Administrator of Greenwood Christian says recovery was miracle, not medical
August 21, 2005
By JACKIE R. BROACH
Index-Journal staff writer
John Davis knows firsthand what it feels like to experience a miracle.
He went on a mission trip to Honduras this summer, arriving there in a wheelchair. By the time he left, he didn’t need it anymore.
Davis, administrator at Greenwood Christian School, said he was healed on the trip after having a pastor in Honduras pray for him.
“The first thing he said to me was ‘God will do a miracle in your life today,’” Davis said of the pastor, known to the missionaries as Pastor Juan.
According to Davis’ account of the trip, Pastor Juan spoke with him and other missionaries for an hour or two and then went into prayer.
“My faith just grew as he prayed and, by the time he was done, I had almost all the strength back in my legs,” Davis said. “By that night, I had it all back.”
Four years ago, Davis was diagnosed with relapsing, remitting multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system and can damage the nerve fiber in the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves. As the disease progresses, the patient’s symptoms worsen for a period, then go into remission before further worsening. The remission is not a full recovery, but a lessening of symptoms.
The disease dealt its first severe blow to Davis three years ago, leaving him in a wheelchair much of the time. Though he was able to walk on his own during remissions, the act was difficult and accompanied by a defined limp.
Since that night in Honduras, Davis’ movements are no longer visibly affected by the disease and he said walking is no longer a painful and difficult process. That’s not a normal recovery for someone at Davis’ stage of the disease, said Dr. Randy Cain, an emergency room physician at Self Regional Healthcare.
Cain also went on the mission trip, though he was working in a different part of the country and didn’t witness the healing.
He did, however, see Davis before and after.
“He almost backed out of this trip because he was having so much trouble getting around and knew he would have to be in a wheelchair,” Cain recalled. “He didn’t want to burden the other people,” he explained.
The next time Cain saw Davis, when the group was heading back home, “he was walking very well, better than I’ve seen in at least a couple of years.” It was a surprise, Cain said.
“MS (multiple sclerosis) isn’t a specialty of mine, but what I know is that it’s a waxing and waning neurological disease and over time it tends to gradually get worse,” Cain said. “A patient may have months to weeks of remission, but there’s a tendency over time for the disease to get worse after each remission.”
Cain explained that each time patients with MS regain their strength, it’s usually less than what it was the last time.
“The thing about John is that he is now walking and getting around better than he has been in years,” Cain said. “There are medications that can be of service to these patients, but most of them are expensive and John has not been able to afford them. He’s had to live with the ebb and flow of the disease.
“All I can attest to,” Cain said, “is going down on the plane and seeing him doing not so well. Then at end of week, he had dramatically regained his strength to point of walking almost normally. It was a pretty dramatic recovery and not what you would expect to see from someone with MS, even with the waxing and waning.”
Davis said his doctor hasn’t diagnosed him since getting back from the trip.
“I’m not going to go back,” he said. “I no longer have a need for treatment.”
Davis said he would contact his doctor to let him know about his miraculous recovery. And it was miraculous, according to Delores Peace, who participated in the healing prayer.
“It was pretty amazing to witness – it just knocked me out of my socks,” said Peace, a chemistry teacher at Greenwood Christian who also went on the mission trip. “I’d never seen an actual healing before.”
Peace admitted she had been somewhat skeptical about such healings because of “all the hoopla” surrounding televangelists. Now that she’s seen the miracle God performed on Davis, however, she said she’s not skeptical anymore. Peace said that after the prayer that healed Davis, she saw him make a fairly long trip up a very rocky, difficult hill. She said the trip was something he would have been unable to do only hours before.
Madison Peace, a 10th-grader who witnessed the healing, said, “Mr. Davis was dragging his leg along on the way down the hill, like he’s done for a while now. When we started walking back up, his daughter Danielle pointed out that he was picking up his foot a little bit.”
A couple of hours later, when the group made it back to the children’s home where they were staying, Davis was “running around the house and doing jumping jacks,” Madison said. That was confirmed by others on the trip.
“I didn’t see him until the next day, but it was just like ‘wow,’” said Joy Cain, a senior on the trip. “It was a miracle. It wasn’t medicine or anything that healed him. It was just God.”
“I think it was a reminder that God is who He says He is,” Delores said of Davis’ healing. “He hasn’t changed since the Old Testament and he’s still working miracles.”
Her reaction is typical of those Davis has seen since his healing, he said. Though some have been skeptical, most people have been Davis has come into contact with have been amazed and excited at seeing what God can do, he said.
Davis has not a single doubt that he experienced a miracle.
For those skeptics who suggest his healing was medical rather than miracle, he points out that he never took medication for his disease, because his insurance wouldn’t cover the cost.
“There is no other reasonable cause to look,” he said.
Not only is Davis walking, he’s running and “just enjoying being able to move without limping, scooting or crawling.” In addition to the healing of his legs, he said other symptoms of his disease, including the fatigue that constantly plagued him, have vanished.
“People have been praying for this for a long time,” Davis said. “We don’t always understand God’s healing, but He knows what He’s doing. God has used this disease and the last three-and-a-half years to draw me closer to Him and to have me be a witness to the kids at this school. They asked me how I could stay positive and happy while going through that, but if you’re a Christian, you have joy all the time. They needed to see that.”
Since his healing, Davis has been witnessing and sharing his story with area groups and individuals, trying to show them the power of God, he said.
“This has changed my life and I think its proof to people that prayer really does work,” Davis said. “God is listening and he’s still working miracles. I just hope He gives me more opportunities to share what He’s done in my life.”
The Index Journal -- News Story
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Eminent Domain Jeopardizes Church and Private Properties
By Bill Fancher
August 30, 2005
(AgapePress) - A legal organization says the Supreme Court's decision not to rehear its controversial eminent domain ruling could spell considerable trouble for churches.
In late June, the high court ruled in Kelo v. City of New London that cities could take private property for development if it meant benefits for the community as a whole. Last week the Supreme Court denied a petition filed on behalf of residents of New London to reconsider its original 5-4 ruling.
Steven Anderson of the Institute for Justice contends that the refusal to rehear the case carries an ominous message. "It makes crystal clear that the federal government is going to provide no protection for the property rights of home and small business owners around the country," he says.
And according to Anderson, that message also includes churches and other organizations such as VFW facilities, American Legions, Moose Lodges -- all of which he says are "particularly at risk because they don't provide any tax revenue for the government."
Anderson explains his reasoning: "According to the Supreme Court, the mere possibility that property can make more money as something else" -- which he notes is invariably the case for churches -- "is the only justification the government needs to take it away and give it to a private developer."
Critics of the high court's decision point out it would not be difficult to make the case that taxes from prime real estate owned by churches could produce much more revenue for services from which the entire community might benefit.
According to Anderson, it will be up to the state legislatures to defend private property because the Supreme Court has made it clear the government will not. In the meantime, the Institute's Castle Coalition has launched a "Hands Off My Home" campaign to provide an avenue through which individual homeowners as well as small-business owners who feel threatened by government-forced takings can funnel their opposition efforts in the direction of state lawmakers.
News from Agape Press
August 30, 2005
(AgapePress) - A legal organization says the Supreme Court's decision not to rehear its controversial eminent domain ruling could spell considerable trouble for churches.
In late June, the high court ruled in Kelo v. City of New London that cities could take private property for development if it meant benefits for the community as a whole. Last week the Supreme Court denied a petition filed on behalf of residents of New London to reconsider its original 5-4 ruling.
Steven Anderson of the Institute for Justice contends that the refusal to rehear the case carries an ominous message. "It makes crystal clear that the federal government is going to provide no protection for the property rights of home and small business owners around the country," he says.
And according to Anderson, that message also includes churches and other organizations such as VFW facilities, American Legions, Moose Lodges -- all of which he says are "particularly at risk because they don't provide any tax revenue for the government."
Anderson explains his reasoning: "According to the Supreme Court, the mere possibility that property can make more money as something else" -- which he notes is invariably the case for churches -- "is the only justification the government needs to take it away and give it to a private developer."
Critics of the high court's decision point out it would not be difficult to make the case that taxes from prime real estate owned by churches could produce much more revenue for services from which the entire community might benefit.
According to Anderson, it will be up to the state legislatures to defend private property because the Supreme Court has made it clear the government will not. In the meantime, the Institute's Castle Coalition has launched a "Hands Off My Home" campaign to provide an avenue through which individual homeowners as well as small-business owners who feel threatened by government-forced takings can funnel their opposition efforts in the direction of state lawmakers.
News from Agape Press
Monday, August 29, 2005
Study of design is science, not revelation
MARK HARTWIG
Sunday, August 28, 2005
“Intelligent design.” It’s been in the news a lot lately. Lawsuits over textbook stickers, the presentation of evolution and the legality of presenting alternatives, have thrust the term into public awareness. Even President Bush has acknowledged it as a scientific program worthy of further research and study.
But just what is intelligent design? To hear some folks talk, you’d think it’s a scam to sneak Genesis into science classrooms. Yet intelligent design has nothing to do with the six days of creation and everything to do with hard evidence and logic.
Intelligent design (ID) is grounded on the ancient observation that the world looks very much as if it had an intelligent source. Indeed, as early as the fifth century BC, the Greek philosopher and astronomer Anaxagoras concluded, “Mind set in order — all that ever was — and all that is now or ever will be.”
After 2,400 years, the appearance of design is as powerful as ever. That is especially true of the living world. Advances in biology have revealed that world to be one of staggering complexity. For example, consider the cell. Even the simplest cells bristle with high-tech machinery. On the outside, their surfaces are studded with sensors, gates, pumps and identification markers. Some bacteria even sport rotary outboard motors that they use to navigate their environment.
Inside, cells are jam-packed with power plants, assembly lines, recycling units and more. Miniature monorails whisk materials from one part of the cell to another.
Such sophistication has led even the most hard-bitten atheists to remark on the apparent design in living organisms. The late Nobel laureate Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA’s structure and an outspoken critic of religion, has nonetheless remarked, “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed but rather evolved.”
Clearly, Crick (and others like him) considers the appearance of design to be strictly an illusion, created by naturalistic evolution. Yet it’s also clear that this impression is so compelling that an atheistic biologist must warn his colleagues against it.
In contrast, ID theorists contend that living organisms appear designed because they are designed. And unlike the design thinkers whom Darwin deposed, they’ve developed rigorous new concepts to test their idea.
In the past, detecting design was hampered by vague and subjective criteria, such as discerning an object’s purpose. Moreover, design was entangled with natural theology—which seeks, in part, to infer God’s character by studying nature rather than revelation.
Natural theologians often painted such a rosy view of nature that they became an easy mark for Darwin when he proposed his theory of evolution. Where they saw a finely-balanced world attesting to a kind and just God, Darwin pointed to nature’s imperfections and brutishness.
Since the 1980s, however, developments in several fields have made it possible to rigorously distinguish between things that “just happen” and those that happen “on purpose.” This has helped design theory emerge as a distinct enterprise, aimed at detecting intelligence rather than speculating about God’s character.
Dubbed “intelligent design” to distinguish it from old-school thinking, this new view is detailed in The Design Inference (Cambridge University Press, 1998), a peer-reviewed work by mathematician and philosopher William Dembski.
In contrast to what is called creation science, which parallels Biblical theology, ID rests on two basic assumptions: namely, that intelligent agents exist and that their effects are empirically detectable.
Its chief tool is specified complexity. That’s a mouthful, and the math behind it is forbidding, but the basic idea is simple: An object displays specified complexity when it has lots of parts (is complex) arranged in a recognizable, delimited pattern (is specified).
For example, the article you’re now reading has thousands of characters, which could have been arranged in zillions of ways. Yet it fits a recognizable pattern: It’s not just a jumble of letters (which is also complex), but a newspaper article written in English. Any rational person would conclude that it was designed.
The effectiveness of such thinking is confirmed by massive experience. As Dembski points out, “In every instance where we find specified complexity, and where [its] history is known, it turns out that design actually is present.”
Thus, if we could trace the creation of a book, our investigation would lead us to the author. You could say, then, that specified complexity is a signature of design.
To see how this applies to biology, consider the outboard motor that bacteria such as E. coli use to navigate their environment. This water-cooled contraption, called a flagellum, comes equipped with a reversible engine, drive shaft, U-joint and a long whip-like propeller. It hums along at a cool 17,000 rpm.
Decades of research indicate that its complexity is enormous. It takes about 50 genes to create a working flagellum. Each of those genes is as complex as a sentence with hundreds of letters.
Moreover, the pattern—a working flagellum—is highly specified. Deviate from that pattern, knock out a single gene, and our bug is dead in the water (or whatever).
Such highly specified complexity, which demands the presence of every part, indicates an intelligent origin. It also defies any explanation, such as contemporary Darwinism, that relies on the stepwise accumulation of random genetic change.
In fact, if you want to run the numbers, as Dembski does in his book “No Free Lunch,” it boils down to the following: If every elementary particle in the observed universe (about 1,080) were cranking out mutation events at the cosmic speed limit (about 1,045 times per second) for a billion times the estimated age of the universe, they still could not produce the genes for a working flagellum.
And that’s just one system within multiple layers of systems. Thus the flagellum is integrated into a sensory/guidance system that maneuvers the bacterium toward nutrients and away from noxious chemicals — a system so complex that computer simulation is required to understand it in its entirety. That system is meshed with other systems. And so on.
Of course, what’s important here is not what we conclude about the flagellum or the cell, but how we study it. Design theorists don’t derive their conclusions from revelation, but by looking for reliable, rigorously defined indicators of design and by ruling out alternative explanations, such as Darwinism.
Calling their work religious is just a cheap way to dodge the issues. The public—and our students—deserve better than that.
Mark Hartwig has a Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was an early organizer of the intelligent design movement and for 10 years was managing editor of the science journal Origins Research.
Study of design is science, not revelation - York Daily Record
Sunday, August 28, 2005
“Intelligent design.” It’s been in the news a lot lately. Lawsuits over textbook stickers, the presentation of evolution and the legality of presenting alternatives, have thrust the term into public awareness. Even President Bush has acknowledged it as a scientific program worthy of further research and study.
But just what is intelligent design? To hear some folks talk, you’d think it’s a scam to sneak Genesis into science classrooms. Yet intelligent design has nothing to do with the six days of creation and everything to do with hard evidence and logic.
Intelligent design (ID) is grounded on the ancient observation that the world looks very much as if it had an intelligent source. Indeed, as early as the fifth century BC, the Greek philosopher and astronomer Anaxagoras concluded, “Mind set in order — all that ever was — and all that is now or ever will be.”
After 2,400 years, the appearance of design is as powerful as ever. That is especially true of the living world. Advances in biology have revealed that world to be one of staggering complexity. For example, consider the cell. Even the simplest cells bristle with high-tech machinery. On the outside, their surfaces are studded with sensors, gates, pumps and identification markers. Some bacteria even sport rotary outboard motors that they use to navigate their environment.
Inside, cells are jam-packed with power plants, assembly lines, recycling units and more. Miniature monorails whisk materials from one part of the cell to another.
Such sophistication has led even the most hard-bitten atheists to remark on the apparent design in living organisms. The late Nobel laureate Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA’s structure and an outspoken critic of religion, has nonetheless remarked, “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed but rather evolved.”
Clearly, Crick (and others like him) considers the appearance of design to be strictly an illusion, created by naturalistic evolution. Yet it’s also clear that this impression is so compelling that an atheistic biologist must warn his colleagues against it.
In contrast, ID theorists contend that living organisms appear designed because they are designed. And unlike the design thinkers whom Darwin deposed, they’ve developed rigorous new concepts to test their idea.
In the past, detecting design was hampered by vague and subjective criteria, such as discerning an object’s purpose. Moreover, design was entangled with natural theology—which seeks, in part, to infer God’s character by studying nature rather than revelation.
Natural theologians often painted such a rosy view of nature that they became an easy mark for Darwin when he proposed his theory of evolution. Where they saw a finely-balanced world attesting to a kind and just God, Darwin pointed to nature’s imperfections and brutishness.
Since the 1980s, however, developments in several fields have made it possible to rigorously distinguish between things that “just happen” and those that happen “on purpose.” This has helped design theory emerge as a distinct enterprise, aimed at detecting intelligence rather than speculating about God’s character.
Dubbed “intelligent design” to distinguish it from old-school thinking, this new view is detailed in The Design Inference (Cambridge University Press, 1998), a peer-reviewed work by mathematician and philosopher William Dembski.
In contrast to what is called creation science, which parallels Biblical theology, ID rests on two basic assumptions: namely, that intelligent agents exist and that their effects are empirically detectable.
Its chief tool is specified complexity. That’s a mouthful, and the math behind it is forbidding, but the basic idea is simple: An object displays specified complexity when it has lots of parts (is complex) arranged in a recognizable, delimited pattern (is specified).
For example, the article you’re now reading has thousands of characters, which could have been arranged in zillions of ways. Yet it fits a recognizable pattern: It’s not just a jumble of letters (which is also complex), but a newspaper article written in English. Any rational person would conclude that it was designed.
The effectiveness of such thinking is confirmed by massive experience. As Dembski points out, “In every instance where we find specified complexity, and where [its] history is known, it turns out that design actually is present.”
Thus, if we could trace the creation of a book, our investigation would lead us to the author. You could say, then, that specified complexity is a signature of design.
To see how this applies to biology, consider the outboard motor that bacteria such as E. coli use to navigate their environment. This water-cooled contraption, called a flagellum, comes equipped with a reversible engine, drive shaft, U-joint and a long whip-like propeller. It hums along at a cool 17,000 rpm.
