Chances Aren't

I do love a good scientific debate, especially when a vote is taken at the end !  Global Warming is not the only 'science' that counts hands to win an arguement or arrive at a 'settled' decision.

A bunch of astronomical types were sitting in the US Room doing just that the other day. (My apologies for not getting around to telling of it. I was busy counting barrels). They were voting on Life elsewhere in our humungously enormous Universe. 

Are we alone or not?

Come along. Hands up.

They were trounced after the final drinks were brought to the table though.

Scientists debate likelihood of finding life on other planets

UChicago scientists debated whether remote sensing will reveal evidence of extant life on an exoplanet by the end of 2042.

In a debate hosted by the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, six scientists argued whether remote sensing will reveal evidence of extant life on an exoplanet-any planet outside our solar system-by the end of 2042.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Scientists_debate_likelihood_of_finding_life_on_other_planets_999.html

Do they have a crystal ball, I wonder.  Or is that too much like the older, pre-science alchemy?

The scientists arguing for the discovery of extra-terrestrial life in the near future centered on the ideas that life is versatile, that living organisms create noticeable biosignatures by changing their environment's chemical makeup, and that with the increasing number of earth-like planets found through ventures like the Kepler mission, it shouldn't be too long before we find one with the right signs.

"The history of science is full of many surprises," said Laura Kreidberg, a PhD student in the astronomy and astrophysics. "We should be open-minded about what to expect."

The opposition focused on branching lines of logic. In addition to the possibility of false positives on biosignatures and the unlikelihood of humanity devoting serious resources to finding life, a paradox by UChicago Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi argues that if there's life among billions of planets, some should be advanced enough to have reached Earth already.

"We hope that we can find life in the universe," said Edwin Kite, an assistant professor in geophysical sciences. "But we should vote based on facts, not hopes."

There we have it. Vote on facts. !!!  Presumably a fact is a fact if enough hands carry the day.

The debate, held Nov. 18, 2015, was the penultimate event for AstroChicago 123, which honored the department's founding with talks, a film and panels on the department's past and ongoing research. It also celebrated the completion of the William Eckhardt Research Center.

In the discussion, three researchers defended each side. Audience members had the opportunity to vote before and after the debate.

Dorian Abbot, associate professor in geophysical sciences, framed the arguments for finding extra-terrestrial life in the near future, or the "yes" side. First, he described how microbial life was common and able to survive in extreme conditions on Earth. This meant that, with the raw materials essential for living matter being abundant in our universe, life could likely survive on planets within habitable zones.

Leslie Rogers, assistant professor in astronomy and astrophysics, explained how all life modifies its environment, and that biosignatures such as oxygen and ammonia would be positive evidence toward the existence of life on an exoplanet. It would only take one thousandth of the biomass in the Earth's ocean to produce a noticeable amount of ammonia.

Kreidberg said that NASA currently has the technology to find these signatures, and had a list of planets that were promising candidates for life.

Kite, framing the arguments of the "no" side, explained that at the lab and on the planetary scale, life does not arise spontaneously - the exception being Earth, which proved that life was rare. He further explained that there is no combination of atmospheric signatures that cannot be explained through non-biological processes.

Hmmmmm. I had to pull a few pints pondering even the logic in that   But heck, I am a Tavern Keeper, not an astrophysicist.

Daniel Fabrycky, assistant professor in astronomy and astrophysics, argued from the standpoint of Fermi's paradox-that with the abundance of earth-like planets, including many much older than ours, an alien civilization should have reached the stage of interstellar travel and made some contact with Earth. Following the theory further, Fabrycky argued that confirming existence of life on exoplanets would mean there's a higher probability of intelligent alien civilizations, and the fact that over billions of years none have made it to the point of reaching Earth means humanity has dismal prospects for space exploration and expansion. 

"By voting yes on your ballot, you are dooming humanity," Fabrycky quipped.

See what I mean about Global warmists.

The last argument against finding life by 2042, put forth by Jacob Bean, an assistant professor in astronomy and astrophysics, was that humanity had too many political hurdles to overcome. Should humanity devote serious funding to developing remote-sensing technology to find extant life over other projects, it might find evidence that life exists elsewhere in the universe. However, Bean expressed doubt that the astrophysics community could band together, let alone the nation, to agree to this mission and overcome the technological difficulty.

Before the debate began, 33 members of the audience voted that life on an exoplanet would not be found by 2042, and 38 voted it would. After the debate, 40 members of the audience voted life would not be found and 38 voted it would, in an unexpected turn that Angela Olinto, the Homer J. Livingston Professor in Astronomy and Astrophysics and the College, attributed to "the Chicago tradition of voting often." The ballot and a summary of the debate were placed in a time capsule to be opened 2042.

They didn't vote on whether we would still be here in 2042, thank goodness. That might have been even more dismal.

One critical note was heard from those listening. Don Wolberg piped up...

Did I miss something, but in the "debate" recorded in this item, there was no biologist/zoologist/botanist or a paleontologist, those folks who one would assume might have something to say about the origin and evolution of living things. I continue to be astounded by how "retro" and naïve the astronomers seem to be in these matters--they are much too much of the Star Wars generation! It is clear that Fermi had a point. If they are there where are they. More accurately, living things are very likely very, very, very rare in the universe simply because going from not alive to alive involves serendipity of processes almost unimaginably rare. By the same reasoning the rarity of process likely makes each instance unique and would proceed along different tracks.

