious zealots. Many rightists know that rights come from the law, and the vigalence of the values of the people, not any God. Plato refuted that nonsense (divine command morality) before the concept of rights had even been thought of!
--- a view the right believes is, itself, regardless of whether God actually exists, necessary to the preservation of a free society over many generations.)---
Totally! The commoners just wouldn't be able to function if they didn't believe God existed! They'd rape and kill each other at the drop of a hat! I mean, no one is really capable of valuing other human beings unless they are threatened by eternal torment or authority! Everyone is basically an inhuman monster, accept maybe you and me.
I would think that the USA would be pretty quick to fund research using the Canadian skin cells since it would help get fetal cells out of the limelight.
See the CBC story.
After all, as I myself pointed out, there are many on the right who do not oppose stem-cell research (even of the embryonic type; I note that, typical of left-wing zealots, you omit that key adjective, since it distinguishes that form of research from all other types of stem-cell research, the other types not requiring the destruction of otherwise-viable embryos).
I wrote:
To which you replied:
Objectively speaking, which notion, taught to generations of children, does more to discourage them from taking life so lightly as to destroy it?
By acknowledging, even if just via lip service, that we are endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights, including life, liberty, etc., we teach our children that everyone is created equal in God's eyes, that everyone has an equal right to life.
But what does your prescription teach? That life, or at least the right to it, is nothing more than the result of laws and vigilance of the people. (Which may be true as practiced on earth.)
In other words, people indoctrinated into your worldview will not only view life as easily swept away, with no moral culpability, by simply changing the law or even being less "vigilant", they will assume there is no moral basis from which to construct or modify law in the first place, and they'll believe that they needn't be vigilant about anything more than their own self-interest, as modified by the impositions of the law of the day.
So, under your "system", we can each just try to convince the government to change the laws to suit our convenience, and the most persuasive and forceful will, as usual, win. In a sense, you're arguing that Might Makes Right, since, here on earth, those in power make the laws that you claim are the basis of rights such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Therefore, it isn't really wrong to kill your spouse; all that's important is that it's illegal, as well as whether you actually get caught and convicted. (I note little irony in the fact that apologists for Clinton and now Condit, as compared to those for Republicans in trouble, were far more likely to resort to exactly these sorts of claims. "Well, there's no indictment, so we shouldn't be discussing this, right?" "But it's not illegal, so what business is it of ours?" "Hey, he wasn't convicted, so he did nothing wrong.")
The former Soviet Union: tens of millions of innocents murdered in the name of Communism and atheism. Cambodia under Pol Pot: Ditto. China: Maybe just millions, but, basically, ditto. If everyone already taught, by our culture and our public schools, all about the crimes committed over the last 18 centuries by those wearing the label "Christian", were also to read "The Black Book of Communism", you wouldn't have made a statement like that.
(Christianity has been learning, over the centuries since the 3rd or 4th, and in fits and starts, the futility of imposing itself on people, e.g. via government. Communism has learned no such thing, perhaps because, as far as I can tell, without government, it's nothing more than people deciding to live together and share resources, at least until they decide to stop doing it.)
So, no, while I'm not saying everyone would commit violence against their fellow man without believing in God, I'm pointing out that there is a substantial body of evidence that belief in God, specifically, the belief that life is a right divinely given to all human beings, gives most people an extra, and important, natural resistance to committing violence against innocents, as well as an extra willingness to fight and die to protect the lives of innocents from tyrants. (Note that I do distinguish between living a Christian lifestyle, which is fundamentally nonviolent, and being willing to commit violence to defend those living such a lifestyle, which is not nonviolent. But that distinction doesn't seem relevant here.)
I'm saying that, when you compare how POWs were treated in WW2 by the USA, Germany, and Japan, you'll see a fairly close correlation between belief in one Creator and decent treatment of prisoners of war. Perhaps there are other explanations, but I haven't heard one yet that is nearly as credible.
As far as how mankind treats animals, who are supposedly "more advanced than stem cells" (or embryos, or sufficiently retarded or even unconscious adult human beings, perhaps? justifying their termination to serve science?)? Unlike those animals, embryos, could, if their right to life was respected, contribute far more to the well-being of all mankind than any chicken ever will.