Decades of research indicate that its complexity is enormous. It takes about 50 genes to create a working flagellum. Each of those genes is as complex as a sentence with hundreds of letters.
Moreover, the pattern—a working flagellum—is highly specified. Deviate from that pattern, knock out a single gene, and our bug is dead in the water (or whatever).
Such highly specified complexity, which demands the presence of every part, indicates an intelligent origin. It also defies any explanation, such as contemporary Darwinism, that relies on the stepwise accumulation of random genetic change.
In fact, if you want to run the numbers, as Dembski does in his book “No Free Lunch,” it boils down to the following: If every elementary particle in the observed universe (about 1,080) were cranking out mutation events at the cosmic speed limit (about 1,045 times per second) for a billion times the estimated age of the universe, they still could not produce the genes for a working flagellum.
And that’s just one system within multiple layers of systems. Thus the flagellum is integrated into a sensory/guidance system that maneuvers the bacterium toward nutrients and away from noxious chemicals — a system so complex that computer simulation is required to understand it in its entirety. That system is meshed with other systems. And so on.
Of course, what’s important here is not what we conclude about the flagellum or the cell, but how we study it. Design theorists don’t derive their conclusions from revelation, but by looking for reliable, rigorously defined indicators of design and by ruling out alternative explanations, such as Darwinism.
Calling their work religious is just a cheap way to dodge the issues. The public—and our students—deserve better than that.
Mark Hartwig has a Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was an early organizer of the intelligent design movement and for 10 years was managing editor of the science journal Origins Research.
Study of design is science, not revelation - York Daily Record
Sunday, August 28, 2005
GULLIBLE TREATMENT OF TRUMPED UP "STUDY" ON FETAL PAIN ISSUE SHOULD EMBARRASS J.A.M.A. AND SOME JOURNALISTS
BASIC OBJECTIONS
1. The JAMA article was produced by pro-abortion activists. There is no new laboratory research reported in the article -- it is merely a commentary on a selection of existing medical literature. The authors purport to show that there is no good evidence that human fetuses feel pain before 29 weeks (during the seventh month). The authors' conclusion (which was predetermined by their political agenda -- see below) is disputed by experts with far more extensive credentials in pain research than any of the authors. These independent authorities say that there is substantial evidence from multiple lines of research that unborn humans can perceive pain during the fifth and sixth months (i.e., by 20 weeks gestational age), and perhaps somewhat earlier.
2. For example, Dr. Kanwaljeet S. Anand, a pain researcher who holds tenured chairs in pediatrics, anesthesiology, pharmacology, and neurobiology at the University of Arkansas, said in a document accepted as expert by a federal court, "It is my opinion that the human fetus possesses the ability to experience pain from 20 weeks of gestation, if not earlier, and that pain perceived by a fetus is possibly more intense than that perceived by newborns or older children." Read Dr. Anand's complete statement entered in federal court, summarizing the scientific evidence, here. In a USA Today article (August 25), Dr. Anand predicted that JAMA's publication of the article would "inflame a lot of scientists who are . . . far more knowledgeable in this area than the authors appear to be."
3. A similar review published in September 1999 in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (the leading ob-gyn journal in the UK) concluded: "Given the anatomical evidence, it is possible that the fetus can feel pain from 20 weeks and is caused distress by interventions from as early as 15 or 16 weeks." (Article available in PDF format here.)
4. The JAMA authors arrive at their "conclusion" through a highly tendentious methodology that could, for the most part, also be used to argue that there is no proof that animals really feel pain and no proof that premature newborn humans really feel pain (although the authors do not address those subjects). There are innumerable state and federal laws intended to reduce the suffering of animals, even though it is impossible to "prove" that their "experience" of pain is subjectively the same as that of the lawmakers who have enacted these regulations.
THE EVIDENCE FROM PREMATURELY BORN INFANTS
5. Infants born as early as 23 or 24 weeks now commonly survive long term in neonatal intensive care units. Neonatologists confirm that they react negatively to painful stimuli -- for example, by grimacing, withdrawing, and whimpering. When they must receive surgical procedures, they are given drugs to prevent pain. Yet, the JAMA authors assert that there is no credible evidence of fetal pain until 29 weeks -- which is five or six weeks later. If these babies feel pain in the incubator, then they also feel pain in the womb. If the newborn at 23 weeks demonstrates aversion to pain and needs protection from pain, the same is true of the 24-week (or 25-week, 26-week, 27-week, or 28-week) unborn child.
6. As Dr. Paul Ranalli, a neurologist at the University of Toronto, commented on the paper: "Across the nation, Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) are full of bravely struggling preemies . . . The only difference between a child in the womb at this stage, or one born and cared for in an incubator, is how they receive oxygen -- either through the umbilical cord or through the lungs. There is no difference in their nervous systems. Their article sets back humane pediatric medicine 20 years, back to a time when doctors still believed babies could not feel pain." In testimony before a congressional committee in 1996, Dr. Jean A. Wright, then a pediatric pain specialist at Emory University, said: "Preterm infants who are born and delivered at 23 weeks of gestation show very highly specific and well-coordinated physiologic and behavioral responses to pain which is just like older infants." (Even the paper notes in passing, "Normal EEG patterns have been characterized for neonates as young as 24 weeks' postconceptual age.")
THE VIOLENCE OF ABORTION METHODS USED
7. The gross trauma inflicted on the unborn human by abortion methods used in the fifth and sixth months far exceed anything that would be done to a premature newborn at the same stage of development. The most common abortion method, the so-called "D&E," involves tearing arms and legs off of the unanesthetized unborn child, then crushing the skull. (Click here to see a series of professional medical school illustrations of this method.) Thousands of times annually, the partial-birth abortion method is used, which involves mostly delivering the living premature infant, feet first, and then puncturing the skull with scissors or a pointed metal tube (to see medically accurate illustrations of this method, click here). To review material presented to Congress by leading anesthesiologists and other medical experts with varying positions on legal abortion, click here.
THE ORIGINS OF THE PAPER
8. The so-called "study" was produced by pro-abortion activists and a well-known practitioner of late abortions -- but, with a few notable exceptions, that readily available information was omitted or greatly minimized by mainstream media outlets that initially covered story on August 23 and 24, including ABC World News Tonight, the Associated Press, and the New York Times.
9. The lead author of the article, Susan J. Lee, who is now a medical student, was previously employed as a lawyer by NARAL, the pro-abortion political advocacy organization (Knight Ridder, August 24).
10. One of Lee's four co-authors, Dr. Eleanor A. Drey, is the director of the largest abortion clinic in San Francisco (San Francisco Chronicle, March 31, 2004, and Knight Ridder, August 24, 2005). According to Dr. Drey, the abortion facility that she runs performs about 600 abortions a year between the 20th and 23rd weeks of pregnancy (i.e., in the fifth and sixth months). (San Francisco Chronicle, March 31, 2004) Drey is a prominent critic of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, and a self-described activist. (In a laudatory profile in the newsletter of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, September 2004, it was noted that "much of Dr. Drey's research centers on repeat and second-trimester procedures . . .," and quotes Drey as saying, "I am very lucky because I get to train residents and medical students, and I really do feel that it's a type of activism.") Drey is also on the staff of the Center for Reproductive Health Research and Policy (CRHRP) at the University of California, San Francisco -- a pro-abortion propaganda and training center. Much of this information was available through even a very cursory Google search, and some of it was provided to journalists who contacted NRLC about the embargoed JAMA paper on August 22-23, but few saw fit to mention these connections in their initial reports.
11. However, one reporter (Knight Ridder's Marie McCullough) did contact JAMA editor-in-chief Catherine D. DeAngelis regarding the ties of Lee and Drey. McCullough reported that DeAngelis "said she was unaware of this, and acknowledged it might create an appearance of bias that could hurt the journal's credibility. 'This is the first I've heard about it,' she said. 'We ask them to reveal any conflict of interest. I would have published' the disclosure if it had been made." (Knight Ridder, August 24, 2005) A day later, DeAngelis told USA Today that the affiliations of Drey and Lee "aren't relevant," but again said that the ties should have been disclosed. If she really thought the affiliations were not relevant, why would she say that they should have been disclosed? If a review of the same issue by doctors employed by pro-life advocacy groups had been submitted or published, would those affiliations have been ignored by journalists?
12. Dr. David Grimes, a vice-president of Family Health International, has been relied on by CNN, the New York Times, and some other media as a purported expert to defend the paper. Dr. Grimes has made pro-abortion advocacy a central element of his career for decades. (During the time he worked for the CDC in the 1980s, his off-hours work at a local late-abortion facility sparked protests from some pro-life activists. In 1987, a year after he left the CDC, Grimes testified that he had already performed more than 10,000 abortions, 10 to 20 percent of those after the first trimester.) In addition, Grimes was previously the chief of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the San Francisco General Hospital -- the very same institution where author Drey directs the abortion clinic.
THE FINDINGS OF A FEDERAL COURT
13. In 2004, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York received extensive testimony regarding fetal pain from experts on both sides, including doctors who perform many late abortions, as part of a legal challenge to the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Although the subsequent opinion struck down the ban as inconsistent with a 2000 U.S. Supreme Court ruling (this is being appealed), the court made certain formal "findings of fact," among these: "The Court finds that the testimony at trial and before Congress establishes that D&X [partial-birth abortion] is a gruesome, brutal, barbaric, and uncivilized medical procedure. Dr. Anand's testimony, which went unrebutted by Plaintiffs, is credible evidence that D&X abortions subject fetuses to severe pain. Notwithstanding this evidence, some of Plaintiffs' experts testified that fetal pain does not concern them, and that some do not convey to their patients that their fetuses may undergo severe pain during a D&X." (This illustrates that abortionists will not raise the question of pain, at any stage of pregnancy, unless they are required to do so.)
UNBORN CHILD PAIN AWARENESS ACT (S. 51, H.R. 356)
14. The obvious purpose of the authors of the JAMA paper was to damage the prospects for the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act (S. 51, H.R. 356). This bill would require that abortion providers give women seeking abortions after 20 weeks after fertilization (22 weeks gestation) certain basic information on the substantial evidence that their unborn children may experience pain while being aborted, and advise them regarding any available methods to reduce or eliminate such pain. The bill explicitly states that the abortion provider may offer his or her own opinions and advice regarding the question, including discussion of any risks to the mother of methods of reducing the pain of the unborn child. The authors, in their final paragraph, explicitly oppose any requirement that abortionists raise the pain issue in any fashion, at least during the fifth and sixth months.
15. It is noteworthy, however, that in January, 2005, NARAL President Nancy Keenan issued a statement that NARAL "does not intend to oppose" the bill, because "pro-choice Americans have always believed that women deserve access to all the information relevant to their reproductive health decisions." (A complete reproduction of the NARAL statement is available here.)
16. Spokepersons for some groups of abortion providers say that they object to the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act because it would require that abortionists recite a "script" advising women who are seeking abortions after 22 weeks gestational age (20 weeks from fertilization) that there is "substantial evidence" that abortion will inflict pain (the bill also explicitly says that the abortionist may also offer whatever opinions he or she wishes regarding the issue and the risks of any optional pain relieving methods). But in truth, abortion providers, like the authors of the paper, object not just to a "script" but to any requirement whatever that women be provided with any information on the subject. They have also objected to laws enacted in Arkansas and Georgia that require only the provision of printed information prepared by the state health agencies, and to a Minnesota law that merely requires that the abortionist tell the woman "whether or not an anesthetic or analgesic would eliminate or alleviate organic pain to the unborn child caused by the particular method of abortion to be employed and the particular medical benefits and risks associated with the particular anesthetic or analgesic." Apparently, the abortionists are taking the paternalistic stance that women are incapable of evaluating such information and giving it whatever weight they think it deserves.
ADMINISTERING ANESTHESIA OR ANALGESICS
17. The authors of the JAMA paper say that "no established protocols exist for administering anesthesia or analgesia directly to the fetus for minimally invasive fetal procedures or abortions." (p. 952) Yet, some abortions are performed by administering toxins into the amniotic sac (or even directly into the fetal heart) with a needle, precisely guided by ultrasound. Moreover, in cases of women carrying multiple unborn humans, abortionists sometimes engage in "selective reduction," in which some of the fetuses are killed by stabbing them directly in their hearts with a needle guided by ultrasound. One suspects, therefore, that any current lack of methods of safely administering pain-reducing drugs to a fetus in utero relate more the fact that abortionists just don't care about fetal pain and have not developed such methods, rather than to any insurmountable technical obstacles. In any case, under the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act, a woman considering an abortion after 20 weeks gestational age would be given information on the current state of the art, including the abortionist's own assessment of any risks, to evaluate as she sees fit.
18. Paul Ranalli, a neurologist at the University of Toronto, reports, "Experts from Britain and France have proposed safe and effective fetal anesthesia protocols. (Ranalli cites the 1997 Working Party Report on Fetal Pain by the UK's Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynecology and "La douleur du foetus," Mahieu-Caputo D, Dommergues M et al, Presse Med 2000; 29:663-9, recommending Sulfentanyl 1 ug/kg and Pentothal 10 ug/kg.) Ranalli also writes that the JAMA paper itself "includes experimental animal evidence that suggests an effective intra-amniotic needle injection could spare the fetus pain, without the need to give the mother any additional anesthetic" (citing material on JAMA p. 952, column 1).
NUMBERS OF ABORTION AT ISSUE
19. According to the JAMA paper, relying on a CDC report, about 1.4 percent of the abortions performed in the U.S. are performed at or after 21 weeks gestational age. If so, that would be over 18,000 abortions annually nationwide -- hardly inconsequential to anyone concerned with inflicting pain on a sentient young human. (Note: That figure omits abortions performed at 20 weeks gestational age.) It is worth noting that the CDC reports are very incomplete. Indeed, the report itself makes it clear that the CDC received no abortion reports from California -- so none of the 600 abortions performed annually at 20-23 weeks in Dr. Drey's abortion clinic are reflected in the CDC figures.
NRLC:� Gullible Treatment of Trumped Up "Study" on Fetal Pain Issue Should Embarass J.A.M.A. and some Journalists
1. The JAMA article was produced by pro-abortion activists. There is no new laboratory research reported in the article -- it is merely a commentary on a selection of existing medical literature. The authors purport to show that there is no good evidence that human fetuses feel pain before 29 weeks (during the seventh month). The authors' conclusion (which was predetermined by their political agenda -- see below) is disputed by experts with far more extensive credentials in pain research than any of the authors. These independent authorities say that there is substantial evidence from multiple lines of research that unborn humans can perceive pain during the fifth and sixth months (i.e., by 20 weeks gestational age), and perhaps somewhat earlier.
2. For example, Dr. Kanwaljeet S. Anand, a pain researcher who holds tenured chairs in pediatrics, anesthesiology, pharmacology, and neurobiology at the University of Arkansas, said in a document accepted as expert by a federal court, "It is my opinion that the human fetus possesses the ability to experience pain from 20 weeks of gestation, if not earlier, and that pain perceived by a fetus is possibly more intense than that perceived by newborns or older children." Read Dr. Anand's complete statement entered in federal court, summarizing the scientific evidence, here. In a USA Today article (August 25), Dr. Anand predicted that JAMA's publication of the article would "inflame a lot of scientists who are . . . far more knowledgeable in this area than the authors appear to be."
3. A similar review published in September 1999 in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (the leading ob-gyn journal in the UK) concluded: "Given the anatomical evidence, it is possible that the fetus can feel pain from 20 weeks and is caused distress by interventions from as early as 15 or 16 weeks." (Article available in PDF format here.)
4. The JAMA authors arrive at their "conclusion" through a highly tendentious methodology that could, for the most part, also be used to argue that there is no proof that animals really feel pain and no proof that premature newborn humans really feel pain (although the authors do not address those subjects). There are innumerable state and federal laws intended to reduce the suffering of animals, even though it is impossible to "prove" that their "experience" of pain is subjectively the same as that of the lawmakers who have enacted these regulations.
THE EVIDENCE FROM PREMATURELY BORN INFANTS
5. Infants born as early as 23 or 24 weeks now commonly survive long term in neonatal intensive care units. Neonatologists confirm that they react negatively to painful stimuli -- for example, by grimacing, withdrawing, and whimpering. When they must receive surgical procedures, they are given drugs to prevent pain. Yet, the JAMA authors assert that there is no credible evidence of fetal pain until 29 weeks -- which is five or six weeks later. If these babies feel pain in the incubator, then they also feel pain in the womb. If the newborn at 23 weeks demonstrates aversion to pain and needs protection from pain, the same is true of the 24-week (or 25-week, 26-week, 27-week, or 28-week) unborn child.
6. As Dr. Paul Ranalli, a neurologist at the University of Toronto, commented on the paper: "Across the nation, Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) are full of bravely struggling preemies . . . The only difference between a child in the womb at this stage, or one born and cared for in an incubator, is how they receive oxygen -- either through the umbilical cord or through the lungs. There is no difference in their nervous systems. Their article sets back humane pediatric medicine 20 years, back to a time when doctors still believed babies could not feel pain." In testimony before a congressional committee in 1996, Dr. Jean A. Wright, then a pediatric pain specialist at Emory University, said: "Preterm infants who are born and delivered at 23 weeks of gestation show very highly specific and well-coordinated physiologic and behavioral responses to pain which is just like older infants." (Even the paper notes in passing, "Normal EEG patterns have been characterized for neonates as young as 24 weeks' postconceptual age.")