And talking of uniqueness, which is more about counting than voting, David Klinghoffer had some things to say.

One in 700 Quintillion: 

Exoplanet Study Confirms Terran Exceptionalism

Rare privilege carries with it exceptional responsibility. That might be why many people resist the conclusion of what our colleague Wesley Smith calls human exceptionalism. The unique status and dignity of human beings compared to animals is affirmed by daily experience. 

 http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/02/one_in_700_quin102638.html

The uniquely privileged status of our planet and our species in relationship to the cosmos isn't obvious in the same way. 

It needs rigorous scientific confirmation that goes beyond the instructions of common sense. 

The thesis of what you might call terran exceptionalism received impressive additional support this week from astrophysicist Erik Zackrisson at Sweden's Uppsala University. Nathaniel Scharping, Discover Magazine blogger, summarizes, calling the research -- which sets Earth's uniqueness at one in 700 quintillion -- "beautiful and terrifying at the same time." 

Seven hundred quintillion is the estimated number of planets in the universe.

Zackrisson's [computer] model combined information about known exoplanets with our understanding of the early universe and the laws of physics to recreate the past 13.8 billion years.

Zackrisson found that Earth appears to have been dealt a fairly lucky hand. 

In a galaxy like the Milky Way, for example, most of the planets Zackrisson's model generated looked very different than Earth -- they were larger, older and very unlikely to support life. 

Zackrisson's work suggests an alternative to the commonly held assumption that planets similar to Earth must exist, based on the sheer number of planets out there. Ever since Copernicus put forth the theory that Earth is not the center of the universe, scientists have expanded the map of the cosmos and diminished our planet's relative uniqueness. Current estimates hold that there are some 100 billion galaxies in the universe containing about 10^18 stars, or a billion trillion.

One of the most fundamental requirements for a planet to sustain life is to orbit in the "habitable zone" of a star -- the "Goldilocks" region where the temperature is just right and liquid water can exist. Astronomers have, to this point, discovered around 30 exoplanets in the habitable zones of stars. Simply extrapolating that figure based on the known number of stars suggests that there should be about 50 billion such planets in the Milky Way alone. Probability seems to dictate that Earth-twins are out there somewhere.

But according to Zackrisson, most planets in the universe shouldn't look like Earth. His model indicates that Earth's existence presents a mild statistical anomaly in the multiplicity of planets. Most of the worlds predicted by his model exist in galaxies larger than the Milky Way and orbit stars with different compositions -- an important factor in determining a planet's characteristics. 

His research indicates that, from a purely statistical standpoint, Earth perhaps shouldn't exist.

One in 700 quintillion is "a fairly lucky hand," a "mild statistical anomaly"? 

As Scharping points out, that is one in seven zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero. 

I'm not sure if the understatement is intended to be droll. But note the last sentence: Statistically speaking, "Earth perhaps shouldn't exist."

That's "terrifying" all right if the image of humanity you carry around in your head is the one associated with materialism, insisting that we are ordinary, unexceptional, hairless apes, cosmic flotsam, hardly worth a yawn.

Note also that no-one got around to asking where all the drinks came from.

My Supplier smiles somewhere.

Pax. 

Another Brick in the Wall

Yes, I know, I have not been around upstairs in the bars lately. Stocktaking in the cellars, you see. And book-keeping. I have to give a tally-sheet once in a while or my Supplier starts to worry about me.

That and the prospect of having to move again, as I did some months back. I have been looking around and seeing if I can find a colleague-in-home to make the cost bearable, as well as a suitable spot.

So, my excuses, and back to business.

I put it down to Pink Floyd, m'self. The decine in education that is.  OK, their influence may have been small but perhaps in turn they were influenced by the same dark forces that have been at work over the past generation.  Only the willfully blind would claim that all is well in the 'learning' world.  The 'learners' are not OK. And the 'teachers' have all changed. Well, mostly.

Remind yourself here......

The old-fashioned, hard-work values have gone along with the stern men and the scowling women. Baby and bathwater anyone?

A teacher came by to tell us the bad news. Not that many will have heard him elswhere.  Patrick J. Deneen has been at the upper end of the chalkface a while and is almost in despair.

Res Idiotica

My students are know-nothings.   

They are exceedingly nice, pleasant, trustworthy, mostly honest, well-intentioned, and utterly decent.  But their minds are largely empty, devoid of any substantial knowledge that might be the fruits of an education in an inheritance and a gift of a previous generation.   

They are the culmination of western civilization, a civilization that has forgotten it origins and aims, and as a result, has achieved near-perfect indifference about itself.

It’s difficult to gain admissions to the schools where I’ve taught – Princeton, Georgetown, and now Notre Dame.  Students at these institutions have done what has been demanded of them:  they are superb test-takers, they know exactly what is needed to get an A in every class (meaning that they rarely allow themselves to become passionate and invested in any one subject), they build superb resumes. 

 They are respectful and cordial to their elders, though with their peers (as snatches of passing conversation reveal), easygoing if crude.  They respect diversity (without having the slightest clue what diversity is) and they are experts in the arts of non-judgmentalism (at least publically).   

They are the cream of their generation, 

the masters of the universe, 

a generation-in-waiting who will run America and the 

world.

