News Snipet 'Blog

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Take a look at Doctor Hammesfahr's website. Smells like "Right to Life" evangelical crazy man to me. He thinks Alzheimers is curable.

http://www.hni-online.com/religiousoutreach/religiousdisc_frm.htm

Terri could be at school. Give me a break. Remember this woman didn't have an accident last week, it's been 15 years with no change. Explain that one.

 

When faced with an ethical dilemma like this, I like to ask myself, "What would Bill Clinton do?"

And the answer is, try to have sex with her.

 

Before I say anything about the Terri Schiavo case, I have to preface it with the disclaimer that I still have not done enough research on it to reach an informed opinion about whether she should be kept alive.

Having said that, I also have to say that in any situation where opposite sides offer compelling arguments, it only serves to make me more skeptical.

I agree with Mochi that Hammesfaur's website gives me the impression that he is capable of putting his own religious and/or political interests ahead of those of the patient.

Ultimately, I ask myself, "what would I want in that situation?" And the answer is that I would rather die than live out my days in her condition, and for all I know she would feel the same.

But anyway, something in me prevents me from accepting this doctor's evaluation.

 

Let's apply a little logic here. Although these are disimilar models, they aren't mutually exclusive.

Wouldn't you think that if the state should not have a right to say a person should die for a capital crime, or say that the state can't interfere with someone wanting to abort a child, that they should have no right in saying that a person should be euthanized?

Mochi and Shean, I am (becoming)loathe to dismiss anyone based on their ideological or religious belief system, any more than I would judge someone by the color of their skin. LIKE THE NEWS SNIPET, the Neo-lib site has some stuff on it that is pretty far out there, and I daresay maybe even some wrong conclusions (we're human) but that doesn't completely disqualify the entire content.

Shean, I think it was you who told me to avoid generalizations, and I don't think that just because someone has a particular belief system it negates the content of their argument.

If one becomes too dismissive of religion and Christianity, they need to be reminded of history. We have electricity as we know it today because of an scientist who was a Christian. The Big Bang theory was proposed and developed by a Christian. The father of modern genetics and genome research is a Christian. Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Boyle, Faraday, Mendel, Kelvin either all Christian or believed in God. Darwin himself even said it was impossible to theorize a universe without a designer. Encyclopedia Britanica: "Firmly denying atheism, Einstein expressed a belief in "Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of what exists."

Its easy to dismiss other's opinions and findings if they differ with our own, and its even easier to develop evidence to support our dismissal--the hard thing is to examine the opposing opinion entertaining the thought that it could actually be true.

I learned this by visiting the Neo Libs!

 

I don't want to give the wrong impression. I am neither pro- nor anti-christian, but I've seen christians like him place their subjective religious values ahead of all else, including science, peoples' welfare, etc., which doesn't always work out for the best.

I know that history is full of christians who did great things, but they didn't necessarily do those things because they were christian. I would venture to say that many of the people you list were christian because it was an "accident of birth," like so many others in so many cultures. And I don't have to tell you what Galileo went through at the hands of the church.

So, my dismissal is not of christianity (although I am not a christian), it is of those who use what I consider to be myth as a foundation for their real-world decisions. It's like saying the Tsunami resulted from an offense to Poseidon.

 

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Understand where you're coming from, Shea. Not placing you in this catagory, but I'm just hesitant about people who allow biases or prejudices to limit their ability to see clearly. Coming from the South I have witnessed people judge others by the color of their skin and/or content of their culture.

Another thing I try to caution myself on is recognizing the limitations of disciplines such as science. Science is supposed to be pure, but scientists often are not. For example, in the 1980s I retained a United States Department of Health informational release (targetted at colleges and universities) that stated that "The HIV virus cannot be contracted through heterosexual contact". Science, like everything, changes its mind on a minute to minute basis--and SHOULD as new information is made available. Keep in mind that there are MANY things that science can neither study or substantiate.

I'm sure you know all of this, Shea--I don't want to sound like I'm talking down to you or anything!

 

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