Baroquem

On legal restrictions to abortion

The author of a blog called Zaius Nation wrote a post to explain why he is “very disappointed with the Stupak Amendment”. It develops a thesis along these lines:

I am against abortion. I don’t really think that anybody is actually for abortion, not really. It’s like saying that you don’t like babies, and nobody really says that. (With the possible exception of W. C. Fields.)

I also feel that any woman that makes the decision to have an abortion should be allowed to do so without interference from any outside person or agency. A decision of this nature is difficult enough for any woman to make, and nobody should be able to inject their own opinion into that woman’s life. It’s her own decision to make.

I responded to this in the comment section on his blog; but then I responded to some of the responses to my response (in the process, I was called a troll and a woman-hater), and the net result is that my original reply and all subsequent posts were unceremoniously deleted. What follows here, then, is my original observation about “Dr. Zaius’s” argument:

There are a couple of problems with this. First, it’s a repugnant but verifiable fact that some people are in favor of abortion, not just the so-called ‘right to choose’ (which is, in any case, a red herring). It’s a very warped perspective on reality, but such people are out there; they see the very act of abortion as somehow empowering women rather than reducing them. And then there are the abortion providers themselves, for whom abortion is a source of profit. A former Planned Parenthood director recently described how she was told to bring in more abortions to bolster the organization’s finances in a struggling economy. Are these the idealistic defenders of women’s rights?

Like those people, albeit to a lesser extreme, the author here makes the same mistake — often used deliberately as a tactical maneuver — of framing abortion as a woman-centric issue. The whole argument presented here is based on that premise: the comparison to alcoholism and Prohibition, the bit about ‘second-class citizens’, the whole thing. But … the premise doesn’t hold. Re-center the discussion, put the developing child at the focal point, and the whole edifice collapses. Because the ugly truth is that every abortion has a ‘horrifying and gruesome result’: a human life is destroyed, often violently. This is not a religious argument; it’s common sense backed up by junior-high biology. The pro-abortion movement desperately wants to keep that fact hidden, but it’s becoming harder and harder to conceal the truth.

We begin to restrict personal liberties as soon as they negatively impact the rights of another. Sexual harassment. Theft. Rape. Murder. Those things happen anyway; should we then not bother to criminalize them? The current laws governing abortion already promote an inequality of the sexes, because they completely disenfranchise the child’s father: once the child is born, he can be forced to financially support him; but before birth, he has no voice at all in determining whether his son or daughter is allowed to live.

The first step to discussing abortion in a realistic manner is to recognize that there is more than one life involved. The child growing in the womb is no less a child than one lying in a cot in the delivery room. There are many hard and sad choices to be made in the abortion debate, but they must be made with a full acknowledgement of what abortion really is. It is not a victory for women’s liberation. It is death.

Atheists reveal their blind faith

(Warning: this post is a bit of a rant, and I wax a bit sarcastic towards the end. I don’t normally do that, and I apologize in advance.)

I keep an eye on references to the Shroud of Turin on Twitter. After this week’s news, the number of such references exploded.

Predictably, many of the tweets come from atheists or antireligious types crowing about a perceived victory of science over religion. Without knowing any of the details of the experiment beyond a brief news article. And probably knowing next to nothing about the scientific studies that have been performed on the Shroud.

Here’s a sampling of some of the comments by different users (with hyperlinks removed):