Fat chance, thought I, as I pulled him a pint.

http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2016/02/res-idiotica/

But ask them some basic questions about the civilization they will be inheriting, and be prepared for averted eyes and somewhat panicked looks.  Who fought in the Peloponnesian war?  What was at stake at the Battle of Salamis?  Who taught Plato, and whom did Plato teach?  How did Socrates die?  Raise your hand if you have read both the Iliad and the Odyssey.  The Canterbury Tales?  Paradise Lost?  The Inferno? 

Who was Saul of Tarsus?  What were the 95 theses, who wrote them, and what was their effect?  Why does the Magna Carta matter?  How and where did Thomas Becket die?  What happened to Charles I?  Who was Guy Fawkes, and why is there a day named after him?  What happened at Yorktown in 1781?  What did Lincoln say in his Second Inaugural?  His first Inaugural?  How about his third Inaugural?  Who can tell me one or two of the arguments that are made in Federalist 10? Who has readFederalist 10?  What are the Federalist Papers?  

Some students, due most often to serendipitous class choices or a quirky old-fashioned teacher, might know a few of these answers.   

But most students will not know many of them, or vast numbers like them, because they have not been educated to know them.   

At best they possess accidental knowledge, but otherwise are masters of systematic ignorance.  They are not to be blamed for their pervasive ignorance of western and American history, civilization, politics, art and literature.  It is the hallmark of their education.  They have learned exactly what we have asked of them – to be like mayflies, alive by happenstance in a fleeting present. 

Our students’ ignorance is not a failing of the educational system – it is its crowning achievement.   

Efforts by several generations of philosophers and reformers and public policy experts whom our students (and most of us) know nothing about have combined to produce a generation of know-nothings.   

The pervasive ignorance of our students is not a mere accident or unfortunate but correctible outcome, if only we hire better teachers or tweak the reading lists in high school.  

 It is the consequence of a civilizational commitment to civilizational suicide.   

The end of history for our students signals the End of History for the West.

During my lifetime, lamentation over student ignorance has been sounded by the likes of E.D. Hirsch, Allan Bloom, Mark Bauerlein and Jay Leno, among many others.  But these lamentations have been leavened with the hope that appeal to our and their better angels might reverse the trend (that’s an allusion to one of Lincoln’s inaugural addresses, by the way).  E.D. Hirsch even worked up a self-help curriculum, a do-it yourself guide on how to become culturally literate, imbued with the can-do American spirit that cultural defenestration could be reversed by a good reading list in the appendix.  Broadly missing is sufficient appreciation that this ignorance is the intended consequence of our educational system, a sign of its robust health and success. 

We have fallen into the bad and unquestioned habit of thinking that our educational system is broken, but it is working on all cylinders.   

What our educational system aims to produce is cultural amnesia, a wholesale lack of curiosity, historyless free agents, and educational goals composed of contentless processes and unexamined buzz-words like “critical thinking,” “diversity,” “ways of knowing,” “social justice,” and “cultural competence.”   

Our students are the achievement of a systemic commitment to producing individuals without a past for whom the future is a foreign country, cultureless ciphers who can live anywhere and perform any kind of work without inquiring about its purposes or ends, perfected tools for an economic system that prizes “flexibility” (geographic, interpersonal, ethical).   

In such a world, possessing a culture, a history, an inheritance, a commitment to a place and particular people, specific forms of gratitude and indebtedness (rather than a generalized and deracinated commitment to “social justice), a strong set of ethical and moral norms that assert definite limits to what one ought and ought not to do (aside from being “judgmental”) are hindrances and handicaps.

 Regardless of major or course of study, the main object of modern education is to sand off remnants of any cultural or historical specificity and identity that might still stick to our students, to make them perfect company men and women for a modern polity and economy that penalizes deep commitments.   

Efforts first to foster appreciation for “multi-culturalism” signaled a dedication to eviscerate any particular cultural inheritance, while the current fad of “diversity” signals thoroughgoing commitment to de-cultured and relentless homogenization.

My students are the fruits of a longstanding project to liberate all humans from the accidents of birth and circumstance, to make a self-making humanity. 

 Understanding liberty to be the absence of constraint,  forms of cultural inheritance and concomitant gratitude were attacked as so many arbitrary limits on personal choice, and hence, matters of contingency that required systematic disassembly.   

Believing that the source of political and social division and war was residual commitment to religion and culture, widespread efforts were undertaken to eliminate such devotions in preference to a universalized embrace of toleration and detached selves.   Perceiving that a globalizing economic system required deracinated workers who could live anywhere and perform any task without curiosity about ultimate goals and effects, a main task of education became instillation of certain dispositions rather than grounded knowledge – flexibility, non-judgmentalism, contentless “skills,” detached “ways of knowing,” praise for social justice even as students were girded for a winner-take-all economy, and a fetish for diversity that left unquestioned why it was that everyone was identically educated at indistinguishable institutions.   

At first this meant the hollowing of local, regional, and religious specificity in the name of national identity.  Today it has came to mean the hollowing of national specificity in the name of globalized cosmopolitanism, which above all requires studied oblivion to anything culturally defining.   

The inability to answer basic questions about America or the West is not a consequence of bad education; it is a marker of a successful education.

Above all, the one overarching lesson that students receive is to understand themselves to be radically autonomous selves within a comprehensive global system with a common commitment to mutual indifference.  Our commitment to mutual indifference is what binds us together as a global people.  Any remnant of a common culture would interfere with this prime directive:  a common culture would imply that we share something thicker, an inheritance that we did not create, and a set of commitments that imply limits and particular devotions. 

