Friday, March 13, 2009

This is stupid - Updated 3/13

For UPDATE see bottom of post:

Sorry but this is why the catholic church is wrong (and anyone else who says abortion is wrong for any and all cases):

Brazil girl, alleged rape victim, aborts twins:
The procedure on the 9-year-old girl draws complaints from Catholic church

The title says it all but the story says the girl is "alleged" to have been raped by her stepfather, she is 80 lbs and SHE IS 9 YEARS OLD!!!! and it isn't just one it's TWINS!!! In Brazil abortion is illegal except for specific circumstance (endanger the mother) and the the catholic church says she should carry it to term; it's the law of GOD - WTF???? They even tried to take legal action to stop it..."inconceivable" - it is the will of God for her to get pregnant and then if she dies carrying the babies to term...that's all on him too I guess and we should just let it go????? AND to top it off, get this, the Archbishop excommunicated the child's mother, doctors and others involved! I don't even know what to say to that.....

If you want a little more detail and a better discussion see Mike's blog at The Questionable Authority

UPDATE 3/13/09 - From PZ: "After all of this the president of Brazil took a public stand against the church's unjust decision. Now at last, we hear from the top of the Catholic hierarchy…and the Vatican sides with fetuses over children. No surprise there at all."

The stupid, it hurts. Sorry but I have absoutley zero tolerance for this! To say we should force a 9 year old rape victim to carry to term twins (that are her stepdad's....) NO WAY.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Oh the irony, it hurts

So I am sitting at the Nature Centre here in Lethbridge watching my birds and listening to podcasts on my Ipod. I was listening to one from NPR Science titled Eyes in the Skies and Drying up Rainforests

Most of the podcast is about rainforests, global warming and CO2 sources/sinks but a portion of it is on in vitro fertelization and pre-implantation genetic haplotyping. A couple who had a child that died at approximately 8 weeks I think from a neuromuscular genetic disorder had decided they wanted to have more children but did not want to have another one with the same genetic disorder. The woman took hormone therapy for in-vitro and after harvesting 17 embryos and fertilizing them, all of them had one cell removed (at the 8 cell stage this doesn't do anything to the embryo really) for testing to make sure which ones didn't have the gene for the disorder. After all that, and having a lab identify about 10+ embryos without the disorder (any not implanted in the first round are frozen for future attempts if desired) the journalists asked the couple how many children they wanted and she said "however many God wants us to have"! Apparently it is all up to God and the lab personnel, her own active hormone supplementation, freezing embryos and then all of the extra stuff you do for implantation of the fertilized embryo(s) is all up to God and just God's plan (which correct me if I am wrong was an infant with the disorder?). Now don't get me wrong, I feel sorry for anyone that has to deal with the loss of a child at any age but especially so young but the irony of their statement vs actions is lost on this woman/couple, going through all of this effort/actions and still claiming it is all up to God! That just drives me crazy and I couldn't believe it just came out so naturally and without even the briefest pause from these people who are actively playing "god" regarding their own reproductive efforts but still clinging to this predetermined plan from their deity.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

The Darwin Song

This is great! These kids already know more about Darwin than many adults I know.



hat tip to Greg Laden where I found it, and Evolving Complexity

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Faith: can justify anything as from God

It amazes me how the "faithful" can attribute ANYTHING to God. If a plane crashes and everyone dies it was God's will, if a plane has a problem and lands on the Hudson safely it was God's hand, if a Hurricane or Tsunami hits it was God's will, if a new job comes along, a long lost relative calls when you think of them, you turn left instead of right and it was a good thing ..... etc. A believer can justify why either God or prayer works, fails to work, or explain a positive random event as the will of God or an answer to prayer. I wont get into the psychological aspect of the difficulties the human mind has with correlations or the natural tendency and evolutionary reason that the human mind looks for patterns which I will save for a future blog, but I will recommend reading this blog by Harry McCall on How the Human Mind Reasons which I think is really good. I am actually working on a similar blog regarding God's love and another on the effect of giving up the idea that you can control all of your life which when you fully accept that you can't, you need to accept life as it comes and enjoy it for what it, Which when do this removes a huge burden/weight and is a relief; it's just that believers attribute this to God (God's will or path they are willing to follow) and atheists attribute it to learning to accept life (such is life), but the end result is still the same! Sorry for rambling but I got work to do and just wanted to post real quick AND recommend the above blog posting: McCall's blog is interesting, especially the personal organ transplant story about his daughter!

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Rivals of Jesus

For those of you interested in this stuff here is a good little video on the rivals of Jesus before, during and just after his time. Jesus wasn’t the only messianic prophet in the ancient world — but he’s the only one most people remember. This National Geographic documentary presents some of the rivals of Jesus and Judaism like Mithras, Simon Magus, Apollonius of Tyana, Simon Bar Kochba, and Isis (Tip to Daniel for the post I noticed)