• bluSTREAK: Shroud of Turin is just a garment of the imagination? Leave it to Italian atheists to prove it.  Vatican silent.
• Markho23: re: …Shroud of Turin is a medieval forgery: What!! You mean there is no death shroud for a fictional religious character?. :^)
• LudicrousLouisa: The turin shroud was just debunked AGAIN. God, how many times are they going to have to do this and people STILL don’t get it?
• randfree: Ooooh, The Shroud of Turin is a fake. Nothing new there. Who cares?
• royobrs3: RT @NuttyNewswire: Shroud of Turin ‘is a medieval fake’  #news #wtf / of course it is.. :)
• paulcasino: Way to go on debunking the Shroud of Turin, science. Score one for SANITY.
• SarahTulley: Scientific experiments prove the falseness of the Shroud of Turin
• bryandrews: RT The Shroud of Turin reproven fake —again. Probably won’t make any difference to believers. Ugh.
• KnightLAT:  Turns out the Shroud of Turin is a fake. What a surprise!
• chas_martin: Scientists prove the Shroud of Turin isn’t divine by making one themselves. Next up: proving that Bette Midler is really just “The Miss M.”
• pentagram1971: bahahahahahaha Turin Shroud a fake. Who’d have thought it.
• Papa_Shango: RT @denyreligion: Shroud of Turin is a Fake #atheism
• BinaCollins: Miracle is a fraud! Whew! Shroud of Turin is a fake
• JohnNStewart: Scientists say experiment proves Shroud of Turin man-made
• ArielAkiva: Researchers find that The Shroud of Turin is a fraud. Jewish people are not surprised. #CNNFactCheck
• ConsiderThis1: Wow RT @argylestyle @MelChrisAlexSam Shroud of Turin Debunked by Scientists - its man made
• TracyBoehrer: How many times does the Shroud of Turin have to be shown as a fake before people stop believing in it?
• Deadeye_Dick: Shroud of Turin was recreated proving to be fake. Good news for Atheists better news for me. Look out for Shroud of Union on TMNT bed sheet.
• jonseff: Seriously, why has it taken until 2009 to prove that the Shroud of Turin is a fake?
• theboomie: occasional triumph of reason!
• bigcountryhome: Athiest Report Debunks Shroud of Turin
• Nekidchickens: Shroud if Turin replicated perfecly?  What a shocker.
• tokyoreishi: Christianity punched in the solar plexus again, Italian scientist says he has proven the Shroud of Turin is fake
• za7ch: The shroud of Turin a fake? No way!?! /sarcasm
• BrettMerryman: I love that hard science is used to disprove the Shroud of Turin. Just LOOK AT IT. It’s an obvious fake.

Perhaps this post should be titled RATIONALITY FAIL.

There’s a story here, but it’s not the story of science and rationality triumphing over the superstitious, blind faith of the unthinking masses. Quite the opposite. At best, comments such as the ones above merely betray a shocking lack of critical analysis of news. But I think that they also reveal a willingness on the part of some atheists to blindly worship Science — despite having a complete disregard for the scientific method.

The irony is deep. We the religious are supposed to be the unthinking ones, the blind sheep, the deluded faithful who accept whatever we’re told. But the story is about a Scientist, and so of course he’s correct in his proof of … well, what, exactly? He made a superficial replica of the Shroud? What, pray tell, does that prove? If you believe that that “debunks” the Shroud’s authenticity, then I dare you to buy an artificial flower and write a paper describing how plants are actually made of plastic and silk. Go on. You can “debunk” a good chunk of the biological sciences that way.

If you’ve been thinking along the same lines as bryandrews or BrettMerryman or Nekidchickens, then you need to (a) stop and think about how science works, and (b) do a bit of reading about the Shroud. Seriously. Because they have no idea.

I’ve saved the best for last, though:

• Richard_Dawkins: “An Italian scientist and his team debunk the Shroud of Turin.” ~ http://is.gd/43nia

Yes, that’s right: Richard Dawkins says that the Shroud has now been debunked. I suppose we can be charitable and say that he was just trying to summarize the article’s claim in his headline but … shame on him. As a distinguished scientist, he should know better. But Dawkins has an antireligious agenda to pursue, so I’m not really surprised.

Let’s be clear: this news could be very significant. It could, in fact, be the beginning of the end for the Shroud. But, by itself, it proves nothing. There’s a lot more work and study that needs to be done first. Having all the actual details of the experiment and the results would be a good place to start. All we’ve got right now is a slightly sensationalistic news clip and a picture. And from a scientific point of view, that gives us bupkis.

Those that hold science in such high esteem while denigrating religion ought to know that.

That’s why I wrote this.

So they say they've made a Shroud...

An Italian organic chemistry professor claims to have made an authentic-looking copy of the Shroud of Turin.

There’s also a comparison photo of his shroud with the original.

Intriguing. It would be nice to have more technical details, of course, but there are several points we can make in anticipation:

- If these Italian atheists and agnostics are trying to attack religion, then it’s nice to see them wasting their money on something that doesn’t affect our faith one whit.

