Study author Jerry McManus and colleagues Roger Francois, Jeanne Gherardi, Lloyd Keigwin and Susan Brown-Leger at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and in France report that the coldest interval of the last 20,000 years occurred when the overturning circulation collapsed following the discharge of icebergs into the North Atlantic 17,500 years ago. This regional climatic extreme began suddenly and lasted for two thousand years. Another cold snap 12,700 years ago lasting more than a thousand years and accompanied another slowdown of overturning circulation. Each of these two cold intervals was followed by a rapid acceleration of the overturning circulation and dramatically warmer climates over Northern Europe and the North Atlantic region.
McManus and colleagues studied a seafloor sediment core from the subtropical North Atlantic that was retrieved from an area known as the Bermuda Rise. The core contains sediments deposited over tens of thousands of years that include shells of small animals called foraminifera that record surface water conditions in their shells when alive. The researchers measured oxygen isotope ratios in each individual sandgrain-sized shell to determine climatic changes that occurred since the last ice age. They used a new tool, based on two daughter isotopes of uranium that occur naturally in seawater, as a proxy for changes in the rate of ocean circulation. The technique has been used for other purposes in the past, but this is the first time it has been used to generate a detailed time series that provides a history of variations in the strength of ocean circulation.
The isotopes, protactinium and thorium, are produced at constant rates in seawater by radioactive decay from dissolved uranium and are removed quickly by adhering to particles settling to the ocean floor. Thorium is removed so rapidly by particles that it resides in the water column no more than a few decades before nearly all of it is buried on the sea floor below where it was produced. Protactinium is removed less readily and thus remains in the water column 100 to 200 years. As a result, about half of the protactinium produced in North Atlantic water today is exported into the Southern Ocean as part of the ocean circulation system known as the great conveyor. At times when the rate of overturning circulation slows, the proportion of protactinium buried in the North Atlantic sediments increases, thus preserving the record of such changes in the accumulating sediments.
The research team found that the rate of ocean circulation varied remarkably following the last ice age, with strong reductions and abrupt reinvigorations closely tied to regional climate changes. McManus says this is the best demonstration to date of what many paleoclimatologists and ocean scientists have long suspected. “Strong overturning circulation leads to warm conditions in the North Atlantic region, and weak overturning circulation leads to cold conditions,” he said. “We’ve known for some time from changes in the chemistry of the seawater itself that something was different about the ocean’s circulation at times of rapid climate changes, and it now appears that the difference was related to changes in the rate of ocean circulation. One big question is why the circulation would collapse in the first place and possibly trigger abrupt climate change. We think it is the input of fresh water to the surface ocean at a particularly sensitive location.”
McManus says the team is now applying this same technique to sea floor cores collected in other regions of the North Atlantic. “We’ve made a little step forward in understanding the ocean’s role in the climate puzzle, but there are more pieces to fill in.”
Ricky,
If so-called ‘free thinking’ populations were not so reactionary and prone to making half informed decisions, one could reasonably throw out incomplete scientific information for the masses. (Maybe the climate concern will be a big deal, maybe it will not.)
In any event, what will people do if this does turn out to be serious threat? Run about like chickens with their heads chopped off?! More than likely.
In such situations, it is far better to have all the facts in context before releasing it to the public. On this issue, the pres is correct.
…what designer color do you want yours to be to coordinate with your wardrobe?
Let me see if I follow your logic. IF the public was NOT so prone to making half-informed decisions, THEN they could be given full scientific info. But BECAUSE they ARE prone to making half-informed decisions, they should NOT be given full scientific info.
Ummm….isn’t it NOT giving the public full scientific info what makes them half-informed in the first place?
Isn’t “keep the public half-informed” exactly the policy espoused by the initial NASA memo – don’t have government scientists discuss facts with the public, leave them half-informed by a silly little movie with great entertainment value and uncertain-to-no science value?
You will NEVER get me to agree that a government acting to keep its citizens in ignorance is a good idea.
What will people do if this does turn out to be a serious threat? Well, I hope they do what democracy is designed to allow them to do and elect approriate-for-the-times leadership to organize them and lead them out of the mess in which they find themselves.
