Videos

BloggingHeadsTV restores censored video interview of Michael Behe

1 Comment

You can watch the video here, where Michael Behe is interviewed on a variety of topics by an atheist, who is nevertheless impressed by Behe’s book.

Topics:

  • Michael’s book, “The Edge of Evolution” (04:29)
  • Malaria and evolution (06:56)
  • Do proteins point to teleology? (05:59)
  • Have we really hit a wall of understanding? (04:08)
  • Challenges to Michael’s theory of irreducible complexity (05:28)
  • John: The boredom objection to intelligent design (09:13)

Here is Robert Wright’s comment about the restoration of the interview:

This diavlog has now been re-posted. The decision to remove it from the site was made by BhTV staff while I was away and unavailable for consultation…. It’s impossible to say for sure whether, in the heat of the moment, I would have made a decision different from the staff’s decision. But on reflection I’ve decided that removing this particular diavlog from the site is hard to justify by any general principle that should govern our future conduct. In other words, it’s not a precedent I’d want to live with.

Kick off the audio, (or download the MP3), and then read the comments of the Darwinists.

Comments from open-minded, tolerant Darwinists

Many of the commenters don’t mention the interview at all – they didn’t watch it.

Here’s one comment:

I’ve listened to a few seconds of this diavlog, enough to hear John McWhorter call Behe’s nonsense “a very important book.” I can’t remember the last time I lost so much respect for someone so quickly.

And another:

Grab the popcorn: this is bound to be a good thread. (Doubtful I’ll actually watch the diavlog.)

And one last one:

If this creationism thing keeps up no one will want to be on bhtv anymore. A spinoff site is better than no site for us regular viewers. Who’s with me?

Who can have any confidence in a theory when the adherents cannot even be bothered to listen to a tenured biochemist explain his own research which contradicts that theory?

News

Canada cuts deal with US hospitals to reduce waiting times

7 Comments

UPDATE: Welcome, visitors from Blazing Cat Fur!

Story from the Detroit Free Press. (H/T Health Care BS via ECM)

Excerpt:

Hospitals in border cities, including Detroit, are forging lucrative arrangements with Canadian health agencies to provide care not widely available across the border.

Agreements between Detroit hospitals and the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care for heart, imaging tests, bariatric and other services provide access to some services not immediately available in the province, said ministry spokesman David Jensen.

The agreements show how a country with a national care system — a proposal not part of the health care changes under discussion in Congress — copes with demand for care with U.S. partnerships, rather than building new facilities.

I am not so sure that we should be adopting single-payer health care. Who can we cut a deal with to reduce our waiting list delays?

Commentary

Are “de-facto” parents good for children?

1 Comment

ECM sent me this interesting National Review article about how courts are undermining the rights of children by breaking down traditional parental roles.

Excerpt:

This year, the District of Columbia Council passed a law allowing biological parents’ registered domestic partners to be presumed parents, and to be listed as such on the children’s birth certificates. The law also allows a person to be legally designated a parent if he consents in writing to the artificial insemination of his partner, or if he “hold[s] out” the child as his own—that is, presents the child as his to others. (D.C. already had a law allowing people to sue for child custody if they could show they had acted as “de facto” parents (D.C. Code 16-831.01).)

Then, last month, the Delaware legislature went even farther when it enacted legislation giving state courts the ability to designate a non-parent as a “de facto” parent (with all the legal ramifications of parenthood) as long as the biological parent of a child “fosters” a “parent-like relationship” between the non-parent and the child, and as long as the “de facto” parent has acted like a parent and bonded with the child in a way that is “parental in nature.”

The Delaware law completely untethers legal parentage from biology, marriage, adoption, and even the relationship between the adults who are the child’s legal “parents.” It also abandons the binary nature of legal parenthood by allowing three or more adults to be designated “parents” of a child at the same time.

The article goes on to explain why the court’s designation of de facto parents is a bad idea for children, who are increasingly having their rights to a happy childhood denied by courts. This is what Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse was concerned about in her recent podcast on family and marriage.

I think the bottom line here is that children do best when bonding to two opposite-sex parents who are biologically linked to them. That is the most stable, loving environment in which to have children. The left is sacrificing the welfare of children in order to cater to the needs of adults who don’t care about what is best for children.