Sophism on personhood

While browsing Google News, the following headline caught my eye: "State's 'personhood' initiative at odds with science." It was penned by a certain Arthur Caplan, Ph.D., director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.

I was intrigued by what salient facts he might bring forward to decided the admittedly difficult philosophical issue. I was sorely disappointed and instead of finding fascinating facts found only blatant fallacies, more accurately one blatant fallacy developed into an article.

It seems to me the whole article can be summed up in one quotation:

What science has found is that around half of all conceptions don't make it to implantation. Calling a fertilized egg a person flies in the face of this cruel biological reality. Half of all fertilized eggs cannot even become an embryo, much less a person.

See what he did? He assumes his own private definition of 'person'--he never says what he means by 'person'--and simply postulates without any defense that an embryo is not yet one and that since most embryos do not develop into one (whatever is required to be a person according to Dr. Caplan) it is wrong to call embryos persons. How such terrible logic got passed into a published article baffles me.

This is a textbook example of circular logic and just says, Most embryos will never become persons, therefore embryos are not persons. But there was no attempt to establish the principle which itself contains what the author is trying to prove. I believe we call this technically a petitio principii.

How does a person capable of writing such utter tripe get a doctorate, let alone a job teaching Bioethics at an Ivy?

Christianity and homosexuality

Just a quick reply to a tasty tidbit I dug up in a forum thread discussing social conservatives at Yale. Since this is not the first time I have encountered these ideas I thought it might be a chance to address them:

Social conservatism is grounded for me personally in biblical principles, because it is an extension of my religious faith. The entire conception of anti-gay conservatism is really flawed, the Christian faith is about embracing people regardless of differences. Do we disagree about a lifestyle of homosexuality? Yep. But the people are the ones that matter not what they do.

No. Just no. This line refuses to die and we have to make a point of calling people out on it:

Mt 10: [34] Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword. [35] For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

Obviously the reason Christ came was not to bring war, but that is the effect of His Gospel: Those who reject it will hate those who accept and spread it (and those who accept it must not compromise for the sake of political correctness: " [37] He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me").

This is the patent meaning of the whole passage.

Again, did Christ embrace the money changers regardless of the personal differences He had with them?

Truth is divisive. Charity, yes. But charity in truth. You can't deny the truth to avoid giving Pharisaical scandal.

I find this conception of so called "intolerance" does not spill over to the other sins like lying or stealing or cheating on a spouse. Even if you disagree, social conservatism is from the viewpoint that all our actions are choices and that choice is the bad thing, not the person.

Yes of course, we love the sinner and hate the sin. But the logic is a mess as it is here being applied. You must recognize that people's choices have enduring consequences that will attach to the one who makes the choice.
Let me descend to an illustration:
How do you apply this dichotomy of choice and person to a cold-blooded murderer? Sure we love him, pray for his conversion, treat him like a human, and so on. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't discriminate against murderers by say, oh I don't know, outlawing murder.

Also, I should note that I do discriminate against those who lie, steal, and cheat on their spouses, at least if it is clear that the acts in question weren't the result of occasional weaknesses but of deliberate, unrepentant, long-term self-determination, a self-determination that is daily renewed.

Lying is a sin, and I do not lie and am firmly against it. But would I protest liars? No. That would not make any sense, similarly why would I protest gay groups? That would actually be counter-productive to spreading the message of CHRIST.

This is just too dumb to pass on. Let's think about this a minute: The reason we don't protest liars is that liars do not identify themselves as such. When was the last time you encountered a militant liars' organization? The whole idea of liars self-identifying is ridiculous--liars don't want to be known as liars because, not only does no one like a liar (i.e., the entire world universally discriminates against liars), but more importantly no one believes a liar and the whole damned point of lying is to be believed.
However, I'd be willing to bet that if this author ever met an inveterate liar he'd discriminate against him just the like the rest of the world.

I think some people on here may have skewed conceptions of Christian principles and should read what CHRIST said and not what people do.

Back attcha, those lines from Matthew were what Christ said.

