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choner

since bush never considered the pros and cons, what makes you think he is capable of re considering.

other coutnries that are not run by the christian coalition don't have this religious dichodomy, is it a fetus, is a fetus a person, what does god want us to do.

there was a time when religious doctrine prevented disecting corpses.

perhaps christians should take no asprins or any other medications to aleviate pain or cure a disease.

in israel, they are close to curing alzheimers, some forms of cancer, and they have been able to regenerate some spinal cord injuries to the point that patients can feel their toes and move them.

who knows what other countries are researching and developing.

only in america

Did you ever notice the similarity between George W. Bush's name and that of his father, George H.W. Bush? George Walker Bush? George Herbert Walker Bush? Suspicious, eh? Both have the same first name. Both have the same last name. Both have an initial in common. Both are or were presidents of the United States.

But notice, if you will, that one president has ONE MORE NAME than the other: George Herbert Walker Bush v George Walker Bush.

Now think to yourself: what member of a family usually has one more name? Take your own family, for example. Who acquires additional names? SONS, ain't it? Take, for example, Dale Earnhardt and Dale Earnhardt Jr.
And they look the same.

CLONES!!!

I will agree with Rickmaven on one point.
That the US is sadly way behind quite a few countries on medical research.
Canada is years ahead of the US in their Diabetes research and while the US has made progress, if they would combine their efforts, instead of finding reasons not to do certain research, then they would be much further ahead.

00camper,
from what you wrote, it is implied that only Christians are moral and that it is morally correct to not do research?
That is awfully arrogant.

Your example.......
They are right now "harvesting" (as you succintly put it) pancreas cells for transplanting into diabetics (see my comments above) in Canada with some limited success. The US has transplanted pancreas organs into diabetics with much success.
As for your commments about the grandmothers, I really have to tell you, that is really reaching to prove a point.

To be honest, I will support Diabetes research with everything I can, even if it means embryo research.
If God, The great spirit or which ever name you wish to call him, had not meant for any research to be done, then it probably would not have come to pass. But it has.... And everything happens for a purpose.

You see, I am very much interested in the pancreas research, as my son is one of those children with diabetes you talked about.
So you are teling us that if your child was diabetic, you wouldn't be interested in ALL research done to cure them? Kind of hypocritical if you ask me.

- 0patience
"from what you wrote, it is implied that only Christians are moral and that it is morally correct to not do research?
That is awfully arrogant. ?"

That's the nature of religionS.

- Rickster,
00camper has a point. He can't help being Christian any more than a black can change being a black, or a jew can change being a jew.

- 00camper
Having a different opinion from yours is not necessarily "following the crowd". Your point of view is a little egotistical. After all, you're following your "crowd".

Not to pick on religion; politics are just as detrimental to our society, perhaps worse.

RICKAMAVEN suggested that Christians should stop taking medicine altogether, an implication that we are all backward and want to keep everybody else in the dark, too. The point of my post was that nothing could be further from the truth. Christians want scientific advances, we just don't want scientists to kill people on purpose while doing it.

0patience:
Taking pancreas cells from a willing donor while leaving them alive is one thing. Killing someone for the sole purpose of making them a donor is another.

I have a niece with Cystic Fibrosis and all the other ailments associated with either CF or the medications used to treat it. My family and I would like nothing more than to see stem cell research lead to a method of regenerating her ravaged body.

Being arrogant or morally superior is not the intent of my post. The intent is to demonstrate that there is another viewpoint on this question.

I support killing babies up to 2 years after birth. And why not? They are not yet fully developed and can’t talk, many people I know get sick of all that dam crying. And it should be the mother’s right to end the life whenever she wants and sell off the parts, well up to that 2year period of course, we are not monsters.


hahahaha sock it to me

A person is pronounced dead when brainwaves are not present""



Insert bush joke here lol

65gtoman

many times you make a lot of sense.

if this were all about an embryo that could grow into a human being, i'd say that there would be a moral issue to discuss. however, a stem cell is not and cannot be a human being. ever. if we follow that logic, we should never clip our fingernails, because hey -- it was a "living" thing! a stem cell is no more of a human life than a fingernail clipping is.

as for the nazi camp "research," we do not use it because it is "immoral" -- there were, in fact, attempts to use this information. we do not use it because it is not empiracally useful. in other words, the tests and "research" done falls way out of the guidelines of being meaningful. if, for instance, a control group is tainted, then nothing coming out of that research is scientifically useful. there are simply too many factors that taint the control group. you cannot say "humans die after being in 40 degree water for 20 minutes" when those humans in the control group have been beaten, tortured and starved. the only scientific "truth" you can conclude is that certain people who have undergone harsh treatment, who are injured, who are malnourished, whose body weight is extremely low, etc. will die after x amount of time in a tub of ice water.