- It will be genuinely useful to Shroud research if this approach managed to produce an undistorted image, but I wonder. Almost all previous attempts to replicate the Shroud by placing a cloth over a human face (real or, say, a statue) have failed. The results are distorted because you’re mapping a three-dimensional surface onto a two-dimensional one. On the Shroud, the image-producing mechanism seemingly worked “straight up”, acting in a purely vertical direction, to create an undistorted image.

(UPDATE: going by the image linked above, he did a pretty good job of replicating the image at least on a superficial level. The plot thickens.)

- On the other hand, there are good reasons to think that the blood stains on the cloth were there *before* the image of the man appeared: on threads in the cloth bearing blood stains, the fibrils are undamaged by whatever mechanism created the image. Furthermore, the stains *do* map correctly from 2D to 3D — e.g., the stains around the face in the photo you see on the article appear to be in the “hair” — but if you wrap that image around a human head, then they fall into much more natural positions on the temples and sides of the face.

- There are also valid reasons to believe that there is historical evidence of the Shroud’s existence prior to the date range established by the carbon dating in 1988; and the objections made to the validity of the carbon testing itself are reasonable (including some peer-reviewed research published in reputable journals).

- It will be interesting to hear whether this technique of reproduction produces the same chemical and material properties seen on the Shroud — they’re rather unique.

- If Garlaschelli’s technique can adequately meet all those objections, then the skeptics still have to answer two standing questions: Why would a medieval forger go to the trouble to produce such a subtle result in an age when depictions of human figures in art were crude and unlifelike, and yet people were credulous enough to accept impossibilities as relics; and why have we not seen any other example of this artistic technique created by an unknown medieval master? 

I’m not 100% certain of the Shroud’s origin one way or the other, but I tend to lean toward authenticity, based on the weight of the evidence. It’s a far more complex topic than most people give it credit for, and skeptics tend to dismiss it out of hand. So did most of the scientists in ‘78 — until they had a chance to actually examine it.

7 Quick Takes, Take 15

The original Seven Quick Takes Friday maven can be read here.

:::: 1 ::::

Let’s get the confessions out of the way first: Jenn’s coy little hint is what gave me the extra push to actually write this update. Not that I haven’t been meaning to write for the past couple of weeks, of course, but I’m afraid that I’m fairly intertial about such things.

And of course, you’ll read through the rest of these items and conclude that I shouldn’t have bothered. Or you could just stop here and save 30 perfectly good seconds!

:::: 2 ::::

Speaking of intertia, I just finished uploading the last of my photos of Indonesia a couple of days ago — a mere seven weeks since the trip ended! Take a look at the results here.

A bit of a preview:

I put most of the images I upload to Flickr under a Creative Commons license; I’m happy to have other people reuse them (with proper attribution). There’s also a nice Flickr feature whereby I can the the links people are following to arrive at my pictures. That’s how I discovered one of the strangest reuses so far. One of the photos I took in Sulawesi is now decorating a blog entry about purchasing funeral insurance. Which photo, you ask? Why, this one — a field of waruga, centuries-old stone sarcophagi in which the dead were interred in a huddled sitting position.

I didn’t realize that insurance covered that option.

:::: 3 ::::

Last night I made a low-fat ice cream alternative using evaporated milk and ate an embarrassing amount of it. This morning I realized that I’d pulled the wrong can from the pantry and used a full-fat milk base. Oops. I thought it seemed creamier than usual.

And this comes just one day after hearing a lecture about “mindless eating” by Cornell’s Brian Wasnik (winner of an Ig Nobel prize!).

:::: 4 ::::

The library building where I work is overdue for a major renovation (there are no sprinklers to protect the collections in case of fire, for starters); six months ago, we were fully expecting that, just about now, we’d all be packing up and moving to an undisclosed location so that the upper floors of the building could be completely gutted. The “undisclosed” part was a source of some anxiety because the options would all seem to be less desirable. We’re located right in the heart of campus, with all the conveniences the campus offers right within walking distance — and, most importantly for me, we’re right next door to Sage Chapel with its lovely large pipe organ.

But the economic slump put the brakes on the renovation plans, and I have no idea what’s happening now; they’re mentioned less and less frequently these days. But at least nobody has come along and told me to pack up my office for next week.

:::: 5 ::::

I’m in the middle of rereading C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower series. I think I first heard about the books as a teenager reading about the creation of Star Trek — Gene Roddenberry took elements of Hornblower’s character to create James T. Kirk’s. (Kirk’s serial womanizing came from elsewhere, though.) At the time, they didn’t sound particularly interesting. They’re very good, though.