Gender roles

I've been indulging my morbid curiosity and reading John McNeil's blog; He was a Jesuit who was removed from the Society because of his outspoken views on homosexual relations, which are mainly what he writes about on his blog.

I've noticed that his writings vacillate between the laughably misguided (Didn't you know the centurion's servant was actually his gay lover? Or that Martha, Mary, and Lazarus were an LGBT "family"?) and profoundly insightful.

Case in point, his post on "how gay marriage will save straight marriage!" [yes, re: the exclamation point, sic. Italics mine]:

Another major problem with heterosexual marriage is that it is based on gender-identity images. . . . They result in seeing the human individual, whether male or female, as essentially partial and incomplete. No human person is seen as complete in him or her-self, but as essentially dependent on the opposite sex for her or his completion. The male is required to suppress all the feminine in himself and seek the feminine outside himself in a woman. Women, in turn, must suppress all the masculine in themselves and seek the masculine outside themselves in the male.

It is this shift in consciousness that has caused the enormous amount of breakdown and divorce when heterosexuals try to follow the traditional patterns of male dominance and feminine submission. Both genders are being called on to develop the fullness of their own humanity, so that they can approach each other as complete, independent persons and not remain essentially dependent on the other gender for their completion.

Now he tries to take this whole gender roles theme and turn it into inequality, self-suppression and misogyny, hence destructive of any true love; But at the end of the day, ignoring all the commentary, he seems to be doing a pretty good job describing the complementarity of the two genders, and recognizing that this complementarity is at the heart of traditional marriage.

The problem--of course--is that he rejects this complementarity (he'd rather we all be more or less androgynous, transcending sex). To his rejection I can only ask, It is really bad when a man feels like half a person without his wife? Does that feeling really render true love impossible? Is the family more stable and more relevant when the two people are utterly independent and self-satisfied, having no need for one another?

Back the the original point: Leave it to a gay man to get (albeit in a very gay way) heterosexuality.

Concerning the Anglican Church of Virginia's reply to the Pope

Context:

Here is the website of the Anglican Church of Virginia.

And here is the letter, (by Larry Johnson) prominently on their front page, to which I am replying.

The fundamental point is made in the second paragraph:

I said before this is sheep stealing

What precisely is the difference between "sheep stealing" and evangelization? What I mean by this is simply that the Anglican and Catholic Churches have between themselves substantial differences of doctrine and practice. Let's hypothesize for a moment that the Pope is actually Catholic, that is, that he in fact accepts the Catholic Church's claim to being the Church established by Christ for the salvation of men. Let's say also that the Pope is not an Anglican, and so reject's any sort of branch theory that would legitimize the Anglican Church. Can one then fault him for wishing Anglicans to come to the Catholic Church, which ex hypothesi he believes to be the true Church? Can one fault him for wishing these souls to have at their disposal the graces whereof the Catholic Church believes herself to be the dispenser or to know the fullness of the Gospel whereof the Catholic Church professes herself to be the sole guardian?

What I'm getting at is this: Although I can certainly see an Anglican disagreeing with the Church's claims on these points (after all such a person is an Anglican, presumably for a reason) I cannot see how one can hold the Pope in bad faith for trying to make the way of salvation easier and more certain for Anglicans (which after all, given that he is a Catholic, is precisely what he understands himself to be doing). One can sympathize with an Anglican's objecting to the Pope's objective claims, but I have difficulty seeing how an Anglican can in good faith label him as subjectively blame-worthy for doing what given his own religion is an act of charity. Unless of course we are relativists and think that there is in fact no true Church, or that no particular religion has any particular claim to truth.

and is an attempt to further fracture an already fractured method of faith.

I'm not sure what "an already fractured method of faith" is meant to refer to. If to the Anglican Church, then as already discussed the Pope has no particular interest in its continuation as such. The Pope's job is not to safeguard the Church of England. If on the other hand it refers to the Catholic Church, the Church has never had a problem with liturgical or devotional diversity. In fact she is rather tolerant of them. If it refers to Christianity generally, then the mind boggles to try to understand how working to reunify Christians who were once one and have since broken apart is "further fracturing", rather than reintegration and unification into a single catholic--i.e., universal--church.