THE VIOLENCE OF ABORTION METHODS USED
7. The gross trauma inflicted on the unborn human by abortion methods used in the fifth and sixth months far exceed anything that would be done to a premature newborn at the same stage of development. The most common abortion method, the so-called "D&E," involves tearing arms and legs off of the unanesthetized unborn child, then crushing the skull. (Click here to see a series of professional medical school illustrations of this method.) Thousands of times annually, the partial-birth abortion method is used, which involves mostly delivering the living premature infant, feet first, and then puncturing the skull with scissors or a pointed metal tube (to see medically accurate illustrations of this method, click here). To review material presented to Congress by leading anesthesiologists and other medical experts with varying positions on legal abortion, click here.
THE ORIGINS OF THE PAPER
8. The so-called "study" was produced by pro-abortion activists and a well-known practitioner of late abortions -- but, with a few notable exceptions, that readily available information was omitted or greatly minimized by mainstream media outlets that initially covered story on August 23 and 24, including ABC World News Tonight, the Associated Press, and the New York Times.
9. The lead author of the article, Susan J. Lee, who is now a medical student, was previously employed as a lawyer by NARAL, the pro-abortion political advocacy organization (Knight Ridder, August 24).
10. One of Lee's four co-authors, Dr. Eleanor A. Drey, is the director of the largest abortion clinic in San Francisco (San Francisco Chronicle, March 31, 2004, and Knight Ridder, August 24, 2005). According to Dr. Drey, the abortion facility that she runs performs about 600 abortions a year between the 20th and 23rd weeks of pregnancy (i.e., in the fifth and sixth months). (San Francisco Chronicle, March 31, 2004) Drey is a prominent critic of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, and a self-described activist. (In a laudatory profile in the newsletter of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, September 2004, it was noted that "much of Dr. Drey's research centers on repeat and second-trimester procedures . . .," and quotes Drey as saying, "I am very lucky because I get to train residents and medical students, and I really do feel that it's a type of activism.") Drey is also on the staff of the Center for Reproductive Health Research and Policy (CRHRP) at the University of California, San Francisco -- a pro-abortion propaganda and training center. Much of this information was available through even a very cursory Google search, and some of it was provided to journalists who contacted NRLC about the embargoed JAMA paper on August 22-23, but few saw fit to mention these connections in their initial reports.
11. However, one reporter (Knight Ridder's Marie McCullough) did contact JAMA editor-in-chief Catherine D. DeAngelis regarding the ties of Lee and Drey. McCullough reported that DeAngelis "said she was unaware of this, and acknowledged it might create an appearance of bias that could hurt the journal's credibility. 'This is the first I've heard about it,' she said. 'We ask them to reveal any conflict of interest. I would have published' the disclosure if it had been made." (Knight Ridder, August 24, 2005) A day later, DeAngelis told USA Today that the affiliations of Drey and Lee "aren't relevant," but again said that the ties should have been disclosed. If she really thought the affiliations were not relevant, why would she say that they should have been disclosed? If a review of the same issue by doctors employed by pro-life advocacy groups had been submitted or published, would those affiliations have been ignored by journalists?
12. Dr. David Grimes, a vice-president of Family Health International, has been relied on by CNN, the New York Times, and some other media as a purported expert to defend the paper. Dr. Grimes has made pro-abortion advocacy a central element of his career for decades. (During the time he worked for the CDC in the 1980s, his off-hours work at a local late-abortion facility sparked protests from some pro-life activists. In 1987, a year after he left the CDC, Grimes testified that he had already performed more than 10,000 abortions, 10 to 20 percent of those after the first trimester.) In addition, Grimes was previously the chief of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the San Francisco General Hospital -- the very same institution where author Drey directs the abortion clinic.
THE FINDINGS OF A FEDERAL COURT
13. In 2004, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York received extensive testimony regarding fetal pain from experts on both sides, including doctors who perform many late abortions, as part of a legal challenge to the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Although the subsequent opinion struck down the ban as inconsistent with a 2000 U.S. Supreme Court ruling (this is being appealed), the court made certain formal "findings of fact," among these: "The Court finds that the testimony at trial and before Congress establishes that D&X [partial-birth abortion] is a gruesome, brutal, barbaric, and uncivilized medical procedure. Dr. Anand's testimony, which went unrebutted by Plaintiffs, is credible evidence that D&X abortions subject fetuses to severe pain. Notwithstanding this evidence, some of Plaintiffs' experts testified that fetal pain does not concern them, and that some do not convey to their patients that their fetuses may undergo severe pain during a D&X." (This illustrates that abortionists will not raise the question of pain, at any stage of pregnancy, unless they are required to do so.)
UNBORN CHILD PAIN AWARENESS ACT (S. 51, H.R. 356)
14. The obvious purpose of the authors of the JAMA paper was to damage the prospects for the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act (S. 51, H.R. 356). This bill would require that abortion providers give women seeking abortions after 20 weeks after fertilization (22 weeks gestation) certain basic information on the substantial evidence that their unborn children may experience pain while being aborted, and advise them regarding any available methods to reduce or eliminate such pain. The bill explicitly states that the abortion provider may offer his or her own opinions and advice regarding the question, including discussion of any risks to the mother of methods of reducing the pain of the unborn child. The authors, in their final paragraph, explicitly oppose any requirement that abortionists raise the pain issue in any fashion, at least during the fifth and sixth months.
15. It is noteworthy, however, that in January, 2005, NARAL President Nancy Keenan issued a statement that NARAL "does not intend to oppose" the bill, because "pro-choice Americans have always believed that women deserve access to all the information relevant to their reproductive health decisions." (A complete reproduction of the NARAL statement is available here.)
16. Spokepersons for some groups of abortion providers say that they object to the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act because it would require that abortionists recite a "script" advising women who are seeking abortions after 22 weeks gestational age (20 weeks from fertilization) that there is "substantial evidence" that abortion will inflict pain (the bill also explicitly says that the abortionist may also offer whatever opinions he or she wishes regarding the issue and the risks of any optional pain relieving methods). But in truth, abortion providers, like the authors of the paper, object not just to a "script" but to any requirement whatever that women be provided with any information on the subject. They have also objected to laws enacted in Arkansas and Georgia that require only the provision of printed information prepared by the state health agencies, and to a Minnesota law that merely requires that the abortionist tell the woman "whether or not an anesthetic or analgesic would eliminate or alleviate organic pain to the unborn child caused by the particular method of abortion to be employed and the particular medical benefits and risks associated with the particular anesthetic or analgesic." Apparently, the abortionists are taking the paternalistic stance that women are incapable of evaluating such information and giving it whatever weight they think it deserves.
ADMINISTERING ANESTHESIA OR ANALGESICS
17. The authors of the JAMA paper say that "no established protocols exist for administering anesthesia or analgesia directly to the fetus for minimally invasive fetal procedures or abortions." (p. 952) Yet, some abortions are performed by administering toxins into the amniotic sac (or even directly into the fetal heart) with a needle, precisely guided by ultrasound. Moreover, in cases of women carrying multiple unborn humans, abortionists sometimes engage in "selective reduction," in which some of the fetuses are killed by stabbing them directly in their hearts with a needle guided by ultrasound. One suspects, therefore, that any current lack of methods of safely administering pain-reducing drugs to a fetus in utero relate more the fact that abortionists just don't care about fetal pain and have not developed such methods, rather than to any insurmountable technical obstacles. In any case, under the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act, a woman considering an abortion after 20 weeks gestational age would be given information on the current state of the art, including the abortionist's own assessment of any risks, to evaluate as she sees fit.
18. Paul Ranalli, a neurologist at the University of Toronto, reports, "Experts from Britain and France have proposed safe and effective fetal anesthesia protocols. (Ranalli cites the 1997 Working Party Report on Fetal Pain by the UK's Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynecology and "La douleur du foetus," Mahieu-Caputo D, Dommergues M et al, Presse Med 2000; 29:663-9, recommending Sulfentanyl 1 ug/kg and Pentothal 10 ug/kg.) Ranalli also writes that the JAMA paper itself "includes experimental animal evidence that suggests an effective intra-amniotic needle injection could spare the fetus pain, without the need to give the mother any additional anesthetic" (citing material on JAMA p. 952, column 1).
NUMBERS OF ABORTION AT ISSUE
19. According to the JAMA paper, relying on a CDC report, about 1.4 percent of the abortions performed in the U.S. are performed at or after 21 weeks gestational age. If so, that would be over 18,000 abortions annually nationwide -- hardly inconsequential to anyone concerned with inflicting pain on a sentient young human. (Note: That figure omits abortions performed at 20 weeks gestational age.) It is worth noting that the CDC reports are very incomplete. Indeed, the report itself makes it clear that the CDC received no abortion reports from California -- so none of the 600 abortions performed annually at 20-23 weeks in Dr. Drey's abortion clinic are reflected in the CDC figures.
NRLC:� Gullible Treatment of Trumped Up "Study" on Fetal Pain Issue Should Embarass J.A.M.A. and some Journalists
Ethical Stem Cell Sources
-- Congress Urged to Halt ESCR Funding in View of Life-Honoring Alternatives
By Bill Fancher
August 26, 2005
(AgapePress) - The discovery of new sources of cells that are similar to embryonic stem cells in nature has the Christian Coalition calling on Congress to apply the legislative brakes to embryonic stem-cell research (ESCR) funding. Researchers are now saying stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood may allow them to explore cures for disease without killing human embryos in the process.
An international team of American and British scientists has informed the public that these embryonic-like cells, which they term "cord-blood-derived-embryonic like stem cells" or CBEs, have been shown to exhibit pluripotency -- the ability to transform into any kind of body tissue, just as embryonic stem cells do. The researchers have also noted that CBEs could be mass-produced using technology from NASA.
Also, more recently, Harvard scientists announced possible long-term successes from research fusing adult skin cells with embryonic stem cells. This fusion would theoretically lead to the creation of useful stem cells without first having to create and destroy human embryos.
Based on this latest information, Christian Coalition's Vice President of Legislative Affairs, Jim Backlin, wants to see U.S. congressional leaders take action. He says because of these new developments, his group feels Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist should move to "postpone or cancel the vote scheduled for this fall on the Castle-DeGette Bill -- we call it the Human Embryo Stem Cell Destruction Bill."
The Castle-DeGette Bill would fund research on embryonic stem cells obtained by creating a human embryo, destroying it in the process of extracting its stem cells, and then discarding the remains. Backlin hopes to see the legislation scrubbed.
"We feel that there's no need for such a divisive vote," the Christian Coalition spokesman says, "especially considering that 52 percent of the American people do not want their tax dollars going for human embryo destruction research." The coalition is mobilizing its supporters to apply pressure on Senator Frist and other leaders in Congress in hopes of preventing the controversial vote from taking place.
The discovery of new sources of stem cells that have much the same properties and potential as embryonic stem cells may prove to be a tremendous boon to society at large, and especially to those who have fallen on either the ethics or the medical expediency side of the ESCR debate.
Backlin is optimistic that new sources of embryonic-like stem cells will provide what is needed to allow the hunt for cures to go forward without the ethical problem of having to destroy human embryos.
News from Agape Press
By Bill Fancher
August 26, 2005
(AgapePress) - The discovery of new sources of cells that are similar to embryonic stem cells in nature has the Christian Coalition calling on Congress to apply the legislative brakes to embryonic stem-cell research (ESCR) funding. Researchers are now saying stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood may allow them to explore cures for disease without killing human embryos in the process.
An international team of American and British scientists has informed the public that these embryonic-like cells, which they term "cord-blood-derived-embryonic like stem cells" or CBEs, have been shown to exhibit pluripotency -- the ability to transform into any kind of body tissue, just as embryonic stem cells do. The researchers have also noted that CBEs could be mass-produced using technology from NASA.
Also, more recently, Harvard scientists announced possible long-term successes from research fusing adult skin cells with embryonic stem cells. This fusion would theoretically lead to the creation of useful stem cells without first having to create and destroy human embryos.
Based on this latest information, Christian Coalition's Vice President of Legislative Affairs, Jim Backlin, wants to see U.S. congressional leaders take action. He says because of these new developments, his group feels Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist should move to "postpone or cancel the vote scheduled for this fall on the Castle-DeGette Bill -- we call it the Human Embryo Stem Cell Destruction Bill."
The Castle-DeGette Bill would fund research on embryonic stem cells obtained by creating a human embryo, destroying it in the process of extracting its stem cells, and then discarding the remains. Backlin hopes to see the legislation scrubbed.
"We feel that there's no need for such a divisive vote," the Christian Coalition spokesman says, "especially considering that 52 percent of the American people do not want their tax dollars going for human embryo destruction research." The coalition is mobilizing its supporters to apply pressure on Senator Frist and other leaders in Congress in hopes of preventing the controversial vote from taking place.
The discovery of new sources of stem cells that have much the same properties and potential as embryonic stem cells may prove to be a tremendous boon to society at large, and especially to those who have fallen on either the ethics or the medical expediency side of the ESCR debate.
Backlin is optimistic that new sources of embryonic-like stem cells will provide what is needed to allow the hunt for cures to go forward without the ethical problem of having to destroy human embryos.
News from Agape Press
Expert Insists Unborn Babies Do Feel Pain
-- Pediatrician Suspects JAMA Article of Promoting Pro-Abortion Agenda
By Mary Rettig
August 26, 2005
(AgapePress) - Dr. Jean Wright, M.D., a Christian pediatrician and expert on fetal development, disputes the conclusions of a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that claims unborn babies feel no pain. She says that finding is wrong, and she suspects the authors of the study have an agenda.
After completing their research, the investigators came to the conclusion that laws requiring discussion of fetal pain before a second trimester abortion should not be passed. Wright says they drew that conclusion because they are convinced babies in the womb do not feel pain until they are at least 28 weeks old. But Wright, who serves as Vice President over Women and Children at Memorial Health Center in Savanna, Georgia, says her professional experience has repeatedly negated that notion.
"Every day that I stand in our neonatal intensive care unit and see an infant that's 25, 26, or 28 weeks gestation, I don't have to have any of these fancy studies to say [whether these infants] feel pain," she contends, "because here's the same baby that, inside, you would be measuring and referring to as a fetus, that I'm seeing outside and calling him a premie baby. And that data is overwhelming."
According to the Christian doctor, those NICU infants are unmistakably aware of pain, and yet the authors of the fetal pain study continue to deny that unborn babies at the same stages of development as these premature babies are able to sense painful stimuli. She finds it hard to understand why these scientists refuse to consider that type of tangible evidence -- unless, perhaps, they are not entirely objective.
Of course, Wright points out, the JAMA editor refuted the idea that the article was in any way politically motivated -- an assertion that compels the doctor to smile. "I can't help but grin when I see that reaction," she notes, "because the very first paragraph of this article frames this piece in response to the legislation that we would call the Unborn Pain Awareness Act." In other words," she says, the authors "start in their very first paragraph to frame their article in the context of legislation -- and that is politics."
Regardless of what that editor said, Wright is convinced the article was written for political purposes. But although she expects the report in the AMA's journal will, as one researcher said, "stir up a hornets' nest," the pro-family pediatrician says the controversy may be necessary in order to get more people to examine the evidence that unborn babies really do feel pain.
News from Agape Press
By Mary Rettig
August 26, 2005
(AgapePress) - Dr. Jean Wright, M.D., a Christian pediatrician and expert on fetal development, disputes the conclusions of a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that claims unborn babies feel no pain. She says that finding is wrong, and she suspects the authors of the study have an agenda.
After completing their research, the investigators came to the conclusion that laws requiring discussion of fetal pain before a second trimester abortion should not be passed. Wright says they drew that conclusion because they are convinced babies in the womb do not feel pain until they are at least 28 weeks old. But Wright, who serves as Vice President over Women and Children at Memorial Health Center in Savanna, Georgia, says her professional experience has repeatedly negated that notion.
"Every day that I stand in our neonatal intensive care unit and see an infant that's 25, 26, or 28 weeks gestation, I don't have to have any of these fancy studies to say [whether these infants] feel pain," she contends, "because here's the same baby that, inside, you would be measuring and referring to as a fetus, that I'm seeing outside and calling him a premie baby. And that data is overwhelming."
According to the Christian doctor, those NICU infants are unmistakably aware of pain, and yet the authors of the fetal pain study continue to deny that unborn babies at the same stages of development as these premature babies are able to sense painful stimuli. She finds it hard to understand why these scientists refuse to consider that type of tangible evidence -- unless, perhaps, they are not entirely objective.
Of course, Wright points out, the JAMA editor refuted the idea that the article was in any way politically motivated -- an assertion that compels the doctor to smile. "I can't help but grin when I see that reaction," she notes, "because the very first paragraph of this article frames this piece in response to the legislation that we would call the Unborn Pain Awareness Act." In other words," she says, the authors "start in their very first paragraph to frame their article in the context of legislation -- and that is politics."
Regardless of what that editor said, Wright is convinced the article was written for political purposes. But although she expects the report in the AMA's journal will, as one researcher said, "stir up a hornets' nest," the pro-family pediatrician says the controversy may be necessary in order to get more people to examine the evidence that unborn babies really do feel pain.
News from Agape Press
Poll on Christian Beliefs Troubling
-- Survey Suggests Many Believers Misinformed About Meaning of Biblical Salvation
By Allie Martin and Jenni Parker
August 26, 2005
(AgapePress) - Actor Kirk Cameron, co-producer and host of the evangelical TV show "The Way of the Master," says he is deeply disturbed by the results of a recent survey, which found lots of people who consider themselves followers of Christ actually believe there are many paths to God. According to the recent Newsweek/Beliefnet poll, 68 percent of evangelical Christians say a "good person" of another faith can get into heaven.
While Cameron is known to many for his roles on the much loved 80's sitcom Growing Pains and the phenomenally popular apocalyptic thrillers of the Left Behind movie series, for the last several years much of the actor's time off-screen has been dedicated to the Way of the Master Ministries. Through that evangelistic outreach, he has partnered with evangelist Ray Comfort to teach fellow Christians biblical methods of sharing the gospel and leading the unsaved to Christ.