Keep in mind the fact that, until you get down to microorganisms, mankind is the dominant species on this planet. That is, animals can't fight back, in any practical way, as a means to defend themselves against man's inhumanity to animals, any more (and far less) than they can prevent animal "inhumanity" to animal. So, the only way you can prevent man's mistreatment of animals is to stop man doing it, by force or by preaching. Until we manage to convince enough people to stop oppressing each other for their own convenience, we'll never take even the first baby steps towards stopping oppressing those in the animal kingdom, and, needless to say, if you choose force to achieve your aim of preventing mistreatment of animals, you'll only be encouraging the belief that use of force is justified against them, since you've used it against mankind.
(Treating dogs and cats as pets is little more than the first baby step, if a step at all, in such a direction. I note, however, that many people treat their pets better than their fellow man, so there is already progress here. But many, many others treat their fellow man as pets, that is, as if they can't choose for themselves how to live their lives, how best to earn a living, how to spend or invest their earnings, with whom to associate, and so on, so the "front" here is chaotic, not uniform by any means.)
Note that neither my religious beliefs, nor Christianity as properly taught, requires me or anyone else to kill animals or people. Nor does it require us to tax other people, or to steal from them, or to even covet their property (which is the seed of all taxation, naturally). Compare that to the preachings of the Left, which requires several of these things, to the point that someone like myself, for the "crime" of not agreeing to ever-higher taxation, regulation, and so on, is castigated as an "idiot", a "fool", "delusional", and so on.
But, as a pro-life meat-eater, I'm grateful for any steps individuals choose to take away from tyrannizing their neighbor, even if their path seems hypocritical to me. That is, even a strict vegetarian who might also favor abortion as birth control, the death penalty, and federally-funded embryonic stem-cell research, at least is making a personal sacrifice of sorts (vegetarianism) that contributes to an overall atmosphere standing against violence, tyranny, against other beings, and that I applaud, even if I don't do the same thing myself, and even though I tend to believe their other beliefs might, when preached, overwhelm their "message" about mistreating animals to the point of spreading, overall, a pro-violence message.
As far as Plato refuting "nonsense" -- I'm unaware of him healing the leper, casting out sins, raising the dead, and preaching the gospel that everyone else is capable of doing the same things. That's an authority I consider higher than even a master logician like Plato. As far as where logic itself comes from? If not from Mind, which is God to many of us, then it has no validity since it is not intelligent, in which case it can tell us nothing about the existence of God or from where we derive whatever "rights" we may have. (Read the book of Job for questions just like these, and try answering them from an atheistic viewpoint.)
I must also stress that my post about left vs. right was primarily about the fundamental ideals of these respective thought-systems. You are wise to utterly reject the notion that people on the left vs. right, or who claim to be, necessarily reflect the values I'm talking about better than people on the other side.
Yes, I do believe the general mass of people on the right are less willing to tyrannize their fellow citizens for their own convenience than those on the left, but I also believe that there's still a great distance between both masses and true acceptance a la that professed by Christ Jesus.
But to blindly trust that someone saying "I'm a conservative Republican" is less likely to cherish oppression in their hearts, or assume that someone saying "I'm a liberal Democrat" is more likely to do so, than the other, is to engage in unnecessary prejudice.
What I do know is that every time I've reasoned out a basis on which I believed I might have the right to impose my will on someone else via some means (usually government, but occasionally I admit I just feel like beating the #@!$ out of some loser ;-), and I looked for support for that belief in one of the fundamental texts of the Right -- the Holy Bible -- I am always unable to find sufficient justification for my belief.
(Note that I impose the same kind of requirement on imposing one's will on another as our judicial system does of convicting a criminal, as in "beyond a reasonable doubt". That is, I don't justify my desire to impose my will based on at least a 50/50 support for it in the Bible; I have to see at least a 90/10 support for it. I have yet to find an instance of this.)
Instead, what I find in the Bible, and in primitive Christianity generally, are statements that directly contradict any attempt to justify imposing one's will on another. Consider, for one, the best-known prayer of a Christian, as emphasized by me for this purpose:
Note the recurring them of God's government, His will, being the only valid will to be exercised, and how the final verses seem to suggest, if not shout out, that, among the temptations and evils from which we are asking, in praying this prayer, to be delivered, is any belief in a kingdom, a government, a system of law and order, other than God's, as expressed in His heaven.