Having the government decide when all the facts are ready and true and in context before they are to be released to the public is a recipe for a totalitarian dictatorship. Such an attitude is TOTALLY inappropriate for scientific issues, when the “facts” are ALWAYS subject to revision by further evidence being submitted.
…to match our mandated rose colored glasses…
You have convinced me that the Bush admin. has an agenda to not only destroy the US but the entire planet. The sky is indeed falling.
I only wonder why these rich Republicans do not want to buy some time to enjoy their riches?
I guess they just must be completely stupid.
Scientists are so smart. They never seem to disagree and when was it that they last made a mistake.
Keep up the good work and keep watching those malicious Bush people.
PS. Say Hi to Chicken Little for me, would ya.
…didn’t you hear there’s been a manned Moon/Mars program announced, too? You don’t think they’re going to send non-Republican astronauts, do you?
we have virtually no troops left with which to fight an ice age…
RJ “Having the government decide when all the facts are ready and true and in context before they are to be released to the public is a recipe for a totalitarian dictatorship.”
Well, shoot, R. I’ll bet you have had (at some point) relevant info that you’ve kept off this web site for some nefarious reason, too. Does automatically make you a totalitarian dictator?
Guess it must.
Further, I doubt being half informed or fully informed will make an iota of difference to the tendency of the world’s entire population towards “ruining” the planet. It’s not just an oversight that belongs to conservatives, fyi.
And since how much info, and when it is released is not that big of a deal, answer this then, please:
Why shouldn’t the gov. release the complete details of the a-bomb making process on the web, (probably already is) maybe along with a few other high tech military bio-warfare secrets?
heh?
Give me a break. The last time a politcal party went this far into saying others of their countrymen were unfit to lead, they were called Nazis.
I’ve got nothing personal against conservatives and I’m happy to let them lead when they’re elected to do so. But the attitudes of some conservatives like Ann and Rush (and plenty of others in elected office instead of just behind a mike or a keyboard) are just plain scary. The day people like me stop standing up to say so and provide a counterbalance is a very sad day for America.
I mean, think about what Rush said in that last line of his. Can’t be trusted to be placed in a leadership position? Is he saying an Oath of Allegence to the Conservative Cause should be legislated into law as a pre-requisite for running for public office? How scary is THAT?
The movie’s premise is completely retarded. The thermal mass of the ground itself would prevent thick piles of snow from accumulating so rapidly. If I were a NASA scientist, I might have inadvertantly helped the administration by bad-mouthing the movie. That being said, the evidence is quite strong for interruptions of deep-water formation in the North Atlantic causing cold snaps in portions of the Northern Hemisphere. One must remember, though, that conditions now are rather unusual, i.e. the high CO2 concentration. If heat flow from the equator to the poles is interrupted under a high CO2 scenario, it seems to suggest that the tropical regions might undergo extreme heating, which might lead to high hurricane rates, etc.. More debate and study are warranted, not less, and the administration’s stance on this is therefore bad.
Brave man! Or perhaps just foolish :-)
…know your enemy.
..who it was made for.
Yes, R – undoubtedly Rush is far over the top with his `tude’. But I have no serious problems with Coulter. In my estimation, it’s rather wonderful to see a well-adjusted woman with a good mastery of the issues.
RJ: “3. I believe the better informed you are, the better prepared you are to make a difference regardless of your political views. The belief that the education level of a population is irrelevant is, in my opinion, a very dangerous attitude to have.”
I believe in precisely that, too. What is HIGHLY ironic, however, is that “the left” eventually winds up; in its expression of Bush hatred, aligning itself with the foremost `women haters’ in the world! And added to that, also aligns itself the most information suppressing, narrow minded religious society (culture) in the world.
How could right thinking individuals even find this plausible? !
A friend relayed this story to me, one she had read while visiting England a week or two ago. As the news story explained, a woman from Gaza had to be rescued and moved to another country by a Swiss foreign aid worker, after her family members tried to burn her to death. (she trusted a neighbor who claimed he would marry her. thus, she was being punished for becoming pregnant) However, since the first attempt on this young woman’s life was not successful, her mother tried to poison her while in the hospital. After some time, this same burn victim described an account of how her mother conceived and gave birth to a baby just about every year. But after already having one son and three daughters, she felt that it was necessary for her to kill each female infant that she bore thereafter. (what??!!)