:::: 6 ::::

I’ve been asked to design and teach a small training program at work. I think I’m looking forward to it. At my previous job, I did a lot of work as what they call a “field engineer”, traveling to random locations to repair or install the scientific instruments we sold. When I was doing a new installation, I usually had to spend a day or so training the purchasers how to use their shiny new device. On the rare occasions when there were no snafus and the machines worked correctly, I rather enjoyed the teaching aspect of it.

Of course, the memory cheats, and when the time comes for this new program I’ll probably stammer and go blank and forget everything I know about Drupal. That’ll teach me.

:::: 7 ::::

I haven’t looked into the details of President Obama’s health care proposal. But if it’s true, as they say, that it includes provisions for mandatory abortion coverage — a new, backdoor FOCA, in other words — then it deserves to fail. There, I said it.

::::::::::::

Somebody's trying to tell me something

I have a LibraryThing account and a Mac, so I make use of this nifty LibraryThing screensaver. It’s meant to display stacks of random cover images from the books I own. Sometimes, though, it mysteriously gets stuck on the same two or three images, tossing dozens of copies of the same book onto the screen. I actually like this ‘feature’. Just as some people like to attribute a vague meaning to the serendipitous combinations that sometimes appear in iTunes’ randomly shuffled playlists, I wonder whether LT is trying to send me a message, prompting me to finally read a long-neglected volume or brush up on a specific topic.

I’m not sure what to make of this one, though:

7 Quick Takes, Take 14

All-About-Indonesia Edition!

Before reading, go visit the “7 Quick Takes Friday” originator.

Ready? Okay — seven easily-described things that I found interesting or surprising about Indonesia:

:::: 1 ::::

Everybody has compact fluorescent bulbs (often left bare and unadorned). Everybody. From a good hotel and resort house to the meanest roadside market stalls, I can’t recall seeing a single incandescent bulb anywhere. (This may say as much about my memory and observational skills as anything else, but the point still stands.)

:::: 2 ::::

There are still parts of the country where being Caucasian will make small children cry and adults rush up to you asking if you’ll pose for pictures with them.

:::: 3 ::::

I was prepared for a hostile climate, muggy heat and harsh sun with a liberal distribution of mosquitoes. I was well-provisioned with sunblock, insect repellent, and anti-malaria pills. I was resigned to the fact that I would probably get sick from the food to some degree — at least with minor discomfort from the shift in diet, if not from major gastrointestinal distress after eating the wrong thing.

As it turns out, apart from a minor 24-hour cold, I was completely fine. The food was great, I had to resort to sunblock maybe two days out of the entire three weeks I was there, and I never touched the repellent at all. The mosquitoes largely left me unmolested. It was my native Indonesian friend who suffered from allergies, stomach problems, effects of the heat, and a devoted following of insects!

:::: 4 ::::

Eating stewed bat is aptly described by my friend as being like dining on a combination of beef and fish. Beef for the taste, fish for the experience of picking countless tiny bones out of your food.

:::: 5 ::::

It was raining one evening, and we were trying to rent an umbrella. After asking about the logistics of how this worked, I learned that you actually hire someone with an umbrella to follow you as you walk around the city.

:::: 6 ::::

There are cricket-like insects in Sulawesi that produce sounds with the same volume, pitch, and duration as a commercial fire alarm. Or else there are fire alarms in Sulawesi that the locals mistake for crickets, I’m not sure which. One or the other woke me up two nights in a row without disturbing anyone around me.

:::: 7 ::::

Bananas topped with chili sauce and anchovies make a tasty treat. Even for someone who passionately loathes the smell, taste, and very texture of banana.

::::::::::::

The trip so far...

We’ve arrived in Singapore via Tokyo. When we landed in Tokyo, health officials in scary anti-virus outfits boarded the plane and scanned everyone for traces of swine flu. Took almost two hours. All I saw of Tokyo was the airport.

We’re in Singapore now, about to go out to see a little of the actual city. We arrived at 2:30 a.m., tried to find a place to sleep, ended up on the benches in the airport, and got up at 6 a.m. to see … well, we’ll see what we’ll see.

Pictures to follow eventually!