 Ancient philosophy and practice heaped praise upon res publica – a devotion to public things, things we share together.   

We have instead created the world’s first res idiotica – from the Greek wordidiotes, meaning “private individual.”   

Our education system excels at producing solipsistic, self-contained selves whose only public commitment is an absence of commitment to a public, a common culture, a shared history.   

They are perfectly hollowed vessels, receptive and obedient, without any real obligations or devotions. They have been taught to care passionately about their indifference, and to denounce the presence of actual diversity that threatens the security of their cocoon. They are living in a perpetual Truman Show, a world constructed yesterday that is nothing more than a set for their solipsism, without any history or trajectory. 

I care deeply about and for my students – like any human being, each has enormous potential and great gifts to bestow upon the world.  But I weep for them, for what is rightfully theirs but hasn’t been given.  On our best days together, I discern their longing and anguish and I know that their innate human desire to know who they are, where they have come from, where they ought to go, and how they ought to live will always reassert itself.  But even on those better days, I can’t help but hold the hopeful thought that the world they have inherited – a world without inheritance, without past, future, or deepest cares – is about to come tumbling down, and that this collapse would be the true beginning of a real education.

Yes, he can hope. But what will that 'true education' usher in? The consequences of a civilisational collapse will be a terrible lesson.

Personally, as an unreconstructed old Knight and King, who has seen so much, gained and lost so much, watched as Kingdoms fell and liars reaped great wealth, I can see an end in sight. 

It is not a pretty sight.

Most of what is relevant to a student of that formative age is omitted from the curriculum. Most of what is irrelevant is crammed in in its place.   Many teachers do a fine job. Not all are 'radicals'. Not all are deliberately dumbing down our young. But the fine teachers, the honest teachers, the 'valuable' teachers are not the ones we need to worry about. It takes just a few bad apples to rot the entire barrel. It is as well to discern the relevant from the irrelevant. As say Miss Gabriel does.

Radical 'educators' damage well beyond their numbers.

Destroy their (your)  history; make their (your) culture ''equivalent' to all others; celebrate 'diversity' while eradicating 'you', your gender, your race, your identity: and the One World Order fills the vaccuum. 


Drink up.

Pax 

You Cannot Argue with This in a Safe Space

From time to time we get quite vocal folks 'telling' us what we should think and say. I have to tell them in return that the Tavern is not a 'Safe Space' and people here are apt to say what is on their mind. Hey, I just listen and pull the pints. And clean the bar tops and table. And hook the barrels up. And mop the floor of the Crypt.

But I do get to hear some almost funny arguments and retorts.

Here was one reported by a chap on the Table near the window that the Life-loving folks usually like to sit. Matt Walsh was in the chair. They are forever going on about abortion. I know, it gets to be a bore what with all the crushingly oblivious points that the Pro-Choice ladies (and the bad boys) dish out. But answer them we must. And Matt did.

He had been accosted by a very certain woman. Rachel by name.  Possibly a nice lady. Who knows. She was almost insistent that he would be 'afraid' by her points and at a complete loss for words.

He wasn't.

But let's hear from Matt....

I’m terrified of this indisputable pro-choice argument

I took the bait.

I couldn’t help but open an email with the subject line: “You’re afraid of this pro-choice argument”

Afraid? I’m afraid of a lot of things. Actually, five things: spiders, asteroids, ghosts, head lice, and malaria. But arguments? Especially pro-abortion arguments? Definitely not on the list.

 https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/i-am-afraid-of-this-indisputable-pro-choice-argument

I might be frustrated by them; annoyed, angered, even disturbed, but afraid? I don’t think so.

I know those too ! 

Here’s Rachel, trying to strike fear into my heart:

Dear Matt, ever since I first read your blog I knew you were a cowardly fake. It wasn’t until I started reading some of your anti-choice articles that my suspicions were truly confirmed. You spend a lot of time picking the low hanging fruit. You attack the weakest abortion rights arguments while ignoring the glaring weaknesses in your own position.

If you had the guts or the brains you’d try to respond to the most important abortion rights argument… bodily autonomy or bodily integrity. This means that we have the final jurisdiction over our own bodies. Nobody can claim a right to our body that goes above our own right. 

Nobody can use our bodies without consent.

This is possibly the most trotted out, feminist point. Dim of course, but only if you actually think about it. To those who do not think, it is plausible to the point of overwhelming anything one might say. Nevertheless, despite the absolute certainty of those that trot it out, they have to back it up with personal  insults.

We cannot be forced to donate organs or blood to someone else. A fetus must survive on a woman’s body so the woman has a right to withdrawal her consent and her body at any time.

This is the pro-choice argument that no anti-choice fanatic… especially one as stubborn and simpleminded as you… could ever possibly dispute. If you still don’t understand, try to imagine this hypothetical…

Could not 'ever possibly dispute', eh?  Certain about that, Rachel?

Imagine that you wake up one morning in a hospital bed. In the bed next to you is a famous singer. He is unconscious and all of these tubes are connected from him to you. A doctor comes in and explains that the singer became sick and you are the only person with the right blood type to match his. They need you to remain hooked up to him until he recovers… they tell you it should only take nine months. Until then, he needs to use all of your organs… your kidneys, liver, lungs, everything… just to survive. If you unplug yourself, he will die. So do you think you are obligated to stay plugged in? Does he have a right to live off of you like this? Should you be FORCED to stay connected to him?