So WHY, one wonders, does the left favor this world-view instead of supporting the president’s suppression of these very régimes? (If, after all, the promotion of education and information is supposedly central to a free society) It’s clear, isn’t it? Both American feminists (the self-serving men that support them) and many women of Arab countries, have considered it their responsibility to PLEASE MEN at all costs.
Seems simple, yes. But hey, if the shoe fits…
So until the time that men get their priorities straight, (and quit “supporting” women in largely cowardly, self-serving, in fact, unsupportive ways) the weather will wait. And if it doesn’t, we’re clearly set on a course to destroy each other and our off-spring, anyway.
That’s certainly a debatable point. Frankly, I’ve wondered if she’s not a man in drag. How firm her(?) grip is on the issues depends on whether or not you think she’s more astute than the rest of us or a mouth-foaming lunatic.
Equating those who object to the conservative view of the current war as promoting the subjugation of women is ludicrous. If Bush is waging this war to liberate females from male domination, there’s still work to be done in the good old US of A… and even moreso in African countries.. and China … and in South America.
No thinking individual from a Western culture wants to see women of other cultures treated as property or slaves, wearing what amounts to funeral shrouds, lacking education or medical care, and enduring genital mutilation. The REAL irony is that conservatives are conjuring up all these issues which have nothing to do with our supposed original purpose for going to war in Iraq as justification for our being there now.
…Ann is a man in drag.
I never cease to be amazed at your style of debate. Never stick around to let the absurdity of one position become glaringly obvious; instead, on to the next one…
First off, there’s a whole wide range of political beliefs in the world; the political landscape is not just Conservatives vs. The Monolithic “Left”. I do not consider myself to be “left” at all, although I get the impression you are continually trying to categorize me that way. I consider myself to be a centrist independent – I see lots of holes in both the Conservative and the Leftist manifestos.
Furthermore, being a leftist or centrist or anythingelse does not automatically make somebody a “Bush hater”. I do not hate Dubya. I think he is a simple man being led by a powerful group of others on a path where he is over his head and is taking this country in a dangerous direction. I want him and his pals voted out of power. I am very dismayed that John Kerry has been ordained as the one to do it, because I do not believe Kerry is a man worthy to be President. I am also very dismayed that Hillary is waiting in the wings to take her shot at the Presidency, because she is a crook just like Dubya is. Why we can’t get solid guys like McCain and Powell to run is a mystery to me.
Even more importantly than realizing that not everybody hates Bush when they are really just resisting the Christian Conservative agenda is to realize that such resistance does not AT ALL mean alignment towards or sympathy with the “women hater” Muslims you refer to. I am a pretty amazing individual; I can dislike two oppressive religio-political groups at the same time. There are many others like me; lump us with the vanishingly small Bush-hating-Osama-loving-lefties at your peril.
As far as your ain’t-the-world-tough-towards-women story goes, it’s not just Muslims that mistreat their women. The Chinese have a mandatory one-child policy and enforce it with infantacide. So what’s Dubya doing sending Dick to sell American’s most advanced nuclear technology to babykillers in China while throwing cold water on Taiwanese democracy? Umm…shouldn’t the Veep care more AND SAY MORE IN A STATE VISIT about saving (female!) babies and democracy than nuclear reactor commerce?
You want to push Dubya and the Conservative Superfriends as saviors to women, you’ve got a tough sell to me. Come back when the Religious Right has abandoned their policy of female subjugation and the Republican Party has reversed its decades of opposition to passage of the ERA.
I can totally understand why people would find her conduct a bit weird for a female. If I recall, my husband is not too turned on with her style, either. It’s just interesting(to me) to observe a woman who literally does not care what other people think (much less other women) and can articulate her points well.
If BOTH men and women would not neglect their moral responsibilities, the world, without a doubt, would be a better place. And it has to start with someone, why not Ann?
Remember, kind sir, this is all really over a movie that depicts a hypothetical scenario in the first place. But instead, to be on-topic, you’d rather that I’d have stuck on the `freedom of indiscriminate information’ issue, so that you can eventually be exonerated from being a Totalitarian Dictator?! We certainly can go back to that issue if you like. I can do that.
I picked up your third point, in case it escaped your notice, because I thought that the entire discussion revolved around this. Am I wrong?
