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Events

Upcoming debate with Stephen Meyer, Richard Sternberg and Michael Shermer

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Story here. (H/T Manawatu Christian Apologetics via Apologetics 315)

Excerpt:

A public debate about the origins of life hosted by the American Freedom Alliance and featuring: Stephen Meyer, Rick Sternberg, Michael Shermer and Don Prothero

Admission: $20.00 Students: $10.00
RSVP: Saban Theater Box Office (323) 655-0111

Monday, November 30th, 7pm,

Saban Theater, Beverly Hills

Here’s a neat quote from Harvard paleontologist Richard Lewontin, courtesy of Apologetics 315:

“We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”

I hope that Shermer and Prothero can be more open-minded with respect to the evidence compared to Richard Lewontin’s faith-based epistemology.

Commentary

Did post-traumatic stress disorder cause the Fort Hood murderer to snap?

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Well, he never actually was in combat – he’s a psychologist!

Check out this post from an American soldier who experienced PTSD himself after having most of his arm blown off by an IED. WARNING! This post contains a lot of profanity as you might expect! (I removed the curse words and substituted by favorite words instead in the excerpt below)

Excerpt:

You want to know what [beasting] PTSD is like? I’ll tell you. You have nightmares that go on for weeks. Mine would always be the same. Wherever the window was in the room in which I was sleeping I would see a bright white flash. I would wake up screaming to my wife “Get up! Get the [ROAR!] up! An IED just went off!” Sometimes I would just wake up screaming in agony as I relived the moment where my right arm was ripped from my body by an Iranian shape charge. (I may not know what childbirth feels like, but I know what it’s like to go an hour with my am ripped off without painkillers (I’m allergic to morphine).) PTSD makes you paranoid as [monstery]. “Why is that person staring at me? Are they a threat? Where is the nearest exit? Why are these people so close to me? Why is no one pulling security? What was that noise? Where is the nearest cover? I need to get out of here.” You lie wide awake in bed at night wondering if it’s safe to go to sleep or if you should get up and start pulling security.

[…]I still get nervous and hold my breath every time I drive by a piece of trash or tire debris on the shoulder or median.  I avoid guardrails and broken down cars on the side of the road.  On a couple different occasions I yelled out “tire!” to warn my wife (who was driving) of a potential IED in the road. There was nothing there (no tire, no nothing).  One late night while driving home completely exhausted on our small two lane country roads at slow speed I locked up all four tires on my car to keep from hitting a cardboard box in the middle of the road.  At that moment I would have bet the contents of my bank account it was an IED.  That’s what [toadying] PTSD is like.  At no point in time have I ever felt the desire or need to grab a weapon and go shoot someone or something up.  At no point in time have I ever grabbed a weapon and broken a law because I felt the need to protect myself.  PTSD urges you mitigate the risk of events that happened in your life.  But if you’ve never had anything traumatic happen in your life, you can’t [snarking] have PTSD.

Why do left-wingers always make excuses for the bad decisions of evil people, then rush in with social programs provided by the good people’s hard-work? What causes them to minimize personal responsibility and moral judgment? Why do they think it is virtuous to ignore and malign the victims of crime, terrorism and taxation?

If you don’t know why, be sure and watch this video with Jewish comedian Evan Sayet, who explains the whole thing. In one sense, this whole health care fiasco is nothing but an attempt by the left to equalize the health care outcomes of those who make prudent decisions with those who do not. I.e. – those who do not use drugs should pay for the drug needles of others, so that both have equal outcomes.

News

New research shows that babies learn language patterns in the womb

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Story from Live Science. (H/T Secondhand Smoke via ECM)

Excerpt:

From their very first days, the cries of newborns already bear the mark of the language their parents speak, scientists now find. French newborns tend to cry with rising melody patterns, slowly increasing in pitch from the beginning to the end, whereas German newborns seem to prefer falling melody patterns, findings that are both consistent with differences between the languages. This suggests infants begin picking up elements of language in the womb, long before their first babble or coo.

Prenatal exposure to language was known to influence newborns. For instance, past research showed they preferred their mother’s voice over those of others. Still, researchers thought infants did not imitate sounds until much later on. Although three-month-old babies can match vowel sounds that adults make, this skill depends on vocal control just not physically possible much earlier. However, when scientists recorded and analyzed the cries of 60 healthy newborns when they were three to five days old — 30 born into French-speaking families, 30 into German-speaking ones — their analysis revealed clear differences in the melodies of their cries based on their native tongue.

I told you that babies are scheming in the womb, but none of you believed me.