It is Rome once again declaring war on Anglicanism.

Let us for a moment recall the history of the Anglican Church. Who was it that usurped the other's--'till then--undisputed claim to being head of the Church in England? Who dissolved the monasteries and confiscated the Church's property (which hurt not only the Church but the poor who lived off the monestaries' lands) and then enacted a brutal persecution of Catholics whose crime was simply continuing to practice the Faith that the English had professed for centuries?

I don't want this to be taken as a low-blow: I'm simply pointing out that if the author wants to talk about "Rome once again declaring war on Anglicanism" he might like to recall who committed the acts of war that started it in the first place.

As to the Pope's recent invitation being taken as a declaration of war, I hardly think he would call it that, but as I already pointed out: Necessarily the relation between Catholics and Anglicans will have a fundamental tension. There is always going to be the elephant in the room that we can't both be right. And if Catholic really believe the Catholic Church's teachings and further wish to be charitable to Anglicans, they must ultimately work for the Anglican's coming to the Church. If one wishes to call that war on the Anglican Church, I suppose that might have some merit to the extent that at the end of the day the Pope would very much like the CoE to cease to exist in its present form, namely insofar as it is the Church of England divided against the universal Church. But again, one cannot blame the Catholics subjectively for trying to reach out to their Anglican brothers.

Now Mr. Johnson proceeds to a point that begins to be objective. He argues that the Pope's power needed to be put in check. And as evidence he calls on the condemnation of Jon Hus.

I'm not going to be distracted to clarify the facts of Hus's treatment, nor will I argue the red-herring of Hus's theology; Suffice it to say that Hus was not a mild-mannered priest calling for an end to obvious abuses, but a priest reviving long condemned heresies, and proposing new attacks on central and clear teachings of the Church, who refused to stand down once condemned and made himself sole judge of on matters of the Faith (which is precisely what a heretic is, one who reserves to himself the power to choose).

What is ironic about Mr. Johnson's choice of examples is that Jon Hus was not condemned by a pope, but by a general council called on the authority of the Emperor and which at the time of the trial was acting independently of the pope (recall that this was at the end of the great western schism, and the council in its early acts had a decidedly conciliarist bend). It was only years later that the acts of the council condemning Hus's teaching were ratified by Martin V. The best case, it seems, that Mr. Johnson can find to show that the popes were worldly, power hungry, out of control, and in need of being checked was in fact not an act of a pope at all (not even a papal legate was present).

Now we proceed to Mr Johnson's second historical argument, namely that the Pope was just playing politics in refusing Henry's request for a divorce from Catherine.

Despite the fact that the Pope had accommodated other heads of state, he denied the request

Show me, Mr. Johnson, some evidence that would suggest that there was merit to Henry's case aside from personal or political expedience. The case was quite simple: Henry had wanted to marry Catherine, whom he was--through Church law--prohibited from marrying. Therefore, he asked the Pope to dispense with the impediment. Then after receiving the dispensation, he returned to the pope asking for a declaration of nullity, on the grounds that the pope had no power to make such a dispensation in the first place, and thus the marriage was invalid.

What cases does Mr. Johnson cite when he claims that the pope had granted such claims for other heads of state?

Henry had acknowledged the authority of the pope first in requesting the dispensation, and second in requesting the Holy See to declare its own dispensation illegitimate.

Mr. Johnson's case that the pope should have granted this second request makes no sense theologically unless one denies that there is any supernatural reality or law in Christian marriage, unless one cedes that Christian marriage can and ought to be twisted about however is necessary to accommodate our human goals:

The English monarchy’s need for a male heir was paramount . . . suffice it to say the

purposes of England were different from those of the Pope.

Yes, with this I can agree: Their purposes were quite different. Mr. Johnson does his Church little credit in his simple defense of Henry VIII.