In light of his heart for the lost and his concern with communicating biblical truth, Cameron finds the results of the recent poll troubling. Christians who claim there is another way to heaven other than Christ need to reexamine their salvation, he says, "because if they don't understand Jesus is the only way to heaven, then perhaps they don't understand what it means to really put their faith in Christ alone."
In the Christian TV host/producer's opionion, the poll's outcome is the result of the Church moving away from presenting the gospel biblically. All too often, he asserts, churches and individuals have presented the gospel as a "life improvement" program rather than making it clear that Christ's finished work on the cross is man's only hope in the face of a holy and righteous God's wrath.
Cameron insists that Christians who emphasize God's love and grace without ever laying the scriptural foundation of redemption -- that is, without mentioning sin and the need for repentance -- are misrepresenting the Bible's message of salvation. "If we present the gospel simply as a life improvement program," he says, "well, boy -- there's lots of things that work to improve your life. You could get into yoga, become a vegetarian."
Or if getting to heaven were all about "being a good person," Cameron continues, "surely you could join all sorts of churches or charitable organizations that could improve your benevolence and good works in the community. But those things have nothing to do with getting to heaven."
The Way of the Master Ministries spokesman contends that real evangelism must begin with convincing people of their sinfulness and need for divine mercy and redemption. "The fact is we're sinners, we need a Savior, and Christ shed his blood on the cross to reconcile us to God," the actor explains, "so the first step is helping people see that they're lost and hopeless without Christ."
Doing that, Cameron adds, is "just getting back to the biblical gospel." He feels the findings of that Newsweek/Beliefnet poll clearly demonstrate the need for Christians to return to a biblical model of evangelism so as to communicate what scripture really says about salvation -- that Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, who declares in John 14:6 (NIV), "No one comes to the Father except through me."
News from Agape Press
By Allie Martin and Jenni Parker
August 26, 2005
(AgapePress) - Actor Kirk Cameron, co-producer and host of the evangelical TV show "The Way of the Master," says he is deeply disturbed by the results of a recent survey, which found lots of people who consider themselves followers of Christ actually believe there are many paths to God. According to the recent Newsweek/Beliefnet poll, 68 percent of evangelical Christians say a "good person" of another faith can get into heaven.
While Cameron is known to many for his roles on the much loved 80's sitcom Growing Pains and the phenomenally popular apocalyptic thrillers of the Left Behind movie series, for the last several years much of the actor's time off-screen has been dedicated to the Way of the Master Ministries. Through that evangelistic outreach, he has partnered with evangelist Ray Comfort to teach fellow Christians biblical methods of sharing the gospel and leading the unsaved to Christ.
In light of his heart for the lost and his concern with communicating biblical truth, Cameron finds the results of the recent poll troubling. Christians who claim there is another way to heaven other than Christ need to reexamine their salvation, he says, "because if they don't understand Jesus is the only way to heaven, then perhaps they don't understand what it means to really put their faith in Christ alone."
In the Christian TV host/producer's opionion, the poll's outcome is the result of the Church moving away from presenting the gospel biblically. All too often, he asserts, churches and individuals have presented the gospel as a "life improvement" program rather than making it clear that Christ's finished work on the cross is man's only hope in the face of a holy and righteous God's wrath.
Cameron insists that Christians who emphasize God's love and grace without ever laying the scriptural foundation of redemption -- that is, without mentioning sin and the need for repentance -- are misrepresenting the Bible's message of salvation. "If we present the gospel simply as a life improvement program," he says, "well, boy -- there's lots of things that work to improve your life. You could get into yoga, become a vegetarian."
Or if getting to heaven were all about "being a good person," Cameron continues, "surely you could join all sorts of churches or charitable organizations that could improve your benevolence and good works in the community. But those things have nothing to do with getting to heaven."
The Way of the Master Ministries spokesman contends that real evangelism must begin with convincing people of their sinfulness and need for divine mercy and redemption. "The fact is we're sinners, we need a Savior, and Christ shed his blood on the cross to reconcile us to God," the actor explains, "so the first step is helping people see that they're lost and hopeless without Christ."
Doing that, Cameron adds, is "just getting back to the biblical gospel." He feels the findings of that Newsweek/Beliefnet poll clearly demonstrate the need for Christians to return to a biblical model of evangelism so as to communicate what scripture really says about salvation -- that Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, who declares in John 14:6 (NIV), "No one comes to the Father except through me."
News from Agape Press
Bangladesh & Sri Lanka Christians Face Persecution Threat
As Muslim fundamentalism rises in Bangladesh, church leaders report that Christians in the country are facing a growing threat.
Posted: Saturday, August 27 , 2005, 11:55 (UK)
As Muslim fundamentalism rises in Bangladesh , church leaders report that Christians in the country are facing a growing threat. Two church group workers have been hacked to death by fundamentalists after being warned to stop evangelistic work in the village of Dhupapara.
Tapan Kumar Roy and Liplal Marandi were killed for showing a film about Jesus even though they received permission from villagers, said Sunil Adhikari, director of Christian Life Bangladesh.
In a series of bomb explosions across the country last week, two people were killed and 100 wounded. The Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen group left leaflets with messages on the bomb sites, calling for Islamic rule in Bangladesh. The message also warned the US and Britain against occupation of Muslim nations.
The attacks were “a clear indication of a growing Islamic fundamentalism”, said Augustine Dipak Karmakar, general secretary of the Church of Bangladesh. According to Ecumenical News International, he said that the “secular space in the country is shrinking” and that the murder of the two Christian workers proved the lack of religious freedom. “We are free under law to preach our faith. But, in reality we do not have much freedom.”
Karmakar accused the government of sheltering the culprits saying that no arrests have been made and are not likely to be made even though Christians have marched in protest in Dhaka. He said that the Islamic fundamentalist lobby has spread into the government machinery as the administration is presently headed by a coalition in which the Bangladesh Nationalist Party shares power with the Jamat-e-Islami party.
The non-Muslim population has shrunk in Bangladesh since it broke away from Pakistan in 1971. Only 400,000 of the population of 144 million are Christians, which is less than one percent; 83 percent are Muslim. The first CLB worker was murdered in 2003. Since then four Christians in Bangladesh have been murdered. Baptist minister Bonnie Rozario who had converted from Islam, was killed while preaching in 2004.
Also in south Asia region, Christians in Sri Lanka are also facing persecution as they were ordered by police to stop worshipping at a church. They have been threatened for two consecutive weeks by police in Horana, Kalutara District, to stop meeting for worship at the Foursquare Gospel Church.
As extremists carry out a campaign to throw Christians out from the mainly Buddhist area, the Sri Lankan government is considering bypassing an anti-conversion law to prevent the gospel from spreading.
Christian Today - UK & World News Every Day
Posted: Saturday, August 27 , 2005, 11:55 (UK)
As Muslim fundamentalism rises in Bangladesh , church leaders report that Christians in the country are facing a growing threat. Two church group workers have been hacked to death by fundamentalists after being warned to stop evangelistic work in the village of Dhupapara.
Tapan Kumar Roy and Liplal Marandi were killed for showing a film about Jesus even though they received permission from villagers, said Sunil Adhikari, director of Christian Life Bangladesh.
In a series of bomb explosions across the country last week, two people were killed and 100 wounded. The Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen group left leaflets with messages on the bomb sites, calling for Islamic rule in Bangladesh. The message also warned the US and Britain against occupation of Muslim nations.
The attacks were “a clear indication of a growing Islamic fundamentalism”, said Augustine Dipak Karmakar, general secretary of the Church of Bangladesh. According to Ecumenical News International, he said that the “secular space in the country is shrinking” and that the murder of the two Christian workers proved the lack of religious freedom. “We are free under law to preach our faith. But, in reality we do not have much freedom.”
Karmakar accused the government of sheltering the culprits saying that no arrests have been made and are not likely to be made even though Christians have marched in protest in Dhaka. He said that the Islamic fundamentalist lobby has spread into the government machinery as the administration is presently headed by a coalition in which the Bangladesh Nationalist Party shares power with the Jamat-e-Islami party.
The non-Muslim population has shrunk in Bangladesh since it broke away from Pakistan in 1971. Only 400,000 of the population of 144 million are Christians, which is less than one percent; 83 percent are Muslim. The first CLB worker was murdered in 2003. Since then four Christians in Bangladesh have been murdered. Baptist minister Bonnie Rozario who had converted from Islam, was killed while preaching in 2004.
Also in south Asia region, Christians in Sri Lanka are also facing persecution as they were ordered by police to stop worshipping at a church. They have been threatened for two consecutive weeks by police in Horana, Kalutara District, to stop meeting for worship at the Foursquare Gospel Church.
As extremists carry out a campaign to throw Christians out from the mainly Buddhist area, the Sri Lankan government is considering bypassing an anti-conversion law to prevent the gospel from spreading.
Christian Today - UK & World News Every Day
Bomb hits Israeli bus station
August 28, 2005
Bomb hits Israeli bus station
Lesson: appeasement of terrorists only leads to more terror. How many more times will the world have to learn this lesson? Note also Abbas' despicable equivocation and moral equivalence, as if stopping murderers is the same thing as murdering innocent civilians. Of course, he probably believes that no Israeli is an innocent civilian. From the BBC, with thanks to Granny Weatherwax:
A suicide bombing has injured at least 10 people at a crowded bus station in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba.
Two guards were seriously injured in the morning rush hour blast. It was the first such attack since Israel pulled its settlers out of the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, condemning the attack, described it as a "terrorist operation". But he also described a recent Israeli raid in the West Bank in which five Palestinians died as a "provocation".
The Islamic Jihad group had sworn to take revenge for the deaths.
Israel warns Palestinians
A bus driver told Israel Radio that the suicide bomber was carrying a heavy bag, prompting him to alert a security guard.
Before he could get on the bus was stopped, and blew himself up nearby, according to police.
"The (bomber) then walked... 100 metres (yards) away from the bus and blew up," the driver said. "It was a very powerful explosion."
The two security guards who were critically wounded suffered shrapnel wounds and burns all over their bodies, a paramedic told Israel's Channel 10 TV.
The bomber's remains were scattered at the scene.
Jihad Watch: Bomb hits Israeli bus station
Bomb hits Israeli bus station
Lesson: appeasement of terrorists only leads to more terror. How many more times will the world have to learn this lesson? Note also Abbas' despicable equivocation and moral equivalence, as if stopping murderers is the same thing as murdering innocent civilians. Of course, he probably believes that no Israeli is an innocent civilian. From the BBC, with thanks to Granny Weatherwax:
A suicide bombing has injured at least 10 people at a crowded bus station in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba.
Two guards were seriously injured in the morning rush hour blast. It was the first such attack since Israel pulled its settlers out of the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, condemning the attack, described it as a "terrorist operation". But he also described a recent Israeli raid in the West Bank in which five Palestinians died as a "provocation".
The Islamic Jihad group had sworn to take revenge for the deaths.
Israel warns Palestinians
A bus driver told Israel Radio that the suicide bomber was carrying a heavy bag, prompting him to alert a security guard.
Before he could get on the bus was stopped, and blew himself up nearby, according to police.
"The (bomber) then walked... 100 metres (yards) away from the bus and blew up," the driver said. "It was a very powerful explosion."
The two security guards who were critically wounded suffered shrapnel wounds and burns all over their bodies, a paramedic told Israel's Channel 10 TV.
The bomber's remains were scattered at the scene.
Jihad Watch: Bomb hits Israeli bus station
A tiny miracle
Cynthia T. Pegram
Sunday, August 28, 2005
On Monday, 5-year-old Tori Raulerson will take the next big step in her little-girl world.
She’s entering kindergarten.
It’s just another miracle in a life that’s been filled with the unexpected for this slender child who weighed only 1 pound, 4 ounces when she was born in April 2000.
Her mom’s pregnancy had lasted barely over 22 weeks, and doctors did not hold out much hope for Tori.
But she had a rare spark that put her among the small percentage of very premature babies who thrive.
And now she’ll be right there at Boonsboro Elementary School with her peer group, the babies of year 2000.
“(Doctors) told us, ‘We’ll do what we can,’
but for a 22-weeker to survive, let alone have the outcome she’s had - less than 10 percent chance,” said her mother, Heather Raulerson.
“As she got older and started doing better, things changed. They realized that she was going to do better than they first anticipated.”
Tori and her parents, Heather and Gary Raulerson, attended kindergarten orientation last week.
If Tori was a little anxious, making her soft voice even more whispery, she had her parents to rely on.
They have always been there for her.
The school lobby was welcoming and its staff purposeful.
Do you know your teacher’s name, asked the tall woman as she leaned down to catch Tori’s soft response.
“Who?”
“Miss Tarbell,” Tori said, just loud enough to be heard at very close range.
Then came a trip down a long hall, a left turn, and entry into the new world of Stacy Tarbell’s classroom. By the end of this week, 11 boys and eight girls should be at colorful round tables and engrossed in the first stage of a 12-year school journey.
For thousands of parents, it’s an expected moment. But for Tori’s parents, it is another blessing.
Tori spent her first four months in neonatal intensive care at the University of Virginia Medical Center.
Weighing only 567 grams, Tori needed heart surgery to close a natural developmental opening in the heart that normally closes at a full-term baby’s birth.
IVs and tube feedings kept her alive.
Laser surgery made it possible for Tori to avoid retinopathy of prematurity, blindness from abnormal blood vessel growth in the retina due to high levels of oxygen needed by the newborn’s underdeveloped lungs.
“We were told really early on, just after birth, the complications preemies could have,” said her mother. Those included blindness, cerebral palsy, deafness, continuous lung problems.
Tori’s early childhood hasn’t been without complications, but “compared to what they told us it might be …,” said Heather Raulerson.
“It’s a piece of cake,” said Tori’s dad.
At five months old, Tori, whose last month of hospital care was in Virginia Baptist Hospital, came home from the hospital on oxygen, a monitor (the monitor alarm would go off whether it was a drop in oxygen level, or if she wiggled her toes) and medications. She also needed special baby food and breast milk.
Heather Raulerson quit her job to become Tori’s primary caregiver.
At first, it was “a little intimidating,” she said. “But I think the experience of going to the hospital helped prepare me for bringing her home. It definitely didn’t feel like we brought her home without a clue what to do.”
The Raulersons’ countless trips and endless hours with the hospitalized infant and staff had given them great understanding of her needs.
Dr. John Kattwinkel, UVa professor of pediatrics and a specialist in newborn intensive care, said success stories like Tori’s are those “we love to see.”
To put Tori’s unusual outcome in perspective, Kattwinkel said that for babies of 22 weeks gestation, “most people would say the mortality is so high it’s not even reasonable to try and rescue. She’s the exception.”
There’s no way to tell who can survive like Tori, and who cannot.
“The problem is that as a group, those extremely low-birthweight babies have a relatively high incidence of death,” he said. And if they don’t die, they have a high incidence of injury.
It’s not being born weighing a pound that is the problem, “it is all in the complications.”
“If a baby misses the complications, he or she can have a good outcome,” he said. But the more immature the infant, “the higher the incidence of complications.”
“She had complications, but fortunately, none of the things have been major factors for her outcome.”
In the 23- to 25-week gestation range, Kattwinkel said, the figures most often quoted are 50 percent mortality.
“Half will die. Of the survivors, about one-third will have significant neurological injury, and one-third less severe, and one-third normal.”
To see an infant like Tori do well “is tremendously satisfying,” he said.
“It is a very, very risky situation, with a high chance of having a bad outcome. It is wonderful to have the good, but there are some real tragedies.”
Tori’s parents have always worked together for her.
At home, even doctor’s visits were a family affair. Gary Raulerson works for Innovative Wireless Technologies, and the company made it possible for him to go with his wife and infant daughter, helping with the oxygen tank and monitors and to be there for medical updates.
After the first year, there weren’t as many doctor’s appointments. “The outlook for everything was good,” said Heather Raulerson.
When she was old enough, Tori went to preschool three days a week at the advice of the developmental clinic involved in her care.
It was felt, said her mom, that Tori should be with other teachers “so they could tell if there were going to be any learning delays from her being premature.”
Tori adjusted well. “She was still very tiny,” and it was hard to leave her, said Heather Raulerson, who then began working part time.
Tori’s birthday is April 11. She was supposed to be born Aug. 10.
“Developmentally,” said her mother, “she seems pretty much on target for a 5-year-old.”
And at 42 inches tall and 32 pounds, she’s a little taller than some.
She was recently treated for a lazy eye and astigmatism was detected, so now she wears glasses for both.
Tori - short for Victoria - is a high-energy little girl with golden brown hair and a rose-petal complexion.
She loves music, especially Beethoven, and a CD of thunder and rain. She is gentle with animals, has a pet cat, and very much enjoys watching the Weather Channel.
She’s interested in nature. A recent visit to her grandparents in West Virginia gave her a chance to see, and carry, 42 snake eggs her granddad found near the barn.
“And she was adamant about catching a toad by herself,” said Gary Raulerson. “She caught one and carried it.”
Her dad says she’s full of questions, and “Why?” is her favorite.
Each day gets more fun, he said, because she gets to do more things.
“It used to be when we were hiking, I was carrying her all the time. Now she can actually do some hiking with us.”
“I love being a dad,” said Gary Raulerson.
“We’ve always had a faith in God that He would keep His hands upon Tori. We’ve always had that peace that she’ll be all right, and she will grow up to be whatever she wants to be. She’s talented enough to do what she wants to do.”
Since she was about 3, when a windstorm hit near their house, Tori has seemed sure about what she wants to be.
