As they say from time to time on radio or TV: you might want to have children go into the other room for this one. I share this only to illustrate a simple point — one that Alexander Solzynitsin once made (having lifted it from Fyodor Dostoevsky): that the potential for unmitigated evil exists within all of us.
It was 1941, and an 18-year-old Jew had been sent to the clinic with a foot inflammation… instead of treating the prisoner’s foot, [SS doctor Aribert] Heim anesthetized him, cut him open, castrated him, took apart one kidney and removed the second… the victim’s head was removed and the flesh boiled off so that Heim could keep it on display.
INXS put it nicely also. It’s not clear why this is a lead story on the AP wire right now aside from this being Heim’s 93rd birthday. He may have been dead for some time. Or not.
The point is the same: human nature has not and will not ‘progress’ without submission to Christ’s saving work and will. The notion that ‘progressives’ want to sell us is that it can. They are wrong.
YOU ARE NOT IN CHARGE, get over yourself.
By: Michael on May 4, 2008
at 9:44 am
I hope I was not implying that scientific honesty was not important. I have simply found that, as our society becomes more secular, there are fewer people who even respond to the objection,”but, that’s dishonest.” My friends in university labs report sabotaged experiments, falsified data for theses and dissertations, all sorts fudging for grants, invidious scheming between hostile professors to torpedo the careers of each others’ graduate students.
I’d say we need look no further than the global warming hoax to see the results of most if not all of the above trends, giving us false information, leading to catastrophic economic decisions, which are right now bringing on famine in fragile parts of the world.
Truth is indivisible. I recognize the difference between mutable science and eternal Truth. However, The need to recognize what is, and not try to distort that to conform to our desires, is part of both science and Christianity. Someone reading this is going to start in about the unscientific nature of Christianity, but, the bottom line remains, Y
By: Michael on May 4, 2008
at 9:42 am
With respect to scientific honesty, it is in fact critical to the progress of science. If the results of an experiment and not presented honestly and in verifiable form. All you really have is an unsupported opinion.
Item 1: Prior to 1903 all published aerodynamic table were flawed and it was not possible to design a functional airplane from them. Proof of statement. Dr. S. P. Langley used the exiting tables to design his aerodrome. Wilbur and Orvile Wright, having notice that their 1900,1901 and 1902 machines had less lift than table calculations suggested, built a wind tunnel and constructed their own data tables which were used to build the successful 1903 machine.
Item 2: Tycho Brahe dedicated his life to the collection of planetary orbit data. Brahe lacked the mathematics to prove either the Copernican or Ptolemaic system from his data. Johannes Kepler, Brahe’s understudy, was able to use Brahe’s data and his knowledge of Brahe’s precision to develop the laws of planetary motion, show that the best shape to describe planetary orbits was an ellipse.
So, please tell me again how scientific honesty counts for less than the “truthiness” of a deeply felt opinion.
By: Tigger23505 on May 3, 2008
at 9:18 pm
I should have read the previou8s comment one more time. Scientists who falsify results may seem non sequitous. (Do I need to post warnings about neologisms?) It is philosophy and religion that have valid concerns about honesty, including scientific honesty. I do not mean that they would automatically be honest if the were theists. I merely mean to say that other points of view are valid, and ought never to be excluded.
By: Michael on May 1, 2008
at 7:04 am
The odd thing, the quite OBVIOUS thing to ask is, “Why, of all the possible points of view that Baroness Warknock feels must be excluded from any discussion of scientific ethics, is the one that she labels RELIGIOUS? ” Is the Lady unaware that Galileo was investigated by a SCIENTIFIC panel, who found his methodology faulty? Does she not know that the earliest objections to Darwinian theories of evolution were raised by Liberals, who saw, a hundred and fifty years ago the horrible implications for society in what Darwin was saying?
OK, So, she doesn’t know, or at least doesn’t want to discuss, history. Does she know nothing of scientists who falsify results, to get more and bigger grants? No area of inquiry exists in a vacuum. It’s knowing history, for example, that tells me that there is something flaky about “global warming,” because I know that there used to be big dairy farms in Greenland and wineries in southern England, well-known facts which open a whole book of questions on the topic. If you listen to sociologists, humans are born without any instinctive behaviors. Biologists observe several. Mary W. just needs to be a little more broad minded, more open to other ideas.
By: Michael on May 1, 2008
at 6:59 am
*shudder*
Eeep…..flash-backs to the *tough* part of Expelled….
By: Foxfier on April 30, 2008
at 2:45 pm