That’s what situation the pregnant woman is in. 

Pregnant women are attached to singers?  

Instead of harping on all of these irrelevant issues, I wish you’d be brave enough to address it from this angle. It is immoral to require a woman to sustain a fetus and it is moral for a woman to make a decision with her body based on what is right for her. 

How can you argue against this?

But I guess your blog is more about preaching to the choir than actually being intelligent and bold in your writing. What a shame.

-Rachel

I would love to have had Rachel come in to the Tavern and say all of that to me. But with all the scurrying around fetching and carrying I doubt I could have marshalled the arguments as well as Matt did. I would have offered her a large tankard of Grace though to help Matt's medicine go down. 

Matt continued, marshalling the arguments that I was too busy for.

Here’s my answer:

Dear Rachel,

You’re right. You win. I have no response. I can’t think of any reason why you’re wrong about any of the points you raised.

Well, I can’t think of any reason — except for, like, ten reasons. So I’ll start with five reasons why that hypothetical is flawed, and move on to five additional reasons why your overall argument is flawed.

Here we go:

1. Your analogy is flawed because it presupposes that the relationship between mother and child is no more significant, and carries with it no more responsibility, than the relationship between a person and some random stranger in a hospital bed.

This is absurd. If we’re trying to make this hypothetical as close to pregnancy as possible, shouldn’t the sick singer (or violinist, according to the original iteration of this hypothetical) at least be your child? 

Your argument doesn’t work because the fact that your child is your child, and not some strange adult from across town, is precisely the point. Hidden cleverly in this hypothetical is the insinuation that one cannot agree that an unborn child has a right to his mother’s body, without agreeing that anyone in the entire world, in any context, for any reason, at any point, for any period of time, has a right to a woman’s body.

Nice try, Rachel.

But no cigar.

Just because a mother is expected to be a mother doesn’t mean she’s also expected to be a slave, a prostitute, and a forced organ donor to talented musical artists. Indeed, the extent of our responsibility to a person hinges in many ways on our relationship to them. You would, I assume, agree that you have a responsibility to your born children, wouldn’t you? And your responsibility to them extends far beyond your responsibility to your neighbor, or your plumber, or your trash collector, doesn’t it? The relationship matters. 

Your hypothetical fails because it pretends that relationships are irrelevant.

2. Your analogy is flawed because it leaves out an important detail: how did the singer become ill in the first place?

Aside from cases of rape, a child is only conceived because two people intentionally committed a particular act which has, literally billions of times, resulted in the conception of a human life.

This singer came down with a terrible sickness. You might feel pity for him, but you didn’t cause him to be sick. You didn’t put him in this state. You had absolutely nothing to do with it. The same cannot be said when a child is conceived.

3. Your analogy is flawed because, when framed properly, it doesn’t strengthen your moral position — it defeats it.

I was surprised that she claimed a 'moral' argument at all. Just where do these people get their 'moral' understanding from? 

The hypothetical should be this: your own child becomes very sick because of something you did. 

He needs a blood transfusion and you are the only match. 

Would you refuse to give him your blood because it infringes on your bodily autonomy? Could this be morally justified? 

You put your kid in the hospital and now you will choose to watch him die because he ‘doesn’t have a right to your blood.’ 

THIS scenario would be the closest to abortion. And, if you are consistent in your affinity for ‘bodily autonomy,’ you could not criticize parents who’d rather let their child die than be inconvenienced by a blood transfusion.

4. But, no matter how you frame the hypothetical, it is still flawed because it ignores one crucial thing: natural order.

An unborn child is exactly where he is supposed to be. 

He couldn’t possibly be anywhere else. 

This is the fundamental difference between two people hooked up to machines on a hospital bed, and a ‘fetus’ connected to his mother insider her womb. The former represents unnatural and extraordinary measures, while the latter represents something natural and ordinary. The unborn child is where Nature (or God, as I call Him) intends it to be.

The unborn child is not, in any scientific or medical sense, an intruder or a parasite. These words have meanings, and unborn babies do not fit the bill. They are where they are supposed to be. They are where they belong. A fish belongs in water, just as an unborn child belongs in his mother’s womb.

5. Beyond all of these points, the analogy is flawed because abortion is not the same as ‘unplugging’ a person from medical equipment.

It might be quite sanitary and pleasant to refer to abortion as a woman ‘withdrawing support’ from her child, but the procedure goes beyond this. During a ‘termination,’ the baby is actively killed. It is crushed, dismembered, poisoned, or torn apart. It is killed. It is actively, actually, purposefully, intentionally killed.

In fact, even in the original hypothetical — where you’re hooked up to a singer in a hospital bed — while it would be acceptable to unplug yourself, it would NOT be morally or legally permissible to shoot the poor guy in the head. 

A person’s physical reliance on you does not give you the moral (or legal, usually) right to murder them. 

‘Withdrawing support’ is precisely what an abortion isn’t. If it was, then the baby would be delivered and left to die in the corner of the room. Of course, this is how some abortionists conduct business, but it’s illegal. If they’re caught, they go to jail.

6. But the bodily autonomy argument is flawed in ways that go beyond that utterly fallacious and misleading hypothetical. 

It’s flawed because nobody is crazy enough to consistently apply it to pregnant women.

Hmmmm. Many ARE crazy enough.