“A meteorologist and tornado chaser,” said Tori.
Her parents haven’t talked to her much about her amazing start in life.
But she’s told on a daily basis, said Gary Raulerson, “that she’s our little miracle.”
NewsAdvance.com | A tiny miracle
Sunday, August 28, 2005
On Monday, 5-year-old Tori Raulerson will take the next big step in her little-girl world.
She’s entering kindergarten.
It’s just another miracle in a life that’s been filled with the unexpected for this slender child who weighed only 1 pound, 4 ounces when she was born in April 2000.
Her mom’s pregnancy had lasted barely over 22 weeks, and doctors did not hold out much hope for Tori.
But she had a rare spark that put her among the small percentage of very premature babies who thrive.
And now she’ll be right there at Boonsboro Elementary School with her peer group, the babies of year 2000.
“(Doctors) told us, ‘We’ll do what we can,’
but for a 22-weeker to survive, let alone have the outcome she’s had - less than 10 percent chance,” said her mother, Heather Raulerson.
“As she got older and started doing better, things changed. They realized that she was going to do better than they first anticipated.”
Tori and her parents, Heather and Gary Raulerson, attended kindergarten orientation last week.
If Tori was a little anxious, making her soft voice even more whispery, she had her parents to rely on.
They have always been there for her.
The school lobby was welcoming and its staff purposeful.
Do you know your teacher’s name, asked the tall woman as she leaned down to catch Tori’s soft response.
“Who?”
“Miss Tarbell,” Tori said, just loud enough to be heard at very close range.
Then came a trip down a long hall, a left turn, and entry into the new world of Stacy Tarbell’s classroom. By the end of this week, 11 boys and eight girls should be at colorful round tables and engrossed in the first stage of a 12-year school journey.
For thousands of parents, it’s an expected moment. But for Tori’s parents, it is another blessing.
Tori spent her first four months in neonatal intensive care at the University of Virginia Medical Center.
Weighing only 567 grams, Tori needed heart surgery to close a natural developmental opening in the heart that normally closes at a full-term baby’s birth.
IVs and tube feedings kept her alive.
Laser surgery made it possible for Tori to avoid retinopathy of prematurity, blindness from abnormal blood vessel growth in the retina due to high levels of oxygen needed by the newborn’s underdeveloped lungs.
“We were told really early on, just after birth, the complications preemies could have,” said her mother. Those included blindness, cerebral palsy, deafness, continuous lung problems.
Tori’s early childhood hasn’t been without complications, but “compared to what they told us it might be …,” said Heather Raulerson.
“It’s a piece of cake,” said Tori’s dad.
At five months old, Tori, whose last month of hospital care was in Virginia Baptist Hospital, came home from the hospital on oxygen, a monitor (the monitor alarm would go off whether it was a drop in oxygen level, or if she wiggled her toes) and medications. She also needed special baby food and breast milk.
Heather Raulerson quit her job to become Tori’s primary caregiver.
At first, it was “a little intimidating,” she said. “But I think the experience of going to the hospital helped prepare me for bringing her home. It definitely didn’t feel like we brought her home without a clue what to do.”
The Raulersons’ countless trips and endless hours with the hospitalized infant and staff had given them great understanding of her needs.
Dr. John Kattwinkel, UVa professor of pediatrics and a specialist in newborn intensive care, said success stories like Tori’s are those “we love to see.”
To put Tori’s unusual outcome in perspective, Kattwinkel said that for babies of 22 weeks gestation, “most people would say the mortality is so high it’s not even reasonable to try and rescue. She’s the exception.”
There’s no way to tell who can survive like Tori, and who cannot.
“The problem is that as a group, those extremely low-birthweight babies have a relatively high incidence of death,” he said. And if they don’t die, they have a high incidence of injury.
It’s not being born weighing a pound that is the problem, “it is all in the complications.”
“If a baby misses the complications, he or she can have a good outcome,” he said. But the more immature the infant, “the higher the incidence of complications.”
“She had complications, but fortunately, none of the things have been major factors for her outcome.”
In the 23- to 25-week gestation range, Kattwinkel said, the figures most often quoted are 50 percent mortality.
“Half will die. Of the survivors, about one-third will have significant neurological injury, and one-third less severe, and one-third normal.”
To see an infant like Tori do well “is tremendously satisfying,” he said.
“It is a very, very risky situation, with a high chance of having a bad outcome. It is wonderful to have the good, but there are some real tragedies.”
Tori’s parents have always worked together for her.
At home, even doctor’s visits were a family affair. Gary Raulerson works for Innovative Wireless Technologies, and the company made it possible for him to go with his wife and infant daughter, helping with the oxygen tank and monitors and to be there for medical updates.
After the first year, there weren’t as many doctor’s appointments. “The outlook for everything was good,” said Heather Raulerson.
When she was old enough, Tori went to preschool three days a week at the advice of the developmental clinic involved in her care.
It was felt, said her mom, that Tori should be with other teachers “so they could tell if there were going to be any learning delays from her being premature.”
Tori adjusted well. “She was still very tiny,” and it was hard to leave her, said Heather Raulerson, who then began working part time.
Tori’s birthday is April 11. She was supposed to be born Aug. 10.
“Developmentally,” said her mother, “she seems pretty much on target for a 5-year-old.”
And at 42 inches tall and 32 pounds, she’s a little taller than some.
She was recently treated for a lazy eye and astigmatism was detected, so now she wears glasses for both.
Tori - short for Victoria - is a high-energy little girl with golden brown hair and a rose-petal complexion.
She loves music, especially Beethoven, and a CD of thunder and rain. She is gentle with animals, has a pet cat, and very much enjoys watching the Weather Channel.
She’s interested in nature. A recent visit to her grandparents in West Virginia gave her a chance to see, and carry, 42 snake eggs her granddad found near the barn.
“And she was adamant about catching a toad by herself,” said Gary Raulerson. “She caught one and carried it.”
Her dad says she’s full of questions, and “Why?” is her favorite.
Each day gets more fun, he said, because she gets to do more things.
“It used to be when we were hiking, I was carrying her all the time. Now she can actually do some hiking with us.”
“I love being a dad,” said Gary Raulerson.
“We’ve always had a faith in God that He would keep His hands upon Tori. We’ve always had that peace that she’ll be all right, and she will grow up to be whatever she wants to be. She’s talented enough to do what she wants to do.”
Since she was about 3, when a windstorm hit near their house, Tori has seemed sure about what she wants to be.
“A meteorologist and tornado chaser,” said Tori.
Her parents haven’t talked to her much about her amazing start in life.
But she’s told on a daily basis, said Gary Raulerson, “that she’s our little miracle.”
NewsAdvance.com | A tiny miracle
Christian School Files Discrimination Suit Against University of California
Sunday, Aug. 28, 2005 Posted: 10:37:34AM EST
A group representing Christian schools has filed suit in Los Angeles against the University of California for discriminating against high schools that teach creationism and conservative Christian views.
The Association Of Christian Schools International, which represents 800 religious schools in California, and Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta jointly filed the suit, claiming that the UC board of Regents and five university officials violated their rights to freedom of speech and religion, as well as displaying hostility to Christianity, according to the LA Times.
The suit claims that UC admissions instituted a policy that would refuse to accept high school science courses and textbooks that challenged Darwinian evolution.
Among the courses not being accepted by the university are: "Christianity's Influence in American History," "Christianity and Morality in American Literature" and "Special Providence: American Government."
Ravi Poorsina, a spokeswoman for the UC said that she could not comment on the suit because the university had not yet been served with the suit. However she stated that the university had a right to set requirements for incoming students, according to the LA Times.
"What we're doing is really for the benefit of the students, "she said. ”These requirements were established after careful study by faculty and staff to ensure that students who come here are fully prepared with broad knowledge and the critical thinking skills necessary to succeed."
In the suit, five Cavalry Chapel students were mentioned. Each were said to have strong academic and extracurricular records.
She added that students not meeting the UC requirements should make them up by taking them at community colleges if they chose to.
Addressing the issue of community college makeup classes, the association bringing the suit claimed that this method made it much more difficult for students.
The university was also accused of approving courses from other viewpoints or religions such as Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism.
Christian News - The Christian Post | Christian School Files Discrimination Suit Against University of California
A group representing Christian schools has filed suit in Los Angeles against the University of California for discriminating against high schools that teach creationism and conservative Christian views.
The Association Of Christian Schools International, which represents 800 religious schools in California, and Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta jointly filed the suit, claiming that the UC board of Regents and five university officials violated their rights to freedom of speech and religion, as well as displaying hostility to Christianity, according to the LA Times.
The suit claims that UC admissions instituted a policy that would refuse to accept high school science courses and textbooks that challenged Darwinian evolution.
Among the courses not being accepted by the university are: "Christianity's Influence in American History," "Christianity and Morality in American Literature" and "Special Providence: American Government."
Ravi Poorsina, a spokeswoman for the UC said that she could not comment on the suit because the university had not yet been served with the suit. However she stated that the university had a right to set requirements for incoming students, according to the LA Times.
"What we're doing is really for the benefit of the students, "she said. ”These requirements were established after careful study by faculty and staff to ensure that students who come here are fully prepared with broad knowledge and the critical thinking skills necessary to succeed."
In the suit, five Cavalry Chapel students were mentioned. Each were said to have strong academic and extracurricular records.
She added that students not meeting the UC requirements should make them up by taking them at community colleges if they chose to.
Addressing the issue of community college makeup classes, the association bringing the suit claimed that this method made it much more difficult for students.
The university was also accused of approving courses from other viewpoints or religions such as Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism.
Christian News - The Christian Post | Christian School Files Discrimination Suit Against University of California
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Give intelligent design a place in classrooms
Although the debate over whether intelligent design should be taught concurrently with the theory of evolution is not new, it didn't receive as much attention until President Bush suggested that it should. Not only did the comment draw sharp criticism from the press, the Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean quickly labeled the president as "anti-science." Now it's not only a question of science or education, it's a political issue, as well.
Intelligent design opponents contend it is creationism. While these challengers of the concept attempt to couple the two theories, they also are busy trying to separate evolution from Darwinism, which is taught to our children as scientific fact. I believe that's where the real problem exists.
A primary thesis against intelligent design offers that it is not theory because claiming that nature was designed explains nothing about nature. Of course, it is easier for the evolutionist to accept that we are all a result of some natural process beginning with pre-historic swamp scum. Many of the science textbooks used today present as fact a starting point in addition to a process of evolution. Again, that's part of the problem.
We are often told "real" scientists have not provided evidence that might support intelligent design. They suggest it is only disguised creationism. I would expect nothing less from anyone who worships Darwinism. But, they are negligent when they ignore the growing number of "real" scientists who find value in the theory of intelligent design.
For an insight, read the works of Jonathan Wells, a biologist with two PhDs. Wells contends Darwinian evolution is a theory in crisis that distorts the truth to maintain its influence over scientific education.
We can look to Michael Behe, professor of biology at Lehigh University, who wonders if dogged opponents of intelligent design have something on their minds other than pure science. Or, we could ask either University of Georgia biology professor Russell Carlson or William Harris, professor of medicine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. They have both argued that Darwinism is scientifically controversial. A growing number of scientists believe that the complexity of the cell cannot be accounted for in evolution by natural selection.
I am told that science is a connecting of theoretical and factual claims that are often revised and where one change can produce a multitude of additional modifications. I also understand that theory is merely explanation based on scientific study and reasoning, not necessarily fact. With this in mind, both Darwinism and intelligent design are theories. Shouldn't our children know that?
Students who are exposed to only one side of an issue remain in the dark. Let's give our children the choice of debate and the opportunity to use their intelligence, regardless of whether you believe that intelligence is a result of created design or random selection.
Columnists - Opinion - Port Huron Times-Herald - www.thetimesherald.com
Intelligent design opponents contend it is creationism. While these challengers of the concept attempt to couple the two theories, they also are busy trying to separate evolution from Darwinism, which is taught to our children as scientific fact. I believe that's where the real problem exists.
A primary thesis against intelligent design offers that it is not theory because claiming that nature was designed explains nothing about nature. Of course, it is easier for the evolutionist to accept that we are all a result of some natural process beginning with pre-historic swamp scum. Many of the science textbooks used today present as fact a starting point in addition to a process of evolution. Again, that's part of the problem.
We are often told "real" scientists have not provided evidence that might support intelligent design. They suggest it is only disguised creationism. I would expect nothing less from anyone who worships Darwinism. But, they are negligent when they ignore the growing number of "real" scientists who find value in the theory of intelligent design.
For an insight, read the works of Jonathan Wells, a biologist with two PhDs. Wells contends Darwinian evolution is a theory in crisis that distorts the truth to maintain its influence over scientific education.
We can look to Michael Behe, professor of biology at Lehigh University, who wonders if dogged opponents of intelligent design have something on their minds other than pure science. Or, we could ask either University of Georgia biology professor Russell Carlson or William Harris, professor of medicine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. They have both argued that Darwinism is scientifically controversial. A growing number of scientists believe that the complexity of the cell cannot be accounted for in evolution by natural selection.
I am told that science is a connecting of theoretical and factual claims that are often revised and where one change can produce a multitude of additional modifications. I also understand that theory is merely explanation based on scientific study and reasoning, not necessarily fact. With this in mind, both Darwinism and intelligent design are theories. Shouldn't our children know that?
Students who are exposed to only one side of an issue remain in the dark. Let's give our children the choice of debate and the opportunity to use their intelligence, regardless of whether you believe that intelligence is a result of created design or random selection.
Columnists - Opinion - Port Huron Times-Herald - www.thetimesherald.com
Persecution of Christians grows under new king Abdullah
24 August, 2005
SAUDI ARABIA – INDIA
Indian Christians told not to bring in Holy Books and icons, nor to meet in private to pray.
Riyadh (AsiaNews) – With the death of King Fahd and the arrival of King Abdullah, the persecution by the Saudi Kingdom of believers of religions other than Islam, especially Christians, is on the rise.
Sources close to AsiaNews in the Saudi capital have confirmed that the religious police, the Muttawa, has raided the homes of foreigners, especially suspect homes (i.e. those where Christians live). This has forced many groups, who used to meet in the privacy of their home to pray, to stop this activity. Furthermore, fear is such that people have stopped meeting out of fear that the police might link them to one another. Indians are particularly targeted. In the last few months, nine Indians were arrested for illegal religious activities.
According to Indo-Asia News, things have become so tense that India’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia sent a circular to Indian nationals living in the country warning them that the number of Indians in detention for engaging in religious activities was growing. He told them not to organise prayer meetings in private homes or preach in any way. He also advised his government to warn all those leaving for Saudi Arabia to leave religious books, Bibles, photos, or icons behind.
In a list prepared by the international organisation Open Door, Saudi Arabia comes second only to North Korea in terms of anti-Christian persecution.
The Saudi government has banned any religious practice other than Wahhabi fundamentalist Islam. Any missionary activity or public expression of faith (having Bibles, wearing a crucifix, holding a rosary, praying in public) is outlawed.
The religious police, well-known for its violence and torture, makes sure that the ban is enforced.
Under international pressure, the Saudi monarchy had in the last few years allowed people to practice their religious beliefs in the privacy of their homes. But, the Muttawa did not heed this toleration and continued to arrest, jail and torture people whose only crime was to practice religions other than Islam in private.
Although it persecutes non Muslims, Saudi Arabia has been recruiting skilled foreign labour for its economy. And only recently has Riyadh promised a 15-year tax holiday to attract foreign capital to invest in its railway, desalination plants, power plants and new industrial zones.
>>> AsiaNews.it <<< Persecution of Christians grows under new king Abdullah
SAUDI ARABIA – INDIA
Indian Christians told not to bring in Holy Books and icons, nor to meet in private to pray.
Riyadh (AsiaNews) – With the death of King Fahd and the arrival of King Abdullah, the persecution by the Saudi Kingdom of believers of religions other than Islam, especially Christians, is on the rise.
Sources close to AsiaNews in the Saudi capital have confirmed that the religious police, the Muttawa, has raided the homes of foreigners, especially suspect homes (i.e. those where Christians live). This has forced many groups, who used to meet in the privacy of their home to pray, to stop this activity. Furthermore, fear is such that people have stopped meeting out of fear that the police might link them to one another. Indians are particularly targeted. In the last few months, nine Indians were arrested for illegal religious activities.
According to Indo-Asia News, things have become so tense that India’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia sent a circular to Indian nationals living in the country warning them that the number of Indians in detention for engaging in religious activities was growing. He told them not to organise prayer meetings in private homes or preach in any way. He also advised his government to warn all those leaving for Saudi Arabia to leave religious books, Bibles, photos, or icons behind.
In a list prepared by the international organisation Open Door, Saudi Arabia comes second only to North Korea in terms of anti-Christian persecution.
The Saudi government has banned any religious practice other than Wahhabi fundamentalist Islam. Any missionary activity or public expression of faith (having Bibles, wearing a crucifix, holding a rosary, praying in public) is outlawed.
The religious police, well-known for its violence and torture, makes sure that the ban is enforced.
Under international pressure, the Saudi monarchy had in the last few years allowed people to practice their religious beliefs in the privacy of their homes. But, the Muttawa did not heed this toleration and continued to arrest, jail and torture people whose only crime was to practice religions other than Islam in private.
Although it persecutes non Muslims, Saudi Arabia has been recruiting skilled foreign labour for its economy. And only recently has Riyadh promised a 15-year tax holiday to attract foreign capital to invest in its railway, desalination plants, power plants and new industrial zones.