If it really matters, forget all the other “fluff” then. Here was my central question:
“So WHY, one wonders, does the left (whomever they may be) favor this world-view instead of SUPPORTING the president’s suppression of these very régimes?”
They (along with China, etc) need to be seriously suppressed, so why not back Bush on this? You’ve suggested that you can dislike both Saddam and Bush and maintain your integrity. I strongly disagree. And I do so because they each stand for two totally opposing world views! It has become, by nature of who and what we’re dealing with, an ‘either or’ issue.
Not to worry though. “We” might destroy everything you see before another country gets a chance to!
If you stongly disagree that other political choices exist for you and America besides blindly following Saddam Hussain and blindly following George W. Bush, then mentally you are already living in a dictatorship. The freedom to disagree, the freedom to seek alternative leaders and paths of action, the freedom that is the essence of America, is already denied to you. Too bad, your loss.
America is a great country. We deserve a great leader. I maintain Dubya ain’t that leader. The guy is a failed small-time oilman that resorted to illegal insider trading and selling out to foreign interests that still taint his credibility now more than ever. He made his riches by getting a local government to use millions of tax dollars and build a sports stadium that benefited him, not the citizens who paid for it. He only had one single term as a state governor for experience before being run (within only six months of starting his second term as governor) as a figurehead by a neocon cabal for President of the United States. The guy has no legacy of public service or political seasoning that has prepared him for the toughest job in the world.
He goes around boasting “mission accomplished” and “bring ’em on” while hundreds of valiant servicemen and women die waiting for him to literaly switch from failed plan to failed plan to failed plan to failed plan on setting up a new Iraqi government, only to give up and let the UN he detests choose the Iraqi government for him and let one of Saddam’s own generals to set up the Falluja Defensive Force to “patrol” (yeah, right) a rebel stronghold the Marines could certainly destructively secure but unfortunately not pacify.
We’re way beyond the lack of Iraqi WMDs being reason enough to sideline Dubya. He’s blowing hundreds of billions in supplimental war funds America doesn’t have to spare in the face of half-trillion dollar deficits, and he doesn’t even have the guts to face Congress to ask for them in a legal manner in an election year. He’s lied to the troops with stop-loss orders and in-country tour extentions beyond a year, and he’s lied to the American people about saying our military is up to the job when it isn’t because it’s too small and Dubya resists enlarging it or implementing a draft, which is what you’ve got to have if you’re really fighting a long-term war. Meanwhile, our military is dangerously weak in the face of a real threat from North Korea and hasn’t been focused on the real goal: Find Osama and wheel him through Times Square in a cage for his own personal tickertape parade in downtown New York City.
Dubya man has got no plan to bring democracy to Iraq, much less hold it together in the face of civil war. The recent American prison torture photos (admittedly not Dubya’s direct fault, although if only the Reserves are nailed on this one and not the DOD MI units, that WILL be Dubya’s fault) are in my opinion an unrecoverable blow that deny us the moral high ground in the Arab mind. This week, with the UN selection of an Iraqi government because Dubya can’t do it, the appointment of a Baathist general to pacify a rebel city because Dubya can’t do it, and the publication of those photos swaying the Arab mind that Dubya can’t win – all of these add up to the 2004 version of the Tet offensive that is an unrecoverable loss for America on Dubya’s watch. I’ve given up on the man and I’m looking elsewhere for a leader to get us out of this mess.
If Iraq were a high school and this much bad juju happened, you’d fire the principal. Why Americans don’t seem to hold hold the Prez to the same logical standard of accountability is beyond me. I sure do.
Ricky,
Okay. I understand why you don’t support him. As always, I only wish that you understood what a difficult task that he has in front of him. In light of all the complex range of issues that he faces, I doubt that very few men know how to deal “logically” with terrorism; cuz terrorism, (by the very nature of it) seldom makes any sense at all! Further, “respect”, in the language of terrorism, is a matter of being willing to take more extensive risks than your opponent is. Believe me, if we had done absolutely nothing by this time, it would be OUR train stations that would be blown up!
I am loyal to conservativism for several reasons, but the foremost is that one of my older sisters, who was once a lovely flight attendant for Delta during the 70’s and
80’s, has had opportunities to meet and have discussions with both Reagan and Bush. (and also was a judge for the rep. committee.) She simply has so much integrity as a woman and a human being; she could probably enlist me as her little kamikaze any day of the week.