00camper,
since we are on this point and YOU brought up about killing for purposes, then I have to ask you.
Am I to believe that Christians believe that ALL killing is wrong? If so, then do you eat meat?
If you do, you are a hypocrite.
Because the animal that the meat came from was killed or slaughtered.
Ahhh, but the Christians don't believe animals have souls?? So that justifies the killing of animals? Correct?
Again, I find that hypocritical.

I hunt, I also respect that the animal provided food for my family when it is taken.
I do not take an animal that I do not intend to provide food for my family. So I suppose I am, as the Christians called my ancestors, a heathen.

Call on God, but row away from the rocks

Cavallo,
I apologize if it seemed I lumped all Christians in one package, as with any group of people, there are those who choose the extreme.
In all of history, as you showed, there have been alot of things that were done that were questionable, in the name of Christianity. Right or wrong, that is not for me to decide, but for one to claim high morals solely on the basis of chrisitianity is reaching a bit.
I know some people with very high morals and they are not christians. Then I know some devout christians who's morals are very questionable.

As for the research, to try and stay on track, the research needs to be there. Otherwise, we, as a species are in trouble.

coda,
Actually, alot of folks change their religions.
Look at this person accused of treason. He changed his beliefs.

00camper

my apoligize for any implication that all christians have the same values. i am fixated on the abortion issue that is constantly being discussed in the media and the smug attitude of the talking heads, or as al franken calls them, lying liars and the liars who tell them.

i never resent anyone i talk to that ends the conversation with "have a blessed day" and i admired
kurt warner thanking his personal saviour, jesus, for helping him win the super bowl a few years ago.

it is not chrisianity and christians that cause me any concern, after all there have been monks that have set themselves on fire, and harikari to "save face" is pretty much out there.

i think you have given me the epiphany about what is so distasteful to me about "christians", i think my only problem with the relegion is the abortion issue. the several things that some of the above posters have mentioned ie against abortion, for capital punnishment, are peripheral to me.

toby and i never personally faced a decision about abortion. i believe my mother had a d and c(abortion) when she was in her late 40's and i think that was the correct choice for her.

but i have problems with the christian idea of life beginning at the moment of conception. there was life before that.

i am also put off by the "i am a christian and therefore i have all the answers for the rest of the
world, the non-christians, and they must listen."
quales wife said "they" will never get into heaven unless they believe."

i don't go into churches and interrupt services and i don't like the insistance that christians
interrupt class rooms in order to have services there. but the christian movement doesn't agree
with me. ok, but you can't come into a building a paid for in part and have prayer meetings and i won't put on a musicle comedy in your church that you partily paid for.

Thank you, RICKAMAVEN. You just made my day!

Now that’s something you don’t read everyday. I attacked every religious group and the atheists too.

Ahhahaha SOCK IT TO ME

AAaarghhh!! Cough, cough -- gag... -- Socrates

Cigarick

the quest for a belief system can be a life long search. search on and good luck.

The light at the end of the tunnel has been temporarily shut off due to budget constraints.

coda: okay, i'll bite! :) i love a good debate. :)

here's my take -- i'm with you to a point. i do think that our BELIEFS are the results of our experiences *much of the time* -- but not ALWAYS.

i do think that the WAY we express our beliefs IS a choice. example: "i believe in jesus because i just do; i'll CHOOSE to EXPRESS that belief as a lutheran -- or catholic, or episcopalian, or baptist, etc." the belief in jesus was most likely not specifically chosen, but rather integrated over time. the choice of denomination (or, as i call it, "franchise") IS chosen, though.

now then. i think we're square on up to that point, yeah?

here's where my opinion splits off: i think that there are beliefs that we hold onto DESPITE given proof to the contrary. those beliefs ARE deliberately chosen. once you are presented with options, and once those options meet certain criteria for being credible and believable, then people DO CHOOSE which one(s) they will hold onto and which they will reject.

an example: oh, let's go wide and say racism. i was brought up to believe that black folks were lazy, stupid, inferior and immoral in various ways -- they were all thieves, they were all liars, etc.

now the fact that i held those beliefs up until, say, my mid-teens was NOT a matter of my choice. that's what i grew up hearing. if a black person was arrested, there was someone around to say "see? there's more proof. they're all criminals!" my contact with people of color was limited; the only things ever pointed out to me as a child were those things that "proved" the stereotypical talk.