Whereupon Mr. Johnson produces another historical detail of little relevance: the persecutions under Mary. Unlike Henry and Elizabeth's persecutions, Mary's acts are hardly relevant to the question of the legitimacy of the Roman Church, since Mary refused the title of head of the Church.

He goes on to ask some rhetorical questions, none of which really gets to the heart of the question of what is true and right, they are all practical issues that he seems to think will be unpalatable to Anglicans.

Then he returns to the accusation of "sheep stealing":

Don’t we as Anglicans leave such decisions [of conversion] up to the heart of the individual as prompted by God Himself. Yes, I think so.

The pope is also leaving the decision up to the individual. He has merely issued an invitation and extended favorable terms to any Anglican who might wish to swim the Tiber. I've not heard of any forced Anglican conversions resulting from Benedict's acts. In other words, whatever this "sheep stealing" is, the decision's being left to the individual cannot be the real distinctive factor; It is simply disingenuous to suggest that the pope's invitation is anything more than that, an invitation, or that somehow it does not "leave such . . . to the heart of the individual." Or is the invitation truly too good to refuse?

And finally we get some better insight into what constitutes this "sheep stealing":

Though the Anglican Church is open to all, including Catholics, who consider my

invitation to join, we will not emulate the Pope and encourage it.

But what is the distinction between Mr. Johnson's invitation to Catholics and the Pope's invitation to Anglicans, other than the Pope's invitation being rather more accommodating? Is "sheep stealing" just making a better offer than the other side can make?

But he goes on:

As for me, I choose to remain a part of the Anglican Church and practice my faith the way I believe God founded and intended it to serve Him.

So one must ask: Does Mr. Johnson really believe the Anglican Church represents the practice of the faith as it was founded and intended by God to serve Him, or does he not think it right to encourage other people to serve God as He intended to be served?

I'd like to congratulate St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Maryland (whose conversion occasioned Mr. Johnson's letter) on their brave decision to help heal the fractures of Christendom.

presumably vs assumably

I've seen 'assumably' used where my ear tells me 'presumably' is meant: In fact, this is the case every time I hear 'assumably'; It always sounds like an error.

Usage guides label it an error, although it is in the dictionary--including the OED--albeit labeled as very rare.

I would like to take a stab at why, to my ear, it sounds wrong.

First let's start with the distinction between the basic meanings of the verbs 'presume' and 'assume'.

'Presume' has the connotation of a conscious decision. When one presumes, he consciously takes something as true although he knows, strictly speaking, he has insufficient reason.

When one assumes on the other hand, one takes something as true without questioning it. Assumption is largely unconscious and unexamined.

For example: If I have a paper due on Friday, I would assume the professor would accept it Monday if I just blindly take it for given that he wouldn't refuse a paper one business day late, and didn't actually give it a second thought. If on the other hand, I think through the position I will be putting him in when I hand it in on Monday, and wager that he wouldn't be harsh enough--or perhaps wouldn't care enough--to reject it, I would be presuming.

This is why--it seems to me--a certain sort of impropriety is called 'presumption'; It is assumed that it was a conscious transgression--or at least--that it ought to have been a conscious transgression: It is so far out of normal conduct that no one of any breeding would do it without first thinking about it.

For another example, I and my brother are going from our home to a party, but since I have to run errands we are driving separately. While running errands I realize I have forgotten my coat. If I assume he has already left, I don't even seriously consider the possibility that he got held up and is still at the house. If I presume he has left, I think through his schedule and how likely it is that he has been held up long enough to still be at the house, and I conclude that it is unlikely enough not to merit trying to reach him.

If I say I assumed something, I didn't seriously consider the alternative. If I presume something I did consider the alternative, and decided it was too remote a possibility.

Important in this is that 'assume' includes in itself the notion of error: Insofar as one failed to even consider the alternative, and unthinkingly accepted something that was not in fact given.

(I should note that I am well aware that this distinction is not necessarily hard-and-fast, and that there are many cases in which the two will be used interchangeably. I'm mainly trying to get at the connotation that these words have to modern speakers.)

