Irony

GURPS Space says something to effect of, "The good Lord must love space, He sure made an awful lot of it."

Similarly with irony. I'm not sure of God's exact stand on irony (it may be a result of the Fall). But He sure makes an awful lot of it.

I have been listening to a sermon by John Macarthur (aka Johnny Mac, which I sadly don't have a link for).

It is called "The Comedy at Calvary".

Of course, you might think that odd. The crucifixion was a terribly tragic thing.

But not for the people orchestrating it.

They saw this as the final repudiation of Jesus' ministry, and the validation of their own behavior.

Similarly, God uses the foolishness of preaching the Gospel, to overturn the "wisdom" of the world.

The ironing is delicious.

Sex Again

Last time I looked at the time percentages behind sex.

Now Science Daily has given me the opportunity to rant about late night TV commercials! (Yea!)

If you watch TV after about 9pm (and for some reason, mostly Sci-Fi related stuff), you've seen the ones I'm talking about:

Guy: I have herpes.
Girl: And I don't.
Guy: And we'd like to keep it that way.
Announcer: Tetra-metha-super-hydro-medicine will reduce your chance of getting herpes.

I always have to say, "Hey! Lady! You could, like, you know, get a guy who doesn't have herpes!"

They have hard numbers. Hard numbers are always fun:

• 5,384 people in the study (~1794 women, leaving 3590 men)
• 415 people got herpes by the end of the study (same ratio, so ~138 women)
  
• Condoms gave a 30% advantage

Sadly, we don't know the ratio of condom use, so we can't calculate the base rates. We do know that 415/5384 = 7.7% of the people got herpes - that's 1 in 13. Maybe 1 in 10 base?

NIH and Dred Scott

The Dred Scott Decision is perhaps one of the most famously bad decisions of the Supreme Court. It was just four years later that the Civil War began, and later the decision was overturned by the 13th and 14th ammendments.

The decision is chilling in its terms:

"Does not this show that property in a human being does not arise from nature or from the common law, but, in the language of this court, 'it is a mere municipal regulation, founded upon and limited to the range of the territorial laws?'" (Page 60, US 549)

"A slave is not a mere chattel. He bears the impress of his Maker, and is amenable to the laws of God and man, and he is destined to an endless existence." (US 550)

This was clearly a different time, when the Court would acknowledge God as Creator. Yet, in the same breath, they would deny a human being such a basic right as freedom.

That is certainly their right to do. But such a perversion of nature cannot long stand.


Today we have a similar situation. I do not think it will be long before Roe and Dred Scott are connected in the common telling of history (I pray it would not take such another event as the Civil War to come about). Of course, an extension of the abortion issue is ESC...

From the National Institute of Health:

"hESCs should have been derived from human embryos: that were created using in vitro fertilization for reproductive purposes and were no longer needed for this purpose"

If you are "no longer needed", you can be killed.

ASC and Alzheimer's

Science Daily is reporting an experiment with mice. A compound usually used to stimulate the growth of additional bone marrow stem cells may be able to stimulate neural stem cells to offset Alzheimer's.

This is being driven into human tests.

ASC and Heart Attack

There has been a lot of developments in the use of adult stem cells in the treatment of the heart. The latest involves mice, and uses an extract derived from ASC, rather than the whole cells.

Sin Is Irrational

Hmm, hot on the heals of yesterday's post, we have some more data to ruin a rationalist's day.

Quote of the day:

"The more elaborate ethical debates that we engage in are largely attempts at post-hoc rationalizations of our earlier decisions. "

Now, if this can happen in a clear cut economic sense, how can the rationalist be sure it's not happening every day, in every way?

Sin Is Illogical

Sin causes several problems for the rationalist.

The first being, "What is sin?" Without an objective standard, it causes a lot of confusion and division.

The second being, "Why do we sin?" Not the easy sins - like lying to protect our image, or things we can never get caught for that benefit us.

Big sins, stupid sins.

Like, say, Eliott Spitzer.

The story is only tenuously connected to Spitzer, especially with a comment like:

"when people operate above or below a certain level of moral self-worth, they instinctively push back in the opposite direction to reach an internally regulated set point of goodness"

Yea, I've spent my whole life prosecuting bad people, so I'll balance it out by engaging in some prostitution.

This story flows a lot better when you think about it in terms of sin.

Man inherently understands sin (although he may consciously reject it). This understanding drives justice.

Man is also self-righteous (believing himself more good than he really is), and works-righteous (doing good to cancel out bad he has down).

This is achieved largely through justification (man is self-justified, that is, made right in his own eyes; according to his own standards).

A man like Spitzer would say, "I have worked hard, I deserve this". Or "It is only a small thing, I can stop any time". Of course, he is enslaved to sin (Romans 6:17).

That is the overwhelming sinfulness of sin.