According to bodily autonomy, a mother could not be judged harshly for smoking, drinking, doing coke, and going skydiving (hopefully not all in the same day) while 6 months pregnant. If you really believe that a woman’s body is autonomous — that she has absolute jurisdiction over it — then you must defend a mother who does things that could seriously harm her unborn child, even if she hasn’t chosen to abort it. This is not a slippery slope argument; this is a reasonable and inevitable application of your principle.

7. The bodily autonomy argument is flawed because it requires you to support abortion at every stage of development.

I’m throwing this in here because most pro-aborts will not (vocally) defend abortion at 8 or 9 months. But — if bodily autonomy is your claim — you must. 

Is a woman’s body less autonomous when she’s been pregnant for 35 weeks? 

There is no way around it: bodily autonomy means that it is moral to kill a fully formed baby, at seven months, or eight months, or nine months.

8. The bodily autonomy argument is flawed because you can’t limit it to pregnant women.

You say that our bodies cannot be ‘used’ without our ‘consent.’ Why should this apply only to pregnancy and organ donations? 

Children, at any age, create profound demands on their parents’ bodies. Whether it’s waking up in the middle of the night for the crying baby, working long hours to pay for their food and clothing, carrying them around when they cannot walk, staying home when you’d like to go out, going out (to bring them to the doctor, or school, or soccer practice) when you’d like to stay in, etc, etc, etc, and so forth. 

An argument for absolute bodily autonomy means that it can’t be illegal, or considered immoral, for a parent to decline to do any of these things, so long as their decision was made in the name of bodily autonomy.

9. The bodily autonomy argument is flawed because it necessarily justifies [other] things [Such as] like public masturbation.

If I can ‘do what I want with my body,’ then it becomes very difficult to launch a salient moral or legal attack against a man who chooses to sit in a playground in front of children and pleasure his own body. [Or a woman do that either].

10. Finally, the bodily autonomy argument is flawed because   

our bodies are not autonomous.

I’m often accused of oversimplifying, but I’ve never oversimplified to the extent of you bodily autonomy proponents. Once we’ve considered every complexity and nuance, we can rightly say that our bodies are autonomous in some ways, and in some circumstances, but not in others.  

We cannot say that they are absolutely autonomous, and I find it hard to believe that anyone truly thinks that.

Any claim or responsibility placed on me, automatically includes a claim and responsibility on my body. Everything I do involves my body. I am my body. CS Lewis would say that I am my soul and I have a body. I agree with him, but for our purposes in this discussion, leaving souls and spirits aside, we are our bodies. 

Whether we are expected to pay taxes or drive the speed limit or provide a safe and sanitary home for our children, we are using our bodies to meet these expectations. We experience and participate in life with our bodies. Absolute bodily autonomy is inexorably linked with personal autonomy. If my body is autonomous, my person must be autonomous, and if my person is autonomous, then my very existence is autonomous, and if my very existence is autonomous, then it is simply unacceptable and (by your logic) immoral for anyone to expect me to do anything for anyone at any point for any reason.

If you concede that we ought to be expected or even required to do certain things, then you are placing limits on our bodily autonomy. 

If you place limits on our bodily autonomy, then you are admitting that limits can be placed on our bodily autonomy. If you are admitting that limits can be placed on our bodily autonomy, then you must consider whether abortion falls within or outside of those limits. 

And here’s the rub: if you contend that abortion falls within the limits on bodily autonomy, you must justify that belief beyond simply reasserting our right to bodily autonomy.

Personally, I think that abortion goes well beyond the limits on bodily autonomy, for all of the reasons I’ve previously stipulated.

There’s your answer, Rachel.

But, except for the ten reasons why you’re wrong, you’re right on the money.

And, except for the ten answers I’ve provided, I have no answers for you.

I guess you win.

Thanks for writing.

Matt engages, with a bit of tongue in cheek, in the sort of consideration of what an idea is and where it leads: its consequences.

Pro-choice people do not.

They stand there because they LOVE you. Yes, you, Mum-to-be.

What matters to them is the Mantra of Self.

No-one else can be considered.

No 'logic' can be considered.

You know, as a barman, a Tavern Keeper and counsellor to the inebriates - especially those on the road away from the Perdition they have been used to - I sometimes have to explain things in words of one syllable. Over and over. many different words. Again and again. Until the light goes on in their eyes.

Why do I bother? Why do we have to bother to explain things to the certain and the insistent  and the damned rude people, as Matt does for Rachel?

Because we Love them 

Pax

Those Fundamental Questions, developed a bit.

It is a truth that few understand: things are far deeper than they seem. The last session in the Tavern left a lot of folk thirsty: it is what happens when very significant issues arise that the media and entertainment world, the political and bogus world tends to avoid. Not for Hillary's Village a town cryer, unless she (equality you see) has a bogus victimhood to cry out about.

But seekers of the Way and the Truth and the Light on the hill drink up my Supplier's fare and occasionally are rewarded by a man of deep thought stepping through the door and shouting the Bouncer a pint. (Always a good idea).

Such was the case today which has left many of us thinking deep whilst drinking deep.

It was Bill Carroll a Research Fellow at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, and a member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion of the University of Oxford. Quite a title, eh. He, like many of us, actually reads books !! He came in to tell us of one he read lately.

