Right As Usual

I'm going to be leading an Adult Faith group again, starting next Wednesday evening. One of the people we will be looking at in our video series is St. Thomas Aquinas. His thinking about the conflict between Church Teaching and Science/Natural Philosophy formed the basis for much of Western Civ. The dynamics between dogmas of the Church (those teachings held to be authentic and fundamental to the Faith) and Science (which is always open - theoretically - to modification, as data is found that contradicts the previous theories), is one of the big issues of our time. Many moderns use Science as a way of 'proving' that religion and God are hogwash. When faced with contradictory information, moderns choose to dump God, or, at least, organized religion. Many retain some sort of mushy 'spiritual' awareness, without all those yucky rules or structure. Fr. Michael Barrone, a long-time and very popular defender of the Faith, ruminates on the influence of Aquinas: Thoma...

When there really is no basis for determining something in a factual way, consensus becomes important - even more important than the truth. There are times when consensus makes sense: A time standard - the atomic clock - is agreed to be the "official" time. The French - who invented it - define SI - the international system (better known in America as Metric Measurement). Pantone sets the standard for color, and all other methods of identifying color agree to follow its color shadings standard. If there is disagreement in a family about where to go on vacation, they may decide to vote, and accept the consensus of the majority. They might agree, by consensus, to cede that decision to a single person. Where consensus cannot be the basis for determining things is in fields, such as science, where the data, and analysis of it, are critical. No matter how many scientists agree, if the data can be shown not to back up their consensus, they must give way. Share

Nothing too earth-shattering to relate - we've been traveling, and have come to rest (temporarily) in OH. We're soaking up family time, until early next week. Then it's back to SC, to prepare to move once again. The holiday is making it more difficult to get the paperwork together for our new house. I'm hoping that everything will work out, but, if it doesn't, we'll find a rental for the short-term, and look around again. It's too much of a buyer's market to jump through hoops for any home, however nice. What the immigration bill defeat teaches us is - don't count your chickens. Also, it serves as a reminder that politicians can be sneaky - they really thought they could pull a fast one, bringing the bill back with fancy procedural tricks. Gotcha! I used that experience as a lead-in to my point in an educational conference last week. I pointed out that the power of the blogs has not been tapped, and that the organization needed to begin working...

I've been saying this for some time, but this is one of the first decent reports from a major news organization about the value of non-embryonic stem cell research.

The Associated Press shows its bias quite clearly - multiple quotes of those pushing for embryonic stem cell research, but no sources that would point out that the only current research that has actually yielded results has been that which used adult or umbilical cord stem cells.

Ellen Goodman is solidly lined up with the Global Warming Cult - a group of conspiracy theorists that believe that only a dark conspiracy against "the truth about global warming" prevents the world from bowing down to the blackmail, completely trashing our economy, and frantically beating our chests in a liberal version of the old Catholic "mea culpa, mea culpa". Her "proof"? (thanks to Doug Patten, writing for Human Events - I initially forgot that citation - sorry, Doug). Goodman refers to the gaps between what she calls "Republican science and Democratic science," and is amazed that "23 percent of college-educated Republicans believe the warming is due to humans, while 75 percent of college-educated Democrats believe it." Well, I hate to bring up facts in a good red-state, blue-state rant, but has she considered that the college-educated Democrats are MUCH less likely to have majored in math, science, and engineering? And, theref...