in my young adulthood, for the first time, i interacted with blacks in "neutral territory" so to speak. where i had grown up with a lot of black-white violence, now i'm in a work place where the guy next to me doing the same job as me is black. he's not lazy. he's not stupid. he's not stealing anything. he's not a slacker. whoa... suddenly all of my "beliefs" are challenged.

and at THAT point i DO have a choice. i can go on believing what i was TAUGHT to believe -- despite the fact that i have direct evidence to the contrary -- or i can say "okay. so obviously what i believed before was wrong" and CHOOSE to change my beliefs.

now then -- i can see how you might say in that situation, "well, you didn't choose it; you just got more experience and ACCEPTED it."

but i've evidence that people in such situations do NOT accept what the new experience tells them. not everyone in my shoes WOULD say "okay, that old belief was erroneous; i have new information now, and as i accept that, my belief changes."

there are people who quite willfully hold onto the previous belief DESPITE evidence to the contrary. they will find some way to justify holding onto the old belief ("well, that's how i was raised, and it was good enough for my pappy so it's good enough for me" for instance).

so while i agree with you, it's just up to the point where i have seen people make deliberate choices about what to accept or reject.

-sicilian tony

You have chosen to be a ship. I choose to remain a captain.

Cavallo,
Our remaining difference seems to lie in whether someone consciously or unconsciously rejects "facts" they are faced with.

We are not purely logical creatures. There are many reasons for one's beliefs not to change despite "evidence" to the contrary, to name a few:

-insecurity
-comfort supplied by existing beliefs
-low intelligence
-ego
-desire for acceptance by one's social group
-incorrect interpretation of the "facts"
-narrow range of life experiences
-a traumatic past experience

Our intelligence, self-awareness, and emotional capacity roll up to make a complex, full-bodied smoke. This is what the field of psychology is all about, and none of its "experts" have any idea what's going on in there.

A diehard bigot working next to your same exemplary black co-worker might merely conclude that "this one's REALLY sneaky, I can't catch him at it". That's not a conscious choice, but rather the way his nature and nurture misguide his interpretation of what he sees.

"There are none so blind as those who will not see". That blindness is not voluntary.

Someone who is intelligent, curious, open-minded, and has a minimum of mental baggage is a likelier candidate for belief changes. He still isn't choosing them.

We humans are egotistical by nature and like to think we're in control, hence our telling ourselves that we choose everything. Comforting thought, but that doesn't make it true.

coda: wow. GREAT reply! after giving it some more thought, i pretty much arrived at the exact same conclusions, especially about the reasons why, when presented with a fact that would LOGICALLY over-ride previous beliefs, someone might "choose" to keep the old belief.

and i agree with you. to the extent that other factors come into play with at least (if not more) "pull" than logic, such "choice" is most likely not at all a conscious thing. therefore, the person is likely NOT capable of making a choice. boils down to something like "you can't choose something if you're not aware that you CAN choose it."

i would further that along by adding that life is rarely so black and white that a choice comes without many, many strings attached. and those strings can be the "stuff" of one's very being sometimes. the strings can be attached to one's perception of soul, of duty, of honor, of obligation, of rightness or wrongness, etc.

so i think we really are in agreement basically.

however... :)

you wrote: "Someone who is intelligent, curious, open-minded, and has a minimum of mental baggage is a likelier candidate for belief changes. He still isn't choosing them."

i agree with everything here except for that last sentence, and even there it's more an issue of semantics than anything. i would say "he still MAY NOT be choosing them." i'd even go so far as to say "he still MOST LIKELY IS NOT choosing them." :)

it's just that niggling matter of absolutes that trips me up on that. being someone who was, indeed, raised to be a racist, i'm also someone who did, indeed, change my beliefs as i got out of the neighborhood in which i was raised and got to interact with non-white people outside of that environment -- and it was a neighborhood where there was a perpetual cycle of race-based violence; some whites would jump a black guy; some blacks would get revenge and jump a white guy, repeat ad infinitum -- it still goes on there to this day, sadly.

anyway, maybe we could meet in the middle and say that your assertation is the rule but agree that there are exceptions to the rule? :)

thanks much for this "mental volleyball" today! much appreciated!

-sicilian tony

coda and Cavallo

excuse me for listening in, but is was a pleasant joy to hear different view points discussed by two people that are able to debate in a civilized manner.

You're scaring me. It almost sounds like you're one step away from, "It's not MY fault--I'm a product of my environment!" Isn't that the national disease?