And of course, I know that you’re not a totalitarian dictator. It’s just that you often seem to surmise that no one can think through the issues as well as you do. And ESPECIALLY people who don’t see eye to eye with you politically.
RJ “The recent American prison torture photos (admittedly not Dubya’s direct fault, although if only the Reserves are nailed on this one and not the DOD MI units, that WILL be Dubya’s fault) are in my opinion an unrecoverable blow that deny us the moral high ground in the Arab mind.”
HIGH moral ground? REALLY. Pardon my intense skepticism on this issue.
From the AP “They wanted us to feel as though we were women, the way women feel and this is the worst insult, to feel like a woman,” al-Shweiri said.
..He said he and six other prisoners _ all hooded _ had to face the wall and bend over a little as they put their hands on the wall.
“They made us stand in a way that I am ashamed to describe. They came to look at us as we stood there. They knew this would humiliate us,” he said, adding that he was not sodomized.
“They were trying to humiliate us, break our pride. We are men. It’s OK if they beat me. Beatings don’t hurt us, it’s just a blow. But no one would want their manhood to be shattered,” he said.
In the same sense that there is no way you would be responsible for everything or even anything I write inside of your site, there is no way that the president is directly or indirectly responsible for what, in some cases, may have even been a hoax.
Of course, British papers tend to be sensational, so who knows.
sensitivity training, what’s it good for anyway?
I am not saying the Arabs occupy a particularly high moral ground, particularly regarding their treatment of women. I am saying the Americans have been trying to convince the Atabs that the Americans come to liberate / occupy their lands with high moral intentions such as freeing them from dictators and setting up democracies. The Arabs are just flat out not going to ever believe this anymore after the torture pictures have come out. We had one shot at claiming the moral high ground, and the photos and actions by a very few have spoiled the situation for all American troops in Iraq. Sad but true.
Killing a thousand people in Fallujah this past month didn’t help much, either.
the Commander-in-Chief ordered up this war with Iraq. I understand what you mean that he cannot help what some sadistic American and British soldiers evidently have done, but to say the pres is neither directly nor indirectly responsible is not taking into account an obvious conclusion.
If George Bush hadn’t gone to war, then these National Guardsmen, Brits, and whoever else is involved would have most assuredly been anywhere else other than in that pit-of-hell nightmare place where EVERY fundamentalist religious faction hates EVERY OTHER fundamentalist faction.
And before it’s all over, I even fear Saddam himself will somehow make some glorious comeback–if he’s turned over to the Iraqi courts. I shudder to think that many Iraqis probably prefer life under a REAL totalitarian dictator to what they’re living in at the moment.
I know that the airing of this little comment is real close to being off-topic, but bear with me, please.
Yesterday, during church services, I held a sweet 3-4 month old boy whose teen mom had unfortunately been gang-raped. In many sectors of our county, it would have been more than understandable for her to abort. I was amazed tho as I observed how perfect, pleasant and truly beautiful he was. Then it struck me…only we take the good and lovely things of the world and make them bad. It’s really not a matter of Iraqis vs. Americans. The oppression of others is a collective and universal problem.
So if we are “equal” in the most basic of instances and attributes, it is because we each have unquestionably oppressed another human being at some point in our lives.
GS “If George Bush hadn’t gone to war, then these National Guardsmen, Brits, and whoever else is involved would have most assuredly been anywhere else other than in that pit-of-hell nightmare place where EVERY fundamentalist religious faction hates EVERY OTHER fundamentalist faction.”
Quite true. And Saddam may come back. But to lead (anywhere) does not mean that one only takes on the easy, conquerable tasks. I think to lead means taking on some difficult ones, too. In the hierarchal sense,GW is responsible. But it will be rather difficult to prove that his intent had anything whatsoever to do with actual abuse of Iraqis. And in my mind, “intent” is 10/10ths of the law.
My husband has mentioned on occasion that some of the hazing, while in the early months of being in the Navy, is pretty darn humiliating. Maybe that is where some of these guys (and gals) derive their ideas from. ???
Oh, dear, I’m getting suckered into an abortion debate. Resist, resist, resist…
Aurgh. Let me just say that the Christian view on abortion is logically absurd. Christians believe that while a human egg has no soul and a human sperm has no soul, when the two unite the resulting zygote is instantly A Person With A Soul.