Now let's talk about the adjectives: 'assumable' and 'presumable'.

'Assumable' implies that something is able to be assumed: Which to me at least, sounds like one is able to fail to consider that there might be alternatives. This is true of anything that is not patently false: One can blindly accept without sufficient deliberation just about anything with some plausibility.

'Presumable' on the other hand has the connotation be being able to be taken for granted with reflection, consciously. This is only true of things that are actually probable.

Thus 'presumably' says something substantial: It says something is fairly likely--likely enough that a reasonable person could consciously decide to take it for granted. 'Assumable', on the other hand is nearly vacuous, and says little more than that something is not so obviously false that no one could mistakenly take it for granted without thinking about it.

Maybe I'm reading too much into things. I'd be curious to hear whether this is just me, or whether any of you have a similar impression.

Miracles: Our Lady of Guadalupe

I was recently reading some discussion of a new book

which argues that many more professional scientists have religious belief than is commonly acknowledged. Of course the conversation devolved into the tired old argument that religion is somehow irrational, specifically that there is no evidence for religion at all.

I would like to reject this. There is evidence for a specific religion, specifically, miracles.

Miracles often get written off out of hand by skeptics. But if one wishes to be objective and rational, it seems that there is an onus on the skeptic to at least examine the strongest proported miracles to see whether there is anything to them. Thus I propose to do a short series of posts highlighting some of the more outstanding miracles associated with the Catholic Church.

My criterion is simple: I wish these examples to be current, things that can be seen today if possible, or at least things that have been recently documented by modern science. I do not wish to throw out examples that could be dismissed as legend or as unverifiable.

Exibit A: The tilma of Juan Diego.

First the backstory. Juan Diego was an indigenous Mexican (specifically an Aztec); At the age of 47 he witnessed the Spanish conquest of Mexico under Cortez. Shortly thereafter he converted to Catholicism.

On 9 December 1531, on his way to Church, he heard his name being called. He ran up a hill toward the voice and there saw Our Lady. She told him to tell the bishop she wanted a shrine to her built on the spot. She promised,

I will demonstrate, I will exhibit, I will give all my love, my compassion, my help and my protection to the people. I am your merciful mother, the merciful mother of all of you who live united in this land, and of all mankind, of all those who love me , of those who cry to me, of those who seek me, of those who have confidence in me. Here I will hear their weeping, their sorrow and will remedy and alleviate all their multiple sufferings, necessities and misfortunes.

He reported this to the bishop, but the bishop did not believe the message. Juan Diego returned to Our Lady and begged her to send another messenger. She told him to go to the bishop again the next day. He did so, and again the bishop was incredulous. Juan Diego returned to her, and she promised that on the next day she would give him a sign.

On the following day, Juan Diego found his uncle ill, and wished to find a priest to administer Last Rites. He tried to avoid the hill on which Our Lady had appeared to him. She came to him none the less, assured him that his uncle would not die, and took him to the top of the hill where she showed him roses. This alone was miraculous, for no flowers bloomed there in the relative cool of December.

Together they arranged them in his tilma (a cheap over-cloak). Again Juan Diego went to the Bishop, and threw open his cloak, the roses--a variety native to the Bishop's own Castille, not to Mexico--fell on the ground. Moreover, on the inside of the tilma, there was found an image of the Lady, dressed in the stars with the moon under her feet.

The bishop, now believing, feel to his knees and within two week ordered the shrine build on the hill. Within ten years, it is said, over 9 million Mexican indians converted.

Juan Diego kept the tilma with the miraculous image until his death in 1548.

Forty years later, the then-current bishop had a copy of the image sent to Spain. This image was flow on the flagship of the Christian fleet at the historically crucial victory of Lepanto.

To this day, Our Lady of Guadalupe is venerated, especially by Mexican Catholics, but generally by American Catholics, as the patroness of the Americas. The image is now on display in massive Basilica in Mexico City, erected on the hill. This place is today the second most popular place of pilgirmage in the world (second only to the Vatican).