You will recal that we had been talking of Scientists and smashing particles and such. And Atheists.  Not scientists smashing atheists, you understand; the atheists we spoke of were simply certain with denial where scientists are certain with method.  But is the method right? Often they sit at the same table denying the obvious. Many scientists, following their profession which has been built over several centuries of  a 'mechanistic' paradigm, have busily worked in a very confined space.

The Omega. And where's the Alpha?

But Bill opened the windows for them, a bit. Not that I as a simple Tavern Keeper saw much new through it. But they might, if they take a look.  You might too.

Science, Philosophy, and God

An understanding of the transcendence of creation forms the essential foundation of natural science. 

But does that understanding require revelation?

Understanding what natural entities are—and how they are the kinds of things that they are—is a central goal of all scientific endeavor. It is an endeavor that cannot be undertaken without at least an implicit theology and philosophy. 

 http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/01/15597/

We might distinguish the natural sciences from philosophy and theology, but it is a mistake to see them as extrinsic to one another, each existing in its own neat epistemological and ontological compartment. Although at first it might seem counter-intuitive, the proper autonomy of these areas of inquiry depends upon their interdependence.

Such, at least, is the general claim that informs Michael Hanby’s No God, No Science? Theology, Cosmology, and Biology. 

Hanby’s analysis is wide-ranging, erudite, and sophisticated; his is a challenging and important book.

OK, so he had our attention, and I wondered just where he was going with this. I pulled a pint for him, and one for m'self. 

For Hanby, “science is constitutively and inexorably related to metaphysics and theology;” the latter are “internal to science even as they are distinct from it.” 

The key to understanding this constitutive relationship is the doctrine of creation, and Hanby argues that we 

need “to retrieve the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo from the distortions imposed upon it by the totalizing claims of positivist science and especially by that most theological of sciences, evolutionary biology.” 

Hanby claims that the appropriate autonomy of the natural sciences and metaphysics is “theologically grounded” in science’s very own “creaturely constitution.”

As with many if not most academics, he does challenge us all with odd phrases and terms, but.... bear with him a while. He continued.... 

The Notion of Creation

Distorted notions of God as Creator, that is, as extrinsic cause of things and events in the world, are behind the view that we must choose between divine agency in the world and the kinds of causes that the natural sciences disclose. 

Ah, yes. I cannot say that many Christians do not also become confused by this. We do not have to choose any such thing, as wise Doctors of the Church have pointed out before.

Too often, God has been seen as a finite object among other finite objects, albeit one who is juxtaposed to the world: a cause among causes, a thing simply vastly greater in degree from all other things. 

God becomes a master craftsman and the created order his artifact. God so conceived is one who “imposes his design upon passive subjects.” It is this conception of creation that Darwinism claims to supplant.

For Hanby, this theological “extrinsicism” fails to capture the truth of God’s transcendence, a transcendence so radical that God as Creator is the immanent source of the very existence of all that is. 

Ugghh. That 'radical' word. He is trying too hard !! 

I have to put my hand up to 'defend' science just a bit here. There is a lot to be said for discovering the 'whats' and 'hows' of nature, even extending our apprehension of nature to its furthest limits. The edge of the Universe even. But apprehension itself is only a first step. There is comprehension and understanding to follow. It is here where science loses its remit when based upon a reductionist and mechanist modus. There is a danger of too much 'reading the menu' and not enough having an enjoyment of a fine meal. 

Some fundamentalist Christians should pay heed to that lesson too.

The doctrine of creation, properly understood, is not an alternate cosmological theory of the temporal origins of the universe, nor a rival to scientific explanations of change (e.g., natural selection). Creation is not “a process of bringing forth the animate from the inanimate or one species from another.” 

Rather, it discloses the ontological structure of the world and is the necessary precondition for the world and for science itself.

The claim that Hanby defends in considerable detail—historically, philosophically, and theologically—is this:

the doctrine of creation is essential to an understanding of the universe that is both comprehensive and nonreductive; and that the scientific and Darwinian revolutions, for all their stunning success in increasing our knowledge of the universe, ......

...have left us with a universe so reduced and fractured that it threatens to undermine the rationality and intelligibility of their own achievement.

The error, according to Hanby, is seeing the relationship between God and the world in extrinsic terms rather than seeing God’s abiding presence as cause of existence immanent in the world.

Now, I am no Theologian, but this is something that even a soul like mine can 'know' as surely as I know the heartbeat in my chest that I barely take any notice of. 

As a result of embracing an extrinsic notion of God as creator, the modern world “evacuates creatures of the unity, intelligibility, and interiority inherent in our elementary experience of them.” 

To see nature simply as the product of a divine craftsman is to reduce nature to an artifact and to find the intelligibility of nature exclusively in terms of “extrinsic relations” governing the interaction of parts.

Darwin, according to Hanby, inherited a mechanistic ontology and an “extrinsicist” theology (God as a finite object within the order of being) that has shaped the continuing debate about evolution and creation. 

By golly, I think he's got it ! 

The debate, however, often reveals a false dilemma rooted in defective notions of God, creation, and causality. A vision of God as an artisan/designer was evident in the natural theology of William Paley, which Darwin rejected. It’s also evident in contemporary “intelligent design” theories. Paley understood creation as a kind of manufacturing; he did not see the Creator as the interior source of the creature’s very existence but as an extrinsic cause who imposes order and design on the world. The world is a “cluster of contrivances” and God is the master contriver.