I just don't see sufficient room in prayers like that, or in the life of Christ Jesus and his closest followers (some of whom left government, or quasi-government, positions as soon as they "converted", rather than hold on to positions from which they could tyrannize the populace, such as Saul), to meet the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard I set for myself for imposing my will on others.
Now, can you point me to any fundamental texts of the left that contain language like that? I read Marx's Communist Manifesto so long ago that I can recall little from it, but can you point to statements such as that, which you might be able to persuade me are horribly misinterpreted by his followers of the 20th Century, as a means to dismiss their crimes as not being derived largely from their fundamental teachings?
Not that I'm claiming Marx is the only author of fundamental texts of the left. But we already had Gore and Liebermann (sp?) put on the mantle of God in their campaign, e.g. when the latter talked about how the Commandment "Honor thy father and mother" requires us to grant Medicare coverage for prescription medicines, as if God had really intended to say "You must take up arms against your fellow man, so as to force them to fund the medicines your father and mother need." Thus the left happily puts on the cloak of religion to justify their proposed tyrannies and oppressions, all of which seem, to me, to be Marxist prescriptions for what they believe ails society.
So, sorry to say, I find "if thine enemy strikes thee on the one cheek, turn to him the other cheek also" much more persuasive as a moral basis by which humans should interact with each other, because I find persuasion, preaching, and cherishing the individuality of each and every human being (from conception forward), so they may find their way to live their life the best way they can according to their understanding, to be a far less brutal way to live compared to seeking to impose my will on others. Yet the latter approach is what I find to be pretty much the constant drumbeat of the left, as compared to the right (though there are, of course, exceptions).
Remember, the origin of this thread is the claim that George Bush is an "idiot" because he's refusing to force American citizens to fund research based on the use of stem cells that are extracted only by destroying otherwise-viable embryos.
In my opinion, there's no way someone can make such a claim without regularly fantasizing about exercising tyrannical control over millions of peoples' lives, with little regard for the necessity or effects of that control. (Important: when you have power over someone, your need to exercise it properly is diminished compared to their need, absent your power over them, to exercise self-control. That's why power tends to corrupt -- because those who wield it are insulated somewhat from the effects of wielding it poorly. So people who dream of tyrannizing others in whatever form rarely give serious consideration to the effects their dreams, once realized, might actually have.)
But you won't be sure whether someone is a tyrant-wannabe by checking whether their label reads "Republican", "Democrat", "left-wing", "right-wing", "atheist", "agnostic", "Christian", "Buddhist", etc. You have to look at how they live, what they preach, and how enthusiastically they wear those labels, knowing what the labels represent.
So I certainly agree with your call to generally ignore such labels!
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
But, as far as the actual conduct of those in power in Nazi Germany, their use of national industry to wage war, the means by which they came into power, and their "social darwinism" and other anti-life experiments, the more I learn about it, the more I see its "fascism" as more like today's left-wing than right-wing politics.
And you might want to explore the deep history of that well-known left-wing organization called "Planned Parenthood", if you really want to understand the connection between today's debate over advocating embryonic stem-cell research and yesterday's Nazi-driven desire to create a "master race" (which, ultimately, is difficult to distinguish from the left's desire to create a utopian society by destroying almost every vestige of the forms of society that have proved their worth over the millenia).
In this debate, anyway, the impulse to force every American to help fund embryonic stem-cell research is much more fascist than the willingness to let each American decide for himself whether and how to fund it.
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
I am not talking about the post-invasion Afghanistan. You are talking about the war crimes that the Soviet army committed I am talking about the PDPA government that the Soviets backed before the invasion. They waged a campaign against illiteracy, started a debt forgiveness program, improved the health and lot of women in Afghanistan, etc. Of course, they were doomed - and the Soviet invasion was brutal. But the Taliban are far worse for the majority of Afghani people than the PDPA were.
Oh, please do go on about how the Nazi's were leftists. I'm sure historians around the globe are smacking themselves on the foreheads for missing what you, in your brilliance, have just revealed to them.
Then, please continue with your conspiratorial straw man of the left. It's just so original and incisive!
---I wrote: ...notion that life isn't a fundamental right given to us by God To which you replied: rights come from the law, and the vigalence of the values of the people
Objectively speaking, which notion, taught to generations of children, does more to discourage them from taking life so lightly as to destroy it?