Now generally speaking, most Christians believe in some concept of The Age Of Accountability and that the soul of an innocent young child claimed by death still goes to Heaven because that child was not yet old enough to know right from wrong. The alternative Christian belief is that of Original Sin, where all humans are Born Into Sin and their soul will NOT go to heaven unless redeemed / saved later in life by becoming a Christian .
Now, the ultimate goal of Christ is to make sure that as many souls as possible make it into Heaven after death and enjoy Everlasting Life. That’s what he reportedly came to Earth as an extraterrestrial alien to achieve. All the unpleasantness of human life on Earth ends after a few short decades at most and is soon forgotten as irrelevant if a soul makes it into Heaven for All Eternity.
Abortion is actually a very efficent way of meeting Christ’s ultimate goal of maximizing the number of souls that make it into Heaven. Regardless of which Christian viewpoint is correct, Age of Accountability or Original Sin, abortion places a soul in the hands of God for disposition before either birth or life after birth has a chance to corrupt that soul and damn it to Hell. Either way, God will put this innocent soul into heaven. (Right? You don’t want to argue that God sends stillborn premmies to Hell, do you?)
Thus, every abortion is another score for Jesus and His ultimate goal. Every birth is a chance for the Devil to make a score and claim a soul for evil, wresting it from Christianity.
In fact, if you accept the Christian premise of Women As Wombs To Make Souls, it logically follows that scientific mass production techniques would please God in His goal of trying to maximally fill Heaven with souls. Under these circumstances, I can envision that going from old-fashioned nine-month pregnancies past once-a-month abortions and straight into Catholic-sponsored in-vitro-fertilization factories where millions of petri dishes of freshly fertilized human eggs were doused daily in fatal doses of alcohol would greatly please the Almighty.
Sometimes I like to think of Christians facing God before His throne on Judgement Day, with Him roaring over and over at them, “Why did you embrace the first part of My Plan, Jesus, yet oppose the second part of My Plan, RU-486 and cloning?”
Unless, of course, the Christians want to claim an absolutely 100% perfect success rate that every single child they rescued from abortion were also “saved” later in life by every single one accepting Jesus as their Personal Savior. Remember, one single failure and your meddling did worse by God than if you had left well enough alone…
The reality, or course, is that Christians want to increase their power by establishing their rules to be followed by all, as well as increase the pool size of potential followers by banning contraception methods that are essential for stabilizing population growth on a limited-resource planet. While these are understandable POLITICAL goals, they are often confused as desirable SPIRITUAL ones.
And yes, I realize that the “flaw” in my argument here is that if what I said above is valid, then infanticide and hosing down schoolyard playgrounds with poison gas is also warrented (at least if you believe in Age of Accountability instead of Original Sin). Of course I don’t believe in such after-birth horrors against innocents – but as a practical, secular, political, humanitarian point, not a religious one. I am very pro-family. I believe protecting beautiful young babies (and they ARE beautiful) is certainly in our best interests to promote a stable, sustainable organized society where every child is loved and wanted.
I believe protecting a woman’s right to abortion is in our best interests for the same reason.
RJ: Thus, every abortion is another score for Jesus and His ultimate goal. Every birth is a chance for the Devil to make a score and claim a soul for evil, wresting it from Christianity.
Um…probably not. If a third more children happen to be born or conceived by irresponsible procreating but never have the opportunity to express their individual free will, no, I don’t think God would even be slightly amused by our stupidity or selfishness.
And tho the children may be with him, no matter what the rationalization, their will be a great deal of consequences to pay for here back on earth. You know as in multiple layers of mistrust, mistrust, and more mistrust, in response to the conditions laid down within the particular relationship by soft choices.
RJ “contraception methods that are essential for stabilizing population growth”
Like the argument over gun control: guns don’t kill people, people do the killing… Thusly, contraception doesn’t stop irresponsible procreation, people do. If one can take time out of his busy day to choose a contraceptive, with all that self determination in hand, I’ll bet he can choose to behave himself, too.
RJ “a stable, sustainable organized society where every child is loved and wanted.”