>>> AsiaNews.it <<< Persecution of Christians grows under new king Abdullah
Former Homosexual receiving death threats
A Christian activist in San Diego says his efforts to protect children from the homosexual movement are being met with threats of violence. James Hartline, a former homosexual, was instrumental in the discovery of three convicted sex offenders working at the recent San Diego Gay Pride Parade and Festival. All three men are posted on the California Megan's Law website, and are banned from working with any non-profit organization that deals with children. Hartline says because of this work, he receives threats to his health almost daily. Most recently, two lesbians who run a business website have allowed an anonymous death threat for Hartline to be posted in the blog section of the site. According to Hartline, the threat states that the "moment was never riper for the San Diego LGBT community to push for the elimination and suppression of the James Hartlines of the world. We currently have an openly lesbian mayor of San Diego and an openly gay mayor of Chula Vista. People, we are in power. We are in charge." Hartline says allowing this to be posted is a criminal offense -- and that the situation lifts the veil of tolerance that homosexual activists want the public to see and exposes their true intent of eradicating all opposition. Hartline says the webmaster added words to the post to soften the rhetoric, but that the author's intent is clear. [Mary Rettig]
In other news...
The head of a Massachusetts pro-family group continues to sound the alarm over the increasing involvement of homosexual activists in the public school system. Brian Camenker of the Article 8 Alliance says homosexual advocates are increasing the pressure on the public school system to obtain their goals. The problem, he says, is especially bad in his home state of Massachusetts. "The homosexual lobby had put an extra, I believe it was, $175,000 into homosexual programs in the public schools," he explains. "This is a 70 percent increase in money for that." The state education department has already allocated considerable funding to prevent suicide among homosexual teens. Camenker maintains that the real intent by these actions is to normalize homosexuality in children's minds. [Bill Fancher]
News from Agape Press
In other news...
The head of a Massachusetts pro-family group continues to sound the alarm over the increasing involvement of homosexual activists in the public school system. Brian Camenker of the Article 8 Alliance says homosexual advocates are increasing the pressure on the public school system to obtain their goals. The problem, he says, is especially bad in his home state of Massachusetts. "The homosexual lobby had put an extra, I believe it was, $175,000 into homosexual programs in the public schools," he explains. "This is a 70 percent increase in money for that." The state education department has already allocated considerable funding to prevent suicide among homosexual teens. Camenker maintains that the real intent by these actions is to normalize homosexuality in children's minds. [Bill Fancher]
News from Agape Press
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
HOMESCHOOLERS SCORE HIGHER ON ACT
Homeschool Average 22.5 – National Average 20.9
Purcellville VA – Newly released figures for the ACT college entrance exam show that homeschoolers have again scored above the national average. “Homeschoolers continue to excel academically,” said Michael Smith, President of the Home School Legal Defense Association.
The 8075 homeschool graduates who took the ACT college entrance exam this year comprised about 1 percent of those who took the exam.
According to ACT a 22.5 score is significantly higher than the national average and homechoolers have maintained their success over the eight year period they have taken the exam.
“Homeschoolers consistently score above the national average,” said ACT spokesman, Ed Colby.
Homeschooling is not a short-term phenomenon. It is growing between 7 and 15% per year and an estimated 2 million children are homeschooled. In addition, homeschoolers consistently score above their peers on standardized achievement tests. The new ACT scores confirm this trend.
To find out more about homeschool achievement please visit http://nche.hslda.org/research/default.asp
HSLDA | HOMESCHOOLERS SCORE HIGHER ON ACT COLLEGE ENTRANCE EXAM
Purcellville VA – Newly released figures for the ACT college entrance exam show that homeschoolers have again scored above the national average. “Homeschoolers continue to excel academically,” said Michael Smith, President of the Home School Legal Defense Association.
The 8075 homeschool graduates who took the ACT college entrance exam this year comprised about 1 percent of those who took the exam.
According to ACT a 22.5 score is significantly higher than the national average and homechoolers have maintained their success over the eight year period they have taken the exam.
“Homeschoolers consistently score above the national average,” said ACT spokesman, Ed Colby.
Homeschooling is not a short-term phenomenon. It is growing between 7 and 15% per year and an estimated 2 million children are homeschooled. In addition, homeschoolers consistently score above their peers on standardized achievement tests. The new ACT scores confirm this trend.
To find out more about homeschool achievement please visit http://nche.hslda.org/research/default.asp
HSLDA | HOMESCHOOLERS SCORE HIGHER ON ACT COLLEGE ENTRANCE EXAM
Two-Thirds of Evangelicals Doubt Jesus' Words Regarding Salvation Thru Him Alone
By Fred Jackson
August 23, 2005
(AgapePress) - There's a new poll out which points to a growing rejection among Evangelicals that Jesus is the only way of salvation.
For years, most evangelical Christians have been taught and accepted the words of Jesus in John 14:6, where He states, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no man cometh unto the Father but my Me." But now a new Newsweek/Beliefnet poll is showing a shocking number of people who call themselves evangelical and born-again have come to reject those words.
The question in the poll read: "Can a good person who isn't of your religious faith go to heaven or attain salvation, or not?"
According to the poll results of more than 1,000 adults 18 years of age and older, 68 percent of evangelical Christians believe "good" people of other faiths can also go to heaven. Nationally, 79 percent of those surveyed said the same thing, with an "astounding" 91 percent agreement among Catholics, notes Beliefnet. Beliefnet spokesman Steven Waldman calls the results "pretty amazing."
"Evangelicals are among the most churchgoing and religiously attentive people in the United States," Waldman writes, "and one of the ideas they're most likely to hear from the minister at church on a given Sunday is that the path to salvation is through Jesus."
In light of that, how -- he asks -- could so many Americans toss aside such a central element of theology?
Waldman believes the best explanation is found in the Newsweek cover story that grew out of the survey. The conclusion it draws is that Americans have become so focused on a very personal style of worship -- that is, forging a direct relationship with God -- that spiritual experience has begun to supplant dogma, or teaching based on the authority of the Bible.
News from Agape Press
August 23, 2005
(AgapePress) - There's a new poll out which points to a growing rejection among Evangelicals that Jesus is the only way of salvation.
For years, most evangelical Christians have been taught and accepted the words of Jesus in John 14:6, where He states, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no man cometh unto the Father but my Me." But now a new Newsweek/Beliefnet poll is showing a shocking number of people who call themselves evangelical and born-again have come to reject those words.
The question in the poll read: "Can a good person who isn't of your religious faith go to heaven or attain salvation, or not?"
According to the poll results of more than 1,000 adults 18 years of age and older, 68 percent of evangelical Christians believe "good" people of other faiths can also go to heaven. Nationally, 79 percent of those surveyed said the same thing, with an "astounding" 91 percent agreement among Catholics, notes Beliefnet. Beliefnet spokesman Steven Waldman calls the results "pretty amazing."
"Evangelicals are among the most churchgoing and religiously attentive people in the United States," Waldman writes, "and one of the ideas they're most likely to hear from the minister at church on a given Sunday is that the path to salvation is through Jesus."
In light of that, how -- he asks -- could so many Americans toss aside such a central element of theology?
Waldman believes the best explanation is found in the Newsweek cover story that grew out of the survey. The conclusion it draws is that Americans have become so focused on a very personal style of worship -- that is, forging a direct relationship with God -- that spiritual experience has begun to supplant dogma, or teaching based on the authority of the Bible.
News from Agape Press
California Court Declares One Child Can Have Two Moms
Pro-Family Advocates Call Rulings Nonsense, Harmful to Kids
Jenni Parker
August 23, 2005
(AgapePress) - A spokesman for a leading West Coast pro-family organization says his group is shocked and saddened over an August 22 ruling by the California Supreme Court abolishing the traditional definition of parenthood. In three separate cases that raised fundamental issues as to the definition of family and parent, the court decided in each case that a child may legally have two mothers.
In the case of Elisa B. v. Superior Court, the California Supreme Court held that a lesbian who had agreed to raise the children born to her partner, but who then split up with her partner, was required to pay child support for the minors as a parent. And in K.M. v. E.G., the court held that the existence of a written waiver of rights did not prevent a lesbian woman who had donated ova to her partner for in vitro fertilization from asserting rights as a parent. Meanwhile, in Kristine H. v. Lisa R., the court found that a stipulation signed by the natural mother conferred a legal right to her lesbian partner to exercise the role of a parent over the child.
This trio of decisions by the state high court means that parenting, custody, and child support laws in California will now apply to homosexual couples who conceived through artificial insemination. And according to Steve Crampton, chief counsel for the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, the rulings clearly point to the increasingly egregious judicial activism of liberal, pro-homosexual judges.
"The California Supreme Court is determined not to be outdone in the aggressive fashioning of new social policy under the guise of deciding legal cases," Crampton says. "These cases, read together, demonstrate beyond question the social and political agenda of the court. They have little or nothing to do with law."
The AFA attorney says the California court's arrogance in attempting to redefine the family with the mere stroke of a pen is "nothing short of extraordinary," and it is time this "runaway judiciary" were reined in. But if pro-family citizens fail to stand up and let their voices be heard, he warns, "the courts will continue to take over every aspect of our lives."
Activist Says Truth is Self Evident: Kids Need a Mom and a Dad
According to California activist and Campaign for Children and Families president Randy Thomasson, what the state Supreme Court has done is to improperly "reinterpret" parenting and egg donation laws to equate two women with a mother and a father. But he maintains that the court's rulings go against nature.
"Despite junk science and frustrating rulings like this," Thomasson contends, "children still need a mother and a father. A child does not have two mommies or two daddies; a child comes into this world because she has a mother who have her egg and a father who gave his sperm."
The state Supreme Court's decision "ignores the self-evident truth that God designed a man and a woman to fit together and participate in the miracle of procreation," the California pro-family spokesman asserts. And now that "the definition of parenthood has been thrown out the window," he asks, "what's next?" Lest they find out, Thomasson is telling California citizens that the court's decision gives them more reason than ever to support the Voter's Right to Protect Marriage Initiative, a ballot measure being circulated next year in support of an amendment protecting traditional marriage. (See related story)
That initiative, the pro-family activist notes, defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman and as "the basic family unit in the California Constitution." And, although the measure will not affect state adoption and child custody laws, he emphasizes that it will at least establish that "marriage rights are for one man and one woman, as it was, is, and always should be."
Another supporter of the ballot measure is the pro-family legal organization Liberty Counsel, whose president and general counsel Mat Staver suggest that the Voter's Right to Protect Marriage Initiative may be the only antidote to the "nonsense" of the California Supreme Court's August 22 decision. "This ruling defies logic and common sense," he says.
"By saying that children can have two moms, the court has undermined the family," Staver says, and it has meanwhile established "a policy that essentially says moms and dads are mere surplus." But the Liberty Counsel spokesman points out that thousands of studies have concluded otherwise, finding that children need mothers and fathers, and not two of either but one of each.
"Gender does matter to children," Staver insists. And the California high court's "nonsense" ruling, he adds, only serves to underscore the importance of amending the state constitution to preserve marriage as being between one man and one woman.
News from Agape Press
Jenni Parker
August 23, 2005
(AgapePress) - A spokesman for a leading West Coast pro-family organization says his group is shocked and saddened over an August 22 ruling by the California Supreme Court abolishing the traditional definition of parenthood. In three separate cases that raised fundamental issues as to the definition of family and parent, the court decided in each case that a child may legally have two mothers.
In the case of Elisa B. v. Superior Court, the California Supreme Court held that a lesbian who had agreed to raise the children born to her partner, but who then split up with her partner, was required to pay child support for the minors as a parent. And in K.M. v. E.G., the court held that the existence of a written waiver of rights did not prevent a lesbian woman who had donated ova to her partner for in vitro fertilization from asserting rights as a parent. Meanwhile, in Kristine H. v. Lisa R., the court found that a stipulation signed by the natural mother conferred a legal right to her lesbian partner to exercise the role of a parent over the child.
This trio of decisions by the state high court means that parenting, custody, and child support laws in California will now apply to homosexual couples who conceived through artificial insemination. And according to Steve Crampton, chief counsel for the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, the rulings clearly point to the increasingly egregious judicial activism of liberal, pro-homosexual judges.
"The California Supreme Court is determined not to be outdone in the aggressive fashioning of new social policy under the guise of deciding legal cases," Crampton says. "These cases, read together, demonstrate beyond question the social and political agenda of the court. They have little or nothing to do with law."
The AFA attorney says the California court's arrogance in attempting to redefine the family with the mere stroke of a pen is "nothing short of extraordinary," and it is time this "runaway judiciary" were reined in. But if pro-family citizens fail to stand up and let their voices be heard, he warns, "the courts will continue to take over every aspect of our lives."
Activist Says Truth is Self Evident: Kids Need a Mom and a Dad
According to California activist and Campaign for Children and Families president Randy Thomasson, what the state Supreme Court has done is to improperly "reinterpret" parenting and egg donation laws to equate two women with a mother and a father. But he maintains that the court's rulings go against nature.
"Despite junk science and frustrating rulings like this," Thomasson contends, "children still need a mother and a father. A child does not have two mommies or two daddies; a child comes into this world because she has a mother who have her egg and a father who gave his sperm."
The state Supreme Court's decision "ignores the self-evident truth that God designed a man and a woman to fit together and participate in the miracle of procreation," the California pro-family spokesman asserts. And now that "the definition of parenthood has been thrown out the window," he asks, "what's next?" Lest they find out, Thomasson is telling California citizens that the court's decision gives them more reason than ever to support the Voter's Right to Protect Marriage Initiative, a ballot measure being circulated next year in support of an amendment protecting traditional marriage. (See related story)
That initiative, the pro-family activist notes, defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman and as "the basic family unit in the California Constitution." And, although the measure will not affect state adoption and child custody laws, he emphasizes that it will at least establish that "marriage rights are for one man and one woman, as it was, is, and always should be."
Another supporter of the ballot measure is the pro-family legal organization Liberty Counsel, whose president and general counsel Mat Staver suggest that the Voter's Right to Protect Marriage Initiative may be the only antidote to the "nonsense" of the California Supreme Court's August 22 decision. "This ruling defies logic and common sense," he says.
"By saying that children can have two moms, the court has undermined the family," Staver says, and it has meanwhile established "a policy that essentially says moms and dads are mere surplus." But the Liberty Counsel spokesman points out that thousands of studies have concluded otherwise, finding that children need mothers and fathers, and not two of either but one of each.
"Gender does matter to children," Staver insists. And the California high court's "nonsense" ruling, he adds, only serves to underscore the importance of amending the state constitution to preserve marriage as being between one man and one woman.
News from Agape Press
Stem cells made without embryos?
24/08/2005- Researchers in the US have discovered a way of generating stem cells that could avoid the use of human embryos, potentially bypassing one of the major obstacles to the development of therapies based on this technology.
Researchers Kevin Eggan, Douglas Melton, and colleagues of Harvard University’s stem Cell Institute will report in the 26 August edition of the journal Science that it may be possible by fusing two cells together to some day produce cells with the properties of embryonic stem.
The researchers caution, however, that many daunting challenges must still be overcome and the promise of their work should not be seen as a reason to slow present research efforts.
Current stem cell research has generated controversy because it involves the destruction of human embryos, or it requires women to donate unfertilised eggs.
In therapeutic cloning, a nucleus from an adult cell (for instance, a skin cell) is injected into unfertilised egg whose own genetic material has been removed. The egg reprograms the skin cell nucleus to an embryonic state, allowing it to initiate the development of an early embryo without the need for fertilization.
Researchers in Korea recently showed that the resulting embryos can be used to make embryonic stem cells that are genetically identical to the skin cell donor. But that method is technically difficult, involves the use of embryos, and because it requires donated human eggs, it is unlikely that it could ever be scaled up for widespread clinical use.
Moreover, the creation and destruction of embryos is controversial in the US, although this type of research is carried out in Europe and elsewhere in the world. In 2001 US President George W Bush ruled that federal money could only be used for research on embryos that already existed at that time, meaning that only a limited amount of stem cell stocks have been available to US researchers.
The HSCI researchers have taken a quite different approach, fusing an entire skin cell to an existing embryonic stem cell. The result is a hybrid cell with two sets of genetic material, one from each parent.
Using sophisticated 'DNA chip' technology, the Harvard team was able to show that cell fusion causes thousands of genes from the skin cell to be reprogrammed to an embryonic state.
Even more striking, they found that the fused hybrids retain many of the properties of embryonic stem cells, including the ability to differentiate into multiple adult cells types.
This is an important result because it suggests that adult cells could some day be converted into embryonic stem cells without using human eggs and without creating cloned human embryos. But if this kind of reprogramming is really possible, it is likely to take many years and many further studies, on embryos as well as hybrid cells, before this technique offers an alternative method of producing stem cells, say the researchers.
Stem cells made without embryos?
Evolution vs. intelligent design: which model has more integrity?
August 18, 2005
Fred Hutchison
RenewAmerica analyst
President Bush said that public schools should expose students to both evolution and intelligent design science and discuss the scientific controversies as the two models clash. The press unleashed a flurry of editorials that claimed that this would involve a comparison of science with religion and a comparison of facts with faith.
But is this true? Is the evolution camp misunderstanding or misrepresenting what the intelligent design scientists are saying by calling it faith and not science? Even Charles Krauthammer, one of my favorite columnists and television pundits, asserts that intelligent design is faith, not science. Has Krauthammer, a medical doctor, read what the intelligent design scientists are saying, or is he following what he was taught by evolutionists in medical school? Are important thinkers with a scientific background, like Dr. Krauthammer, changing their mind on this point? Yes. I heard one speak in late July (2005) at Oxford, University.
Intelligent design: science or faith?