Now, crucial bits of this story obviously are difficult to verify. But what is not so difficult to verify is the miraculous nature of the image on the tilma, for it is, as I said, preserved to this day.

First, the very fact that the image has survived for almost 500 years (at this date 479) is itself remarkable. The tilma is made of a cheap cloth, woven from cactus fibers, which typically decays in a matter of decades.

In 1789, a replica of the tilma was made, using the best techniques of the time. From the beginning this replica was displayed behind glass. But it was discarded after only 8 years because it was faded, and the threads were breaking.

On the other hand, the original tilma--by then over 250 years old--had been displayed for over 100 years with no protection at all, exposed to hundereds of burning votive candles in the immediate vicinity, as well as the humid air, and even to the pius touch and kisses of pilgrims.

Aside from simply not falling appart, the tilma has survied several potential catastrophes. In 1785 a clumsy worker, while cleaning the glass in front of the image, spilled a 50% nitric acid solution on it. The image, however, was unharmed.

In 1921 a bomb (with 29 sticks of dynamite) was placed in a flower arrangement on the altar at the foot of the image. When the bomb went off all the windows in the basilica were shattered (though some were 150 meters from the explosion), marble throughout the chruch was damaged, and a massive brass cross on the altar was severely mangled (the deformed crucifix can still be seen). The fragile image, sitting behind ordinary glass (bullet-proof glass was installed only in 1993) was untouched.

But what about the image? Is it a fraud?

More than once scientists have concluded that the image itself is inexplicable.

Already in the 18th century examiners had concluded that the work could not have been human.

In 1936, Nobel Prize winning chemist Richard Kuhn examined two colored fibers from the tilma. He found that there were no natural or mineral pigment in the fibers.

In 1979 Phillip Callahan examined the image using an infrared camera and concluded that the image was inexplicable as a human work.

Moreover, in the late 70's microscopic work on the eyes of the image showed that a scene (apparenlty consistent with the accounts of Juan Diego's displaying the roses to the Bishop) appear in the pupils of the image.

That there was an image in the right eye was first noticed in 1929. In 1951, Jose Carlos Salinas Chavez, noticed that it was also visible in the left. In 1956, the ophthalmologist Javier Torroella Bueno certified that the images displayed the distortions and effects seen in human eyes. During that year similar observations were made by Rafael Torrija Lavoignet, also an ophthalmologist. The most well-known work on the eyes was done by Jose Aste Tonsmann, who while at IBM carried out analysis of extremely high resolution images of the eyes, starting in 1979, and resulting in a book on the topic.

One would be tempted to dismiss these extremely faint images as an example of an ink-blot test, except that the images from the two eyes do seem to match (aside from differences in perspective consistent with the optics of human vision).

Various other attempts have been made to show that the image is unable to be explained as a fraud, but I leave those to the reader to examine. It seems that what has been so far advanced should be sufficient.

One could, likewise, describe the various healings that have been associated with the image. But again it seems unnecessary.

Thus ends the first installment.

Some interesting links:

• SCIENCE AND GUADALUPE VIRGIN by Ana Hernandez (unfortunately the original is a .doc).


• Our Lady of Guadalupe ‘completely beyond' scientific explanation


• The story


• Short overview of some scientific analysis

Scary new phishing attack

I love reading about exploits. I just ran across this new method of phishing, dubbed tabnapping.

Basically, the idea is that people identify their tabs by the favicon and title.

So you go to some website; it displays some legitimate content. Then you go to another tab, for some reason. Once you have been off the malicious tab for some period of time, it sneakily changes its favicon and title to match a secure-website that you use, and changes its contents to mirror that site.

So imagine you are Joe-user, with 15 tabs open. You follow a link from a google search. You leave it open in the background while you go and check your rss reader. Then you go to check your email, you scan your tabs looking for the little gmail envelope and go to that tab. When you bring it up it shows the login page, "huh, you think. I wonder why I'm not logged in", and enter your credentials. Little do you know you actually just sent your username and password to the malicious site, not google.