All that really weighs in, in the context of this statement, is each potential parent’s emotional state. And thus “loved and wanted” rapidly becomes a terribly subjective issue to try to nail down.
Should every spouse be `loved and wanted’? How about every grandparent? Even if they are not, why should emotion driven choices change the status of `rights’? Rights should be established by are the long range facts, not by today’s feelings.
And yeah, I cannot believe that you got sucked into this, either :) for pity.
You’re not fully appreciating my argument. We’re not talking a “third more children conceived” here. With a major crash program on automated cloning / stem cell biotechnology, we could literally produce and destro.. er, sanctify billions of soul-containing zygotes per day vs. the decades it takes to produce a mere billion souls the old-fashioned way. Heaven could be 99.999% biotech produced souls in just a few years if Christians start now. Another way of looking at it is that God gets literally not a third more but MILLIONS OF TIMES MORE souls to praise Him throughout Eternity.
If magnifying the volume of praise given in Heaven to God by a factor of a million or so compared to everybody else doesn’t get you on the right hand of Jesus, it for sure should get you at least a seat at His table.
And so what if God’s not amused by our stupidity? (I really don’t see how such a biotech-mass-production-of-souls program could be categorized as selfishness.) Under this biotech scenario even if He condemned everybody who made it out of a womb and lived a “real life” straight to Hell, on a percentage basis Biotech Christians would have gotten 99.999% of human souls to heaven. That’s a MUCH smaller percentage of Hell-bound souls than the Anti-Biotech Christians believe are headed there now, so it’s a vast improvement.
I wonder if this idea is patentable…
Ricky,
You’re either putting me on, cuz I think you actually understand a great deal more theology than I do. But, whatever. I hope that you’ll enjoy this astounding bit of info to sleep on:
Did you know that…’At the moment of conception, a fertilized human egg is about the size of a pinhead. Yet it contains information equivalent to about six billion “chemical letters.” ‘
That’s an extravagant number for this site.
…that extravagant number of comments resides on a fleck of iron oxide the size of a head of a pin.
I’m not weird, just imaginative. As for knowing a bit of theology, well, let’s just say that I’ve done my time on the hard pews of a fundamentalist Southern Baptist church tucked away in a backwoods little corner of Tennessee. No snake handling, tho; too bad, that would have been interesting to watch. My intelligence was noted and groomed, with me preaching several sermons during youth weeks. It was valuable public speaking experience, looking back on it, although I never got into the screaming part of delivering a sermon. The pastor’s wife actually sat down with me and had a talk about how she thought I would do very well in seminary and how she thought I should go there. Fortunately, watching the national news nightly, broadcasts of the 1960s space launches infrequently, the Cleveland Public Library, and driving by the black slums of Sixth Ward dressed in my Sunday finest on the way to a beautiful church convinced me the answers I sought wasn’t to be found at Carson Newman College.
A very good way to triumph in an intellectual debate is not to assail your opponent’s position as incorrect, but agree with them about its validity and then lead them into absurdities. You wanna believe zygotes have souls, OK, I’ve just opened your eyes to the promise biotech has for packing Heaven with souls for the glory of God. If that’s what you believe is the purpose of life, you’d better get busy and forgo a career in Christian evangelism to become a biologist. Call it The Great Commission, SciScoop style: baptise perti dishes with chlorox instead of people with water. You’ll win more souls for God that way, and God won’t be pleased on Judgement Day if you deliberately lived a life on Earth that you knew wouldn’t save as many souls as possible in His name. Don’t become a scientist, go to hell…
A very good way to know you’ve done OK in a debate is when your opponent starts an either / or statement and then forgets to include the “or” part. You’ve done that, so I hereby retreat from this theological battle to post some stories like I should have yesterday.
And I still believe pro-family, pro-choice is the correct belief system for today’s society. This is America; if you believe differently, that’s OK by me.
I didn’t forget the “or” part of the either or comment. (should have altered one word at the beginning tho to accommodate) I just decided that what I had started to say in the second half would have been too hurtful. One considers, at times, driving a point home in the most direct manner. But in this case, I perceived that “winning” might wind up being exactly the same as losing.
game over?
Quite a bit of thought or intelligence invested into all that which could reside on the pinhead, huh.
(exploiting that debate technique you just suggested.. :)
…an excellent point.
Disaster film has scientists laughing