The C.S. Lewis Conference (named Oxbridge, because it meets at Oxford and Cambridge) featured a discussion between eminent philosophers Anthony Flew and Gary Habermas. Anthony Flew was one of the world's most famous atheists because he has debated theist philosophers about the existence of God for decades and some of these debates were televised. For much of his life, Flew based his atheism upon science. His recent and celebrated conversion to theism was also based upon science.
Flew was invited to Oxbridge to join Habermas, his old debating partner and friend, for a discussion about Flew's recollections of C.S. Lewis at Oxford and Flew's conversion from atheism to theism. His conversion to theism came from reading the works of intelligent design scientists. He concluded that the weight of the scientific evidence points to the idea that the universe was designed, and therefore must have an intelligent designer. Habermas asked him about faith and Flew denied that faith had anything to do with his change of mind. He said he was logically following where the evidence led him. Flew obviously regards the research of the intelligent design scientists as science and not faith. What say you to this, Dr. Krauthammer?
Natural law, science, and government
Interestingly, Flew insists he is not a Christian or a religious monotheist and that he has no faith in a personal God. Habermas asked him if he is a Deist and Flew said "yes." A Deist believes in the existence of an impersonal and detached God who is the designer and creator of the universe. The Deist God gave man the gift of reason so he could discover the laws of nature and the design of the universe. Then he stepped away from his creation and left the governance of the world to man. Eighteenth century Deism contributed to the development of Natural law philosophy, which influenced science, philosophy, ethics, and political philosophy.
Deism and Natural law philosophy influenced American founding fathers Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and James Madison, Jefferson's protégé and author of the Constitution. Jefferson opened the Declaration with these words from natural law philosophy: "When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people...to assume those separate but equal stations which the Laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle them.... We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...." Natural rights are derived from natural laws. There are two kinds of natural laws: laws of nature that scientists study, and laws governing human conduct. Concerning the second, natural law decrees that the rights of the individual must not be transgressed by persons or governments.
We have a natural law constitution and a revival of natural law science, namely intelligent design science. Yet some of our judges have assumed that the teaching of natural law science in the public schools violates our natural law constitution. For example, in McLean vs. Arkansas (1984), Judge William Overton ruled that the teaching of scientific creationism in public schools violates the "separation of church and state." Let us assume that Judge Overton would have included intelligent design science as a branch of scientific creationism. There are no natural law churches in America. The last Deist churches in England closed in the eighteenth century. Therefore, how does teaching natural law science bring a church's doctrine into the classroom? Since the Deist God does not answer prayer or involve himself in human life, is not Deism more of a philosophy than a religion? If teaching natural law science like intelligent design is contrary to the "separation of church and state," then our natural law constitution is contrary to "the separation of church and state."
Judge Overton's opinion is based upon two false assumptions: first, that the Constitution is hostile to religion, and second, that natural law philosophy and intelligent design science represent a religion. Madison, who wrote the Constitution, was inspired by natural law philosophy that was based upon the assumptions of philosophical Deism. One assumption of Deism is that men will form rational social contracts like the U.S. Constitution, as guided by self-evident truths from "nature and nature's god." Another assumption is that men will use reason, observation, and experience to discover the laws of nature. Never was there a science more in keeping with the spirit of the Constitution than intelligent design science. Both the Constitution and intelligent design science are triumphs of natural law philosophy.
Einstein's physics: a violation of church/state separation?
Anthony Flew's Deism is a little different from Jefferson's and Madison's Deism. Anthony Flew said he believes in Einstein's God. Einstein said in 1929 and was quoted by the New York Times, "I believe in Spinoza's god who reveals Himself in orderly harmony that exists, not a God who concerns himself with the fate of human beings" (source: Albert Einstein – Scientist, edited by Paul Schilipp 1970). Spinoza was a rationalist philosopher and a pantheist. He believed that everything is interconnected within one gigantic system and that this system and everything it contains is "God." Monotheistic religions and traditional Deism sharply differentiate between Creator and creation. Spinoza, Einstein, and Flew make no distinction between God and the cosmos. Intelligent design science brought Flew to Einstein's impersonal pantheistic God. It did not bring him to a personal faith in a personal God or to anything remotely resembling a religion.
Einstein started with Spinoza's general principle that everything that exists is essentially one, and everything is harmoniously interconnected into a beautiful whole. From this presupposition, he developed his theories of physics through blackboard mathematics. During the later part of his career, Einstein's futile pursuit of a unified field theory was driven by his belief that everything is harmoniously connected and interrelated. Einstein acquired this life-long conviction in his youth while reading Spinoza's pantheistic philosophy.
If deistic natural law science like intelligent design violates the doctrine of separation of church and state, does Einstein's physics, which is based in pantheism, likewise violate that doctrine? Of course not, and neither does intelligent design science violate the separation of church and state. Einstein was a philosophical pantheist, but had no interest in the mystical spirituality of pantheist religion. Intelligent design science is no more a religion than Einstein's physics. The intelligent design writers make no mention of who the intelligent designer might be and say nothing about faith or spirituality. Anthony Flew, who was an Oxford professor of philosophy, thinks that belief in Einstein's god is a particular kind of philosophical Deism. He views intelligent design science as a true science that is compatible with Einstein's philosophy. He firmly rejects personal faith and religion.
The logic is inescapable. Although natural law philosophy has roots in theism, it is a philosophy in the category of rationalism, like the philosophies of Spinoza, Descartes, and Leibnitz. Immanuel Kant fused philosophical rationalism with philosophical empiricism in his work, Critique of Pure Reason. He facilitated the blend of reason and evidence in modern science. A scientific model should be logically sound and mathematically articulated, if possible. However, a model must be vindicated by hard empirical evidence. Einstein's blackboard theories about how gravity bends light were rejected out of hand until the solar eclipse of 1919 when scientists measured the bending of light as it passes by the earth. Flew is a rational philosopher, but it was the hard, scientific evidence that won him over to intelligent design and Deism.
Is evolution a mixture of science and philosophy?
If we can ban a scientific model, such as intelligent design, from the classroom simply because it has roots in a philosophy that has theistic implications, can we also throw out evolution if it is revealed to be a blend of science and a philosophy with cosmological implications? Of course not. It would be absurd to throw out either intelligent design or evolution on these grounds. Although the ultimate winner in the contest between these two scientific models will be determined by the evidence, it is helpful to understand that the two models represent two conflicting cosmologies and world views. It is extremely painful for a man to change a long-held world view. I stand in awe of the profound integrity of Anthony Flew to change his cosmology when the evidence required it, even though he had been a public advocate of a different cosmology for fifty years. The evolutionists' long commitment to a particular cosmology might help us to understand their emotional reactions when they are contradicted with hard evidence.
Since evolutionists often claim, "We are of science, and intelligent design is of faith," we are entitled to know if this is true. So far in our deliberations, it has become clear that intelligent design is a science with roots in a philosophy. Is the same thing true of evolution? Yes, indeed.
Prior to French Enlightenment science, there was no concept of a necessary link between science and the philosophy of materialism--which holds that nothing exists outside the realm of matter. (This was due in part to the fact that most of the founders and eminent names of early science were Christians.) During the 1750's and 60's, Denis Diderot (1731–1784), the leading editor of the Encyclopedia and other leading French "philosophies," borrowed empirical ideas from Bacon, Locke, and Hume, and mechanistic ideas from Descartes, to create a hard-boiled new kind of materialism. The "philosophies" were either atheists or anti-clericalists and their new materialism excludes the possibility of the existence of God or the possibility that God intrudes into nature or intervenes in the affairs of men. The philosophies argued in the encyclopedia that materialism and science were of necessity linked and that traditional theism is necessarily excluded from science. They argued that matter is a closed system that excludes the supernatural, the paranormal and the spiritual. This philosophy of the cosmos came to be known as "scientific naturalism." The philosophies were the first to maintain that science and materialism are bound together in an indivisible embrace.
Influential German scientist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) emphasized the "laws of classical mechanics" and that all science can be reduced to a closed system of matter, force, chemistry, and energy. His emphasis of the mechanics of nature intensified the passion for materialism and the conviction that science is necessarily materialistic. These ideas were passed down to Ernst Von Brucke who was a college professor of Sigmund Freud (1855–1939). Freud, who was a superlative writer and commanded a wide audience, popularized the idea of science as the study of the world as a closed mechanistic system.
Scientific naturalists from Diderot to Freud promoted the idea that science was linked of necessity to materialism and that any conclusions of research that allow for a realm outside of a closed system of material cause and effect must not be science. Evolutionists still make this claim today. But is it true? Not at all. Materialists have used the mechanisms of nature in an attempt to prove materialism, but that does not prove that the assumption of materialism is essential to science. Microbiologist Michael Behe, one of the most famous of the intelligent design scientists, uses the mechanical processes of microscopic creatures as an illustration of the irreducible complexity of nature. He says that irreducible complexity hints at an intelligent design and presents a difficulty for the evolution model.
Although many evolutionists are saying that intelligent design is not of science because it does not support materialistic assumptions, saying so does not make it so. Such an assertion is unnatural to science. It is prima facie evidence that the loyalty of the evolution establishment to a philosophy trumps their curiosity about where the facts lead and calls into question their integrity concerning the pursuit of truth. Not only is a materialist philosophy not essential to science, but the insistence that it is essential to science forces science to serve a philosophy. This fallacy is a potentially corrupting influence upon scientists.
Does the evolution establishment have integrity?
It is not enough to point out a fallacy that is a potentially corrupting principle. It is also necessary to point to specific corrupt actions that flows from the fallacy. Each example must be a recurring syndrome and not just the act of one corrupt person.
Recurring statement of evolutionists: "We do not have to respond to criticism from intelligent design people because they are not of science." Truth: It is a fallacy to say they are not of science because they do not subscribe to a philosophy of materialism. It is contrary to an essential principle of science that inconvenient criticism can be disregarded. One of the time-tested principles of science is that the science community must attempt to "falsify" the results of research. Only conclusions that cannot be falsified should be accepted as sound research. The refusal of evolutionists to answer serious criticisms might be an evidence that they have no answer and prefer to silence the conversation.
Recurring statement of evolutionists: "Intelligent designers do not publish their papers in academic journals so as to expose themselves to the criticism of their peers. Therefore, they are not of science." Truth: This claim is based on the concealment of a false premise. The false assumption is that the journals would publish papers written by intelligent design scientists if the papers were of good quality. However, the biological science journals are controlled by the evolution establishment. Papers submitted by intelligent design scientists are automatically rejected. The prejudicial blackballing of a category of dissenting papers displays a lack of integrity by the evolution establishment and perhaps a fear of the truth. The claim that there is something wrong with intelligent designers because they do not publish is a cleverly deceptive statement. Actually, there is something wrong with the evolution establishment for refusing to allow intelligent design scientists to publish their papers. It is a question of integrity.
Recurring statement of evolutionists: "There is no evidence to support intelligent design and no evidence that challenges evolution." Truth: Such a statement can only be made by a liar, or one who has never read what the intelligent design scientists are saying. Evolutionists get away with the big lie tactic by suppressing the works of intelligent design scientists.
Recurring statement of evolutionists: "Intelligent design is biblical creationism in fancy dress." Truth: Biblical creationism starts with a biblical model and works outward from the model to the evidence. Intelligent design starts with observed facts and cautiously works upwards towards conclusions that it hopes will eventually be the foundation of a mature model. Evolutionists laugh at Intelligent designers because they lack a mature model. Intelligent design scientists are suspicious of evolutionists because of their agenda to find facts or reinterpret facts to fit their model and to sweep facts under the rug that do not fit the model.
Wings on the feet vs. weights on the feet
Intelligent design scientists follow Francis Bacon's cautious guidelines in research and analysis. The scientists should start with empirical facts and work slowly and cautiously upward to provisional conclusions. Francis Bacon (1521–1626), one of the founders of empirical science, advised the scientist to put weights on his feet rather than wings on his feet. With wings on their feet, scientists fly up from scanty evidence to sweeping generalities. With weights on their feet, scientists slowly trudge up a stairway. They use careful inductive reasoning to take a step to a provisional conclusion and carefully tests the conclusion at that stage before taking the next step to a conclusion that is slightly more generalized.
In accord with Bacon's advice, the intelligent designers have avoided flying upwards to sweeping conclusions. They have resisted formulating a general theory because of empirical caution. In contrast, the intelligent designers accuse the evolutionists of hastily seizing fragments of evidence and impetuously flying up to sweeping generalities and writing imaginative "just-so" stories. Rudyard Kipling's "just-so" stories for children include a fanciful yarn about how the leopard got his spots. When scientists ignore Bacon and put wings on their feet, they wind up with "just-so" stories, like the evolutionist who conjured up a missing link from the discovery of one fossilized toe.
Do evolutionists suppress facts?
Yes, evolutionists often suppress the facts when they are inconvenient to the evolution model and the philosophy of materialism.
Example 1: All nine phyla of complex animals appeared suddenly in the Cambrian rock in China. No complex animals appear in Pre-Cambrian rock. No transitional forms of simple creatures evolving into more complex creatures appear in Pre-Cambrian rocks. Some Chinese scientists have rejected Darwinism because of these findings. The American evolution establishment has suppressed the information, so that many American scientists and students of science have never heard of the "Cambrian explosion." Scientists in Communist China have significant freedom of thought and publication. Biological science in democratic America is under the dictatorship of the evolution establishment. However, if President Bush has his way, high school children will be allowed to hear about the "Cambrian explosion."
Example 2: After the discovery of DNA in 1953, evolutionists realized that natural selection is inadequate to explain "macro-evolution," which is evolution from one species to another. Natural selection cannot add new information to the DNA during the evolution of a new species. Dogs cannot evolve into cats through natural selection, because there is a lot of information in cat DNA that is missing in dog DNA. Natural selection cannot make this data appear the DNA. However, evolutionists also recognized that "micro-evolution," which is variation within a species, can occur by natural selection or selective breeding because no new information needs to be added to the DNA. A society of breeders can start with poodles and after thousands of generations of selective breeding wind up with a Saint Bernard. All the information in poodle DNA is also in Saint Bernard DNA.
Evolutionists decided to fix their evolutionary mechanism by claiming that gene mutations can supply new information to DNA. Hopefully, mutations plus natural selection can produce macro-evolution. Students are not told that no example has ever been found of one species evolving into a new species through mutations. Only minor variations within a species have been discovered that involve mutations, and most of these variations are harmful. Students are routinely given examples of micro-evolution as proof of the evolution of species. The fact that micro-evolution is not an evidence of macro-evolution is concealed. When intelligent designers protest this misinformation of students, evolutionists will sometimes say that there is no difference between micro-evolution and macro-evolution, and that creation scientists invented the concept of micro and macro-evolution. This is false, of course. The evolutionists, themselves, discovered the difference between micro-evolution and macro-evolution. That is why they added gene mutation to their model for macro-evolution. However, it is easy to fool students by palming off examples of micro-evolution as evidence for the evolution of new species. It is very easy to conceal the difference between micro-evolution and macro-evolution from students. The evolutionists do not play fair. If President Bush has his way, students will be allowed to hear about the difference between micro-evolution and macro-evolution.
Example 3. The late paleontologist Steven Jay Gould said that the fossil record demonstrates that "species stasis" is the norm. Species change is rare and sudden. It is not a continuous process as evolutionists had long thought. Gould called his theory "punctuated equilibrium," because the long "equilibrium" period when species stay the same are "punctuated" by great change. Gould assumes the sudden change in species is the reason why evolutionists have never found the multitudes of intermediate forms that they have always been looking for--and which Darwin said they must find if evolution is true.
Gould was too famous and too widely published for his theory of punctuated equilibrium to be suppressed. However, the evolution establishment has enough clout to prevent school children from hearing about punctuated equilibrium.
Interestingly, Gould was an articulate defender of evolution all his life and thought that punctuated equilibrium is consistent with evolution. But consider the difficulties. Gould insisted that all evolution is random and without purpose and design. Yet, he also said evolution comes in great spurts in which hundreds of thousands of gene mutations occur in a relatively short period of time and perfectly synchronize with each other. At the same time, each individual mutation must give the creature an immediate advantage in survival--or it will die. After the evolution spurt, the combination of new mutations much give the altered creature an adaptive advantage. The new species must have an internal harmony of parts--as though it had been designed. Scientist William Dembski claims that the mathematical odds of this happening are remote. It is far more plausible that the rare but sudden species changes in the fossil record represent the intervention of an intelligent designer.
Conclusion
The theory of evolution is a blend of science and the philosophy of materialism. The evolution establishment has gradually corrupted the science so that it will serve their theoretical model of random evolution in order to support their philosophy of materialism. This corruption includes the concealment of inconvenient evidence, sheltering themselves from criticism, making sweeping generalities from fragments of evidence, and making false charges against intelligent design scientists.
Like the theory of evolution, intelligent design science has links to a philosophy, namely the philosophy of Deism and natural law. However, intelligent design science is protected from corruption by its careful adherence to the empirical disciplines of Francis Bacon.
In conclusion, whether one believes in evolution or intelligent design science, one is obliged to consider that at present, the intelligent designers are operating at a higher level of integrity than the evolution establishment.
Evolution vs. intelligent design: which model has more integrity?: "Evolution vs. intelligent design: which model has more integrity?"
Fred Hutchison
RenewAmerica analyst
President Bush said that public schools should expose students to both evolution and intelligent design science and discuss the scientific controversies as the two models clash. The press unleashed a flurry of editorials that claimed that this would involve a comparison of science with religion and a comparison of facts with faith.