----
Neither inherently does: it simply matters what certain people will happen to find more compelling. But I should point out that your claim is still nothing more than arbitrary grant of rights based on a fable, based on a philosophical idea that no philosopher has taken seriously since Plato (that morality can inherently "come from" of have anything to do with the will of a god).
Personally, I'd rather have people's morals based in their actual values instead of their variable faith in the stories of one religious tradition or another, especially one as morally relativistic as the Christian tradition. You're in a losing position anyway, because for most believers, the unspoken reality is that these values DO come first: the belief in a god who shares these values comes later. If they didn't have the moral values, they wouldn't respect the god for having them! You yourself totally undermine your own point with your extended discussion of why you find Christian ethics worthwhile: that to you they are most in accord with your values and feelings about morality and compassion!
---By acknowledging, even if just via lip service, that we are endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights, including life, liberty, etc., we teach our children that everyone is created equal in God's eyes, that everyone has an equal right to life.---
Why not simply teach them to respect these rights period? What, exactly, do you think is added by going on about God? I mean sure, we could make up any number of fables about why we have rights. Many cultures have different fables. But if we expect people to intelligently defend and discuss these rights, then it behooves us to have an honest discussion about the real facts of what they are. They didn't shoot out of the sky: they shot out of the pen and mind of Jefferson. Was Jefferson infaliable? No. Some rights might be bad (right to abortion). Some might be good. We need to be able to rationally discuss these issues, not hold rain dances.
---But what does your prescription teach? That life, or at least the right to it, is nothing more than the result of laws and vigilance of the people. (Which may be true as practiced on earth.)----
Where else are they supposed to be practiced if not on earth?! We live on earth!? This is where we keep our stuff, as well as our governments and our lives. You know: the ones we supposedly care about giving rights?
---In other words, people indoctrinated into your worldview will not only view life as easily swept away, with no moral culpability, by simply changing the law or even being less "vigilant", they will assume there is no moral basis from which to construct or modify law in the first place, ----
You are operating under the delusion that A) moral culpability is only "real" if it is eternal and B) that the existence of some god can possibly have any relevance to what is or is not moral. Neither idea can be taken seriously as a philosophical position. If a few minutes of moral culpability are worthless, then how exactly is an eternity of it build up to being worthwhile? 0 + 0 = 1232313?? And I suggest you read up on your Plato, o supposed conservative.
---they'll believe that they needn't be vigilant about anything more than their own self-interest, as modified by the impositions of the law of the day.----
This is what I find most disturbing about people with your position: your barely concealed nihilism. I mean look at you: you can't even see the possibility that anyone has anything other than self-interest in mind. That they could possibly have VALUES of their own. Values for their familes. For their country. For their own ethical conduct and self-appraisal. For the universe. No: you are a nihilist because you think values can ultimately only be things that people are tricked into having by fear of punishment.
---The former Soviet Union: tens of millions of innocents murdered in the name of Communism and atheism. ---
You sir, are a bigot, plain and simple. Assuming that atheism is itself even a value, or that atheism has anything inherently to do with communism! There is nothing a believer can do that an atheist cannot also do: nothing but believe in god.
---I'm pointing out that there is a substantial body of evidence that belief in God, specifically, the belief that life is a right divinely given to all human beings, gives most people an extra, and important, natural resistance to committing violence against innocents, as well as an extra willingness to fight and die to protect the lives of innocents from tyrants. ---
There is, simply, no such body of evidence. No study demonstrates that belief in god makes one more charitable, compassionate, or less violent. In fact, most believers would tell you that that's sort of beside the point. Communism is a moral evil. But communism is a variable independant of belief in god.
---I'm saying that, when you compare how POWs were treated in WW2 by the USA, Germany, and Japan, you'll see a fairly close correlation between belief in one Creator and decent treatment of prisoners of war----
How do you figure? The Germans believed in One God (the Christian god, no less). In fact, moreso than Americans, they had even more of a sense that their mission was in fact DIRECTED and ORDAINED by their god. Not that Americans were all that morally commendable to all their POWs: where was their compassion for their own civilians who happened to be Japanese? The Japanese also had one god: their emporer. You have a quaintly naive idea of history, I'm afraid. Monotheism, or any sort, tends to be very exclusivist, and when elevated as a central cultural value, almost always leads to violence and oppression.
