August 31, 2010
Catching up on the news….
Last year (March 9, 20010) President Obama signed an Executive Order overturning President Bush’s stem cell policy that allowed federal funding for stem cell research on stem cell lines created prior to August 9, 2001, but not after. President Obama wished to expand federal funding to include stem cell lines created after August 9, 2001.
Ironically, two days after issuing his EO, President Obama signed into law the annual appropriations bill which included the Dickey-Wicker amendment. This amendment, which has appeared in every appropriations bill since 1996, specifically prohibits the use of federal funds for research that involves the destruction of human embryos. The amendment reads:
August 26, 2010
Posted by jasondulle under Abortion
, Capital Punishment
, Stem Cell Research
In May of this year Gallup polled Americans to determine what behaviors they found morally acceptable and unacceptable. Sixteen behaviors were evaluated, and here are the results:
August 21, 2010
Posted by jasondulle under Science
Elaine Howard Ecklund has written a book titled Science vs Religion: What Scientists Really Think. A summary of her research findings was published in USA Today (July 19, 2010): “Myths Widen the Science-Religion Divide.”
Ecklund surveyed 1,700 natural and social scientists and conducted interviews with 275 of them. She found that: (more…)
August 17, 2010
I have devised a test to quickly determine whether someone holds to a Nestorian Christology. Ask, “What would have happened to Jesus’ body if the Spirit would have departed from it prior to Jesus’ death on the cross?” If they answer that Jesus would have continued to live and function, they hold to a Nestorian Christology. Here’s why:
August 17, 2010
Catching up on old news…. Argentina legalized same-sex marriage July 15, 2010. They are the first country in Latin America to do so. The legal recognition of same-sex unions as “marriage” continues to spread.
August 13, 2010
Atheists love to assert that there is no scientific evidence for the existence of God. I have a couple of thoughts on this. First, how do they come to this conclusion? Generally speaking, this conclusion follows from their definition of science. They define science as the search for naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena. If science is defined so as to a priori exclude agent causation as a valid explanation for any natural phenomenon, then it is no surprise that “science” will never yield any evidence for the existence of God. It can’t by definition. To put it in the form an argument, the atheist reasons as follows:
August 13, 2010
It is often believed that valid/sound deductive arguments can provide certainty. This is not quite true. The conclusion of a valid/sound deductive argument is certain in the sense that it follows necessarily from the premises. It does not mean, however, that the conclusion is certainly true. Why? The premises are usually contingent truths discovered inductively, and thus the veracity of the logically certain conclusion depends on the veracity of the probabilistic premises. The more confidence we have in the truth of the premises, however, the more confidence we can have in the veracity of the conclusion.
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