But is this true? Is the evolution camp misunderstanding or misrepresenting what the intelligent design scientists are saying by calling it faith and not science? Even Charles Krauthammer, one of my favorite columnists and television pundits, asserts that intelligent design is faith, not science. Has Krauthammer, a medical doctor, read what the intelligent design scientists are saying, or is he following what he was taught by evolutionists in medical school? Are important thinkers with a scientific background, like Dr. Krauthammer, changing their mind on this point? Yes. I heard one speak in late July (2005) at Oxford, University.
Intelligent design: science or faith?
The C.S. Lewis Conference (named Oxbridge, because it meets at Oxford and Cambridge) featured a discussion between eminent philosophers Anthony Flew and Gary Habermas. Anthony Flew was one of the world's most famous atheists because he has debated theist philosophers about the existence of God for decades and some of these debates were televised. For much of his life, Flew based his atheism upon science. His recent and celebrated conversion to theism was also based upon science.
Flew was invited to Oxbridge to join Habermas, his old debating partner and friend, for a discussion about Flew's recollections of C.S. Lewis at Oxford and Flew's conversion from atheism to theism. His conversion to theism came from reading the works of intelligent design scientists. He concluded that the weight of the scientific evidence points to the idea that the universe was designed, and therefore must have an intelligent designer. Habermas asked him about faith and Flew denied that faith had anything to do with his change of mind. He said he was logically following where the evidence led him. Flew obviously regards the research of the intelligent design scientists as science and not faith. What say you to this, Dr. Krauthammer?
Natural law, science, and government
Interestingly, Flew insists he is not a Christian or a religious monotheist and that he has no faith in a personal God. Habermas asked him if he is a Deist and Flew said "yes." A Deist believes in the existence of an impersonal and detached God who is the designer and creator of the universe. The Deist God gave man the gift of reason so he could discover the laws of nature and the design of the universe. Then he stepped away from his creation and left the governance of the world to man. Eighteenth century Deism contributed to the development of Natural law philosophy, which influenced science, philosophy, ethics, and political philosophy.
Deism and Natural law philosophy influenced American founding fathers Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and James Madison, Jefferson's protégé and author of the Constitution. Jefferson opened the Declaration with these words from natural law philosophy: "When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people...to assume those separate but equal stations which the Laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle them.... We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...." Natural rights are derived from natural laws. There are two kinds of natural laws: laws of nature that scientists study, and laws governing human conduct. Concerning the second, natural law decrees that the rights of the individual must not be transgressed by persons or governments.
We have a natural law constitution and a revival of natural law science, namely intelligent design science. Yet some of our judges have assumed that the teaching of natural law science in the public schools violates our natural law constitution. For example, in McLean vs. Arkansas (1984), Judge William Overton ruled that the teaching of scientific creationism in public schools violates the "separation of church and state." Let us assume that Judge Overton would have included intelligent design science as a branch of scientific creationism. There are no natural law churches in America. The last Deist churches in England closed in the eighteenth century. Therefore, how does teaching natural law science bring a church's doctrine into the classroom? Since the Deist God does not answer prayer or involve himself in human life, is not Deism more of a philosophy than a religion? If teaching natural law science like intelligent design is contrary to the "separation of church and state," then our natural law constitution is contrary to "the separation of church and state."
Judge Overton's opinion is based upon two false assumptions: first, that the Constitution is hostile to religion, and second, that natural law philosophy and intelligent design science represent a religion. Madison, who wrote the Constitution, was inspired by natural law philosophy that was based upon the assumptions of philosophical Deism. One assumption of Deism is that men will form rational social contracts like the U.S. Constitution, as guided by self-evident truths from "nature and nature's god." Another assumption is that men will use reason, observation, and experience to discover the laws of nature. Never was there a science more in keeping with the spirit of the Constitution than intelligent design science. Both the Constitution and intelligent design science are triumphs of natural law philosophy.
Einstein's physics: a violation of church/state separation?
Anthony Flew's Deism is a little different from Jefferson's and Madison's Deism. Anthony Flew said he believes in Einstein's God. Einstein said in 1929 and was quoted by the New York Times, "I believe in Spinoza's god who reveals Himself in orderly harmony that exists, not a God who concerns himself with the fate of human beings" (source: Albert Einstein – Scientist, edited by Paul Schilipp 1970). Spinoza was a rationalist philosopher and a pantheist. He believed that everything is interconnected within one gigantic system and that this system and everything it contains is "God." Monotheistic religions and traditional Deism sharply differentiate between Creator and creation. Spinoza, Einstein, and Flew make no distinction between God and the cosmos. Intelligent design science brought Flew to Einstein's impersonal pantheistic God. It did not bring him to a personal faith in a personal God or to anything remotely resembling a religion.
Einstein started with Spinoza's general principle that everything that exists is essentially one, and everything is harmoniously interconnected into a beautiful whole. From this presupposition, he developed his theories of physics through blackboard mathematics. During the later part of his career, Einstein's futile pursuit of a unified field theory was driven by his belief that everything is harmoniously connected and interrelated. Einstein acquired this life-long conviction in his youth while reading Spinoza's pantheistic philosophy.
If deistic natural law science like intelligent design violates the doctrine of separation of church and state, does Einstein's physics, which is based in pantheism, likewise violate that doctrine? Of course not, and neither does intelligent design science violate the separation of church and state. Einstein was a philosophical pantheist, but had no interest in the mystical spirituality of pantheist religion. Intelligent design science is no more a religion than Einstein's physics. The intelligent design writers make no mention of who the intelligent designer might be and say nothing about faith or spirituality. Anthony Flew, who was an Oxford professor of philosophy, thinks that belief in Einstein's god is a particular kind of philosophical Deism. He views intelligent design science as a true science that is compatible with Einstein's philosophy. He firmly rejects personal faith and religion.
The logic is inescapable. Although natural law philosophy has roots in theism, it is a philosophy in the category of rationalism, like the philosophies of Spinoza, Descartes, and Leibnitz. Immanuel Kant fused philosophical rationalism with philosophical empiricism in his work, Critique of Pure Reason. He facilitated the blend of reason and evidence in modern science. A scientific model should be logically sound and mathematically articulated, if possible. However, a model must be vindicated by hard empirical evidence. Einstein's blackboard theories about how gravity bends light were rejected out of hand until the solar eclipse of 1919 when scientists measured the bending of light as it passes by the earth. Flew is a rational philosopher, but it was the hard, scientific evidence that won him over to intelligent design and Deism.
Is evolution a mixture of science and philosophy?
If we can ban a scientific model, such as intelligent design, from the classroom simply because it has roots in a philosophy that has theistic implications, can we also throw out evolution if it is revealed to be a blend of science and a philosophy with cosmological implications? Of course not. It would be absurd to throw out either intelligent design or evolution on these grounds. Although the ultimate winner in the contest between these two scientific models will be determined by the evidence, it is helpful to understand that the two models represent two conflicting cosmologies and world views. It is extremely painful for a man to change a long-held world view. I stand in awe of the profound integrity of Anthony Flew to change his cosmology when the evidence required it, even though he had been a public advocate of a different cosmology for fifty years. The evolutionists' long commitment to a particular cosmology might help us to understand their emotional reactions when they are contradicted with hard evidence.
Since evolutionists often claim, "We are of science, and intelligent design is of faith," we are entitled to know if this is true. So far in our deliberations, it has become clear that intelligent design is a science with roots in a philosophy. Is the same thing true of evolution? Yes, indeed.
Prior to French Enlightenment science, there was no concept of a necessary link between science and the philosophy of materialism--which holds that nothing exists outside the realm of matter. (This was due in part to the fact that most of the founders and eminent names of early science were Christians.) During the 1750's and 60's, Denis Diderot (1731–1784), the leading editor of the Encyclopedia and other leading French "philosophies," borrowed empirical ideas from Bacon, Locke, and Hume, and mechanistic ideas from Descartes, to create a hard-boiled new kind of materialism. The "philosophies" were either atheists or anti-clericalists and their new materialism excludes the possibility of the existence of God or the possibility that God intrudes into nature or intervenes in the affairs of men. The philosophies argued in the encyclopedia that materialism and science were of necessity linked and that traditional theism is necessarily excluded from science. They argued that matter is a closed system that excludes the supernatural, the paranormal and the spiritual. This philosophy of the cosmos came to be known as "scientific naturalism." The philosophies were the first to maintain that science and materialism are bound together in an indivisible embrace.
Influential German scientist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) emphasized the "laws of classical mechanics" and that all science can be reduced to a closed system of matter, force, chemistry, and energy. His emphasis of the mechanics of nature intensified the passion for materialism and the conviction that science is necessarily materialistic. These ideas were passed down to Ernst Von Brucke who was a college professor of Sigmund Freud (1855–1939). Freud, who was a superlative writer and commanded a wide audience, popularized the idea of science as the study of the world as a closed mechanistic system.
Scientific naturalists from Diderot to Freud promoted the idea that science was linked of necessity to materialism and that any conclusions of research that allow for a realm outside of a closed system of material cause and effect must not be science. Evolutionists still make this claim today. But is it true? Not at all. Materialists have used the mechanisms of nature in an attempt to prove materialism, but that does not prove that the assumption of materialism is essential to science. Microbiologist Michael Behe, one of the most famous of the intelligent design scientists, uses the mechanical processes of microscopic creatures as an illustration of the irreducible complexity of nature. He says that irreducible complexity hints at an intelligent design and presents a difficulty for the evolution model.
Although many evolutionists are saying that intelligent design is not of science because it does not support materialistic assumptions, saying so does not make it so. Such an assertion is unnatural to science. It is prima facie evidence that the loyalty of the evolution establishment to a philosophy trumps their curiosity about where the facts lead and calls into question their integrity concerning the pursuit of truth. Not only is a materialist philosophy not essential to science, but the insistence that it is essential to science forces science to serve a philosophy. This fallacy is a potentially corrupting influence upon scientists.
Does the evolution establishment have integrity?
It is not enough to point out a fallacy that is a potentially corrupting principle. It is also necessary to point to specific corrupt actions that flows from the fallacy. Each example must be a recurring syndrome and not just the act of one corrupt person.
Recurring statement of evolutionists: "We do not have to respond to criticism from intelligent design people because they are not of science." Truth: It is a fallacy to say they are not of science because they do not subscribe to a philosophy of materialism. It is contrary to an essential principle of science that inconvenient criticism can be disregarded. One of the time-tested principles of science is that the science community must attempt to "falsify" the results of research. Only conclusions that cannot be falsified should be accepted as sound research. The refusal of evolutionists to answer serious criticisms might be an evidence that they have no answer and prefer to silence the conversation.
Recurring statement of evolutionists: "Intelligent designers do not publish their papers in academic journals so as to expose themselves to the criticism of their peers. Therefore, they are not of science." Truth: This claim is based on the concealment of a false premise. The false assumption is that the journals would publish papers written by intelligent design scientists if the papers were of good quality. However, the biological science journals are controlled by the evolution establishment. Papers submitted by intelligent design scientists are automatically rejected. The prejudicial blackballing of a category of dissenting papers displays a lack of integrity by the evolution establishment and perhaps a fear of the truth. The claim that there is something wrong with intelligent designers because they do not publish is a cleverly deceptive statement. Actually, there is something wrong with the evolution establishment for refusing to allow intelligent design scientists to publish their papers. It is a question of integrity.
Recurring statement of evolutionists: "There is no evidence to support intelligent design and no evidence that challenges evolution." Truth: Such a statement can only be made by a liar, or one who has never read what the intelligent design scientists are saying. Evolutionists get away with the big lie tactic by suppressing the works of intelligent design scientists.
Recurring statement of evolutionists: "Intelligent design is biblical creationism in fancy dress." Truth: Biblical creationism starts with a biblical model and works outward from the model to the evidence. Intelligent design starts with observed facts and cautiously works upwards towards conclusions that it hopes will eventually be the foundation of a mature model. Evolutionists laugh at Intelligent designers because they lack a mature model. Intelligent design scientists are suspicious of evolutionists because of their agenda to find facts or reinterpret facts to fit their model and to sweep facts under the rug that do not fit the model.
Wings on the feet vs. weights on the feet
Intelligent design scientists follow Francis Bacon's cautious guidelines in research and analysis. The scientists should start with empirical facts and work slowly and cautiously upward to provisional conclusions. Francis Bacon (1521–1626), one of the founders of empirical science, advised the scientist to put weights on his feet rather than wings on his feet. With wings on their feet, scientists fly up from scanty evidence to sweeping generalities. With weights on their feet, scientists slowly trudge up a stairway. They use careful inductive reasoning to take a step to a provisional conclusion and carefully tests the conclusion at that stage before taking the next step to a conclusion that is slightly more generalized.
In accord with Bacon's advice, the intelligent designers have avoided flying upwards to sweeping conclusions. They have resisted formulating a general theory because of empirical caution. In contrast, the intelligent designers accuse the evolutionists of hastily seizing fragments of evidence and impetuously flying up to sweeping generalities and writing imaginative "just-so" stories. Rudyard Kipling's "just-so" stories for children include a fanciful yarn about how the leopard got his spots. When scientists ignore Bacon and put wings on their feet, they wind up with "just-so" stories, like the evolutionist who conjured up a missing link from the discovery of one fossilized toe.
Do evolutionists suppress facts?
Yes, evolutionists often suppress the facts when they are inconvenient to the evolution model and the philosophy of materialism.
Example 1: All nine phyla of complex animals appeared suddenly in the Cambrian rock in China. No complex animals appear in Pre-Cambrian rock. No transitional forms of simple creatures evolving into more complex creatures appear in Pre-Cambrian rocks. Some Chinese scientists have rejected Darwinism because of these findings. The American evolution establishment has suppressed the information, so that many American scientists and students of science have never heard of the "Cambrian explosion." Scientists in Communist China have significant freedom of thought and publication. Biological science in democratic America is under the dictatorship of the evolution establishment. However, if President Bush has his way, high school children will be allowed to hear about the "Cambrian explosion."
Example 2: After the discovery of DNA in 1953, evolutionists realized that natural selection is inadequate to explain "macro-evolution," which is evolution from one species to another. Natural selection cannot add new information to the DNA during the evolution of a new species. Dogs cannot evolve into cats through natural selection, because there is a lot of information in cat DNA that is missing in dog DNA. Natural selection cannot make this data appear the DNA. However, evolutionists also recognized that "micro-evolution," which is variation within a species, can occur by natural selection or selective breeding because no new information needs to be added to the DNA. A society of breeders can start with poodles and after thousands of generations of selective breeding wind up with a Saint Bernard. All the information in poodle DNA is also in Saint Bernard DNA.
Evolutionists decided to fix their evolutionary mechanism by claiming that gene mutations can supply new information to DNA. Hopefully, mutations plus natural selection can produce macro-evolution. Students are not told that no example has ever been found of one species evolving into a new species through mutations. Only minor variations within a species have been discovered that involve mutations, and most of these variations are harmful. Students are routinely given examples of micro-evolution as proof of the evolution of species. The fact that micro-evolution is not an evidence of macro-evolution is concealed. When intelligent designers protest this misinformation of students, evolutionists will sometimes say that there is no difference between micro-evolution and macro-evolution, and that creation scientists invented the concept of micro and macro-evolution. This is false, of course. The evolutionists, themselves, discovered the difference between micro-evolution and macro-evolution. That is why they added gene mutation to their model for macro-evolution. However, it is easy to fool students by palming off examples of micro-evolution as evidence for the evolution of new species. It is very easy to conceal the difference between micro-evolution and macro-evolution from students. The evolutionists do not play fair. If President Bush has his way, students will be allowed to hear about the difference between micro-evolution and macro-evolution.
Example 3. The late paleontologist Steven Jay Gould said that the fossil record demonstrates that "species stasis" is the norm. Species change is rare and sudden. It is not a continuous process as evolutionists had long thought. Gould called his theory "punctuated equilibrium," because the long "equilibrium" period when species stay the same are "punctuated" by great change. Gould assumes the sudden change in species is the reason why evolutionists have never found the multitudes of intermediate forms that they have always been looking for--and which Darwin said they must find if evolution is true.
Gould was too famous and too widely published for his theory of punctuated equilibrium to be suppressed. However, the evolution establishment has enough clout to prevent school children from hearing about punctuated equilibrium.
Interestingly, Gould was an articulate defender of evolution all his life and thought that punctuated equilibrium is consistent with evolution. But consider the difficulties. Gould insisted that all evolution is random and without purpose and design. Yet, he also said evolution comes in great spurts in which hundreds of thousands of gene mutations occur in a relatively short period of time and perfectly synchronize with each other. At the same time, each individual mutation must give the creature an immediate advantage in survival--or it will die. After the evolution spurt, the combination of new mutations much give the altered creature an adaptive advantage. The new species must have an internal harmony of parts--as though it had been designed. Scientist William Dembski claims that the mathematical odds of this happening are remote. It is far more plausible that the rare but sudden species changes in the fossil record represent the intervention of an intelligent designer.
Conclusion
The theory of evolution is a blend of science and the philosophy of materialism. The evolution establishment has gradually corrupted the science so that it will serve their theoretical model of random evolution in order to support their philosophy of materialism. This corruption includes the concealment of inconvenient evidence, sheltering themselves from criticism, making sweeping generalities from fragments of evidence, and making false charges against intelligent design scientists.
Like the theory of evolution, intelligent design science has links to a philosophy, namely the philosophy of Deism and natural law. However, intelligent design science is protected from corruption by its careful adherence to the empirical disciplines of Francis Bacon.
In conclusion, whether one believes in evolution or intelligent design science, one is obliged to consider that at present, the intelligent designers are operating at a higher level of integrity than the evolution establishment.
Evolution vs. intelligent design: which model has more integrity?: "Evolution vs. intelligent design: which model has more integrity?"
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