---As far as how mankind treats animals, who are supposedly "more advanced than stem cells" (or embryos, or sufficiently retarded or even unconscious adult human beings, perhaps? justifying their termination to serve science?)?---
I love how you can draw totally unwarranted conclusions out of a position you have not even bothered to try and understand. Retarded human beings have just as much of an interest in living as you or I. Sleeping human beings do as well. Stem cells and embryos, however, don't even have the bare apparatus to HAVE any interests at all!
----Unlike those animals, embryos, could, if their right to life was respected, contribute far more to the well-being of all mankind than any chicken ever will.----
We don't grant moral rights in the present on the basis of potential payoffs in the future! Children do not have the right to consent to sex just because they someday will be able to. What is relevant is the present moral interests of the thing we are talking about, not moral interests it might one day have. For all I know, this apple I have here may one day, if eaten, become part of a sperm cell that joins with an egg to grow into a world famous piano player. Does that mean that the apple has a right to life- because it will one day "be" that piano player?
---As far as Plato refuting "nonsense" -- I'm unaware of him healing the leper, casting out sins, raising the dead, and preaching the gospel that everyone else is capable of doing the same things. ----
"Wouldn't it be nice if we could raise the dead? That would be nice: so obviously any stories about it happening must have been true! Also, since I have no idea how to refute the arguement that morality cannot possibly stem from the dictates of a god, I'll change the subject! I'll attack Plato's character instead of hsi arguement. He couldn't raise the dead, like my favorite Bible character says he could... in the Bible, so his argument cna't possibly be of any relevance!"
---As far as where logic itself comes from? If not from Mind, which is God to many of us, then it has no validity since it is not intelligent, in which case it can tell us nothing about the existence of God or from where we derive whatever "rights" we may have. ---
Oh, that's rich: "I don't have to rationally argue that god exists, because god exists, and therefore logic has no validity against god!" In other words, you do not respect raitonal discussion: even if someone were to demonstrate that your arguments were terrible, it wouldn't matter: you never cared about rational arguement anyway.
---So, sorry to say, I find "if thine enemy strikes thee on the one cheek, turn to him the other cheek also" much more persuasive as a moral basis by which humans should interact with each other, ---
Too bad that, not only is this sentiment not orignial to the character of Jesus (and expressed far more completely, consistently, and better elsewhere), not something that any religious belief is required to hold as a value, but it's also countless times violated as moral principle by the very god who claims it's worthwhile. In other words, if I wanted to teach my children this value, the LAST thing I'd have them read is the Bible.
I think it's great you have a religious belief that you enjoy having and that gives you life meaning. However, I must point out that just because you believe something (like, perhaps, that embryos have an kind of immortal soul that, say, a dolphin does not) doesn't magically make it true and certainly doesn't relieve you of the burden of having to back up your claims. And yes, I'd much rather prefer to speak of actual moral values and what values they actually have themselves, rather than extended ad hominem attacks of this or that political label.
If you really think Bush is such a moral leader, tell me: why is he cutting funding (your money) from stem cell research, but not from the fertility clinics that routinuely create and destroy thousands of embryos? Do you think that this is a consistent moral stand? Or is he simply attacking a convienient political target?
Then this:
Finally, these:
After all this, you ask me questions, as if expecting answers?
Sorry, but I feel the need to relieve you of ever having to endure my hatred of rational discussion again, so I must decline to answer further questions. Please make sure you never again read anything I write.
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
Tetsujin takes it up his ass.
NIPPY
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Nippy takes a bung beating. Hey nippo, go color in some Akira shit for me so I can go and light a fire with your Fagna comic books.
How common: make claims, then get all huffy when someone DARES to point out that they are unconvincing or fallacious. You made a bigoted claim: I was well within the bounds of legitimacy in labeling it as such. And you consistently made statements that again and again demonstrated that you will simply through out reason whenever it doesn't suit your opinions. You said as much, so what exactly is wrong with me pointing it out?
I'm sure everyone is grateful that you did them this service.
I, too, am grateful, and so, before engaging you in debate any further, insist that you at least make public your true identity, rather than remaining behind the shroud of anonymity, so everyone can appreciate your genius. An update to your "personal page" would be one approach.
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.