With such a view, it is hardly surprising that we are in the deep intellectual doo-doo in which we find ourselves wallowing. Well, Hillary's Villagers and the scientific 'community', anyway.

The Unity and Interiority of Living Beings

There is a related failure to understand that living beings are true unities, each of which possesses an irreducible interiority that is not possible for artifacts or machines. 

Here we have a key feature of a reductionist view of the world that claims to explain all things exhaustively in terms of their material constituents.

And insists on smashing them to smaller and smaller bits at enormous cost to the taxpayer ! An Enormity of some magnitude. 

Hanby argues that the failure of modern biology to speak intelligibly of what an organism is {even a baby !} follows from the prior commitment to mechanism that has its roots in a defective understanding of what it means for God to create. Accordingly, Hanby identifies a program for achieving a better grasp of what the world truly is:

We must restore to the things of the world the unity and the interior depth of being that was taken away from them in the modern conflation of nature and art, being and history, truth and utility, and knowledge and power. 

We must dispose with the natural theology and mechanistic ontology commenced in the seventeenth-century and brought to fulfillment by Darwin and his disciples, a theology and metaphysics which continue to deform the meaning of the doctrine of creation and the stakes in its confrontation with the totalizing claims of evolutionary biology. 

We must distinguish the act of creation—that gratuitous gift of being that calls forth its own recipient—from a process of immanent manufacture, and we must distinguish the doctrine of creation from any mechanical explanation seeking to account for the ‘how’ of the world. To do this, we must begin by setting aside that finite and idolatrous God simultaneously affirmed and denied by Darwinian biology and approach, at long last, the Creator God.

Hanby argues that the mistaken metaphysics and theology implicit in Darwinian biology are the sources of considerable confusion in what the biological sciences tell us about the world.

Recognizing the distinction between an organism and an artifact—a recognition that, according to Hanby, requires a correct understanding of what it means for God to be the Creator—leads us to see how activities such as metabolism, respiration, reproduction, and self-movement properly belong to living things precisely as living. An organism is, in this sense, both the cause and effect of itself. 

Organisms maintain themselves in being, whereas artifacts engage in none of these activities because their parts are essentially external to each other and their unity is not intrinsic to them. 

The significance of this way of distinguishing between organism and artifact is clear:

Whereas the unity of an organism ontologically precedes its development, so that its development is the development of an organism such as an embryo or an oak tree, the unity of an artifact resides primarily in the mind of its maker and ..

only comes about in the thing itself as the end result of a process of manufacture.

The conflation of created nature with artifact eliminates the organism as the subject of its own being and action. The organism is considered only “an accidental aggregation of parts which are the parts of no real whole.”

Hence a 'foetus' isn't 'really' a human being until it comes off (out of) the production line (the mother). Such a madness is the inevitable outcome of the mechanistic thinking we wallow in. 


Now, by this point and a lot of pint-pulling for the listening customers, we were wondering when he was going to question 'revelation', as he had previously said. He did at last get around to it.

Faith, Reason, and the Revelation of Transcendence

Throughout his analysis of what it means for God to create, Hanby incorporates important insights from Hans Urs von Balthasar and David Schindler.

Yes, yes, get on with it, and don't forget Thomas Aquinas ! 

To see the distinction between God and nature as being “operative in every conception of nature” is in one sense correct, since all of nature is the result of God's creative act. A complete view of nature requires this recognition, which ultimately involves an appeal to doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation.

Hanby does not grant to metaphysics the ability to reach the conclusion that all that is depends upon the agency of a transcendent source of existence. For him, the doctrine of creation out-of-nothing can only be a revealed theological insight, even if it appropriates metaphysical language.

Following the lead of scholars such as Étienne Gilson, Hanby thinks that, without Christian revelation, Greek philosophy was not and is not able to understand that there must be a transcendent cause of the existence of things.

At issue here are complex historical, philosophical, and theological topics concerning the relationship between reason and faith, including questions about the proper autonomy of various modes of inquiry. 

As we have seen, Hanby argues against a separation of these modes of inquiry (including the separation of theology and metaphysics from the natural sciences), and he thinks that the distinctions he draws maintain a kind of autonomy for each. 

For Thomas Aquinas, however, reason alone, in the discipline of metaphysics, can come to a recognition that the world is created. 

Let's hear it for St Tom!  Pints all round.

Faith, based on divine revelation, deepens this understanding of creation. Hanby, I think, would take issue with the phrase “reason alone,” since he would think that, following Thomas, I have granted too great a distinction between reason and faith.

Hanby calls for a profound rethinking of the explicit and implicit assumptions of much of modern thought. 

He thinks we must “retrieve the doctrine of God from the idolatrous natural theology presupposed by modern science in its founding gesture and exemplified, above all, by Darwinian biology.” This rethinking will also lead to retrieving “the world from the endemic reductionism of a pervasive mechanistic ontology. 

Retrieving creation, then, means retrieving the ontological question suppressed by positivist science and its reduction of being from act to brute facticity.” 

This is all true, but, as Thomas Aquinas can help us to see, retrieving the ontological question of cause of existence does not initially require an appeal to revealed theological claims about the Trinity and the Incarnation. There is a philosophical sense of God’s creative act that does not involve appeals to a theology that sees creation in terms of the dynamics of a triune God—no matter how correct such theology may be.

Whew. Truth snatched from the jaw-words of confusion ! 

Let us drink and think.

Reason and Grace !

Pax