Tuesday, July 29, 2003
God Told Them
Deanna Laney beat to death her 2 sons telling the police that god told her to do it. Many people wonder how this could happen in a family of faith. We like to think of religion as mostly benign and certainly not one that could espouse violence to anyone let alone your own family. We, of course, realize that this woman is certainly unbalanced and god couldn't possibly have told her to kill her own sons. But something similar happened to the very model of Christian faith, Abraham.
Genesis 22:2
And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.
Abraham is often held up as the pillar of faith for Christians. Of course Abraham didn't kill his son as god apparently stayed his hand. To present this as an example though to me implies that true faith requires an irrational element if not a bit of lunacy really. So how much really seperates Deanna Laney and Abraham. In a similar case as mentioned in the article , Andrea Yates drowned her five children two years ago. Of course we know she's nuts because she said the devil told her to do it.
(with special thanks to Crispin Sartwell)
Deanna Laney beat to death her 2 sons telling the police that god told her to do it. Many people wonder how this could happen in a family of faith. We like to think of religion as mostly benign and certainly not one that could espouse violence to anyone let alone your own family. We, of course, realize that this woman is certainly unbalanced and god couldn't possibly have told her to kill her own sons. But something similar happened to the very model of Christian faith, Abraham.
Genesis 22:2
And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.
Abraham is often held up as the pillar of faith for Christians. Of course Abraham didn't kill his son as god apparently stayed his hand. To present this as an example though to me implies that true faith requires an irrational element if not a bit of lunacy really. So how much really seperates Deanna Laney and Abraham. In a similar case as mentioned in the article , Andrea Yates drowned her five children two years ago. Of course we know she's nuts because she said the devil told her to do it.
(with special thanks to Crispin Sartwell)
Tuesday, July 01, 2003
Genetic Testing
It was 3 years ago that scientists announced they had completed mapping the basic sequence of human DNA. What does this mean for you and me, probably not much but for our children and children's children it could mean a future where disease is genetically cured in infancy if not later. But what about today, what can you do with this information today. One, perhaps unsettling, thing you can do is have your genome sequenced and scanned for literally hundreds of diseases and your propensity to get things like cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, or even have a heart attack. The question then becomes is this a good idea?
Would you want to know if you would get any disease in advance of it actually happening? I'm not sure, I think it depends on whether there's a cure or not. On the other hand, perhaps you might live your life differently, take more chances or do more things in the time alloted to you. If you knew you had a better than even chance of getting say cancer, would you maybe contribute more to cancer societies and research? Would this speed up the process of finding a cure? Public health funds may be better allocated if the public knew of their chances of getting disease "X".
I have to bring some religion into this I suppose so here goes. What would happen if more folks of the religious right knew they were going to get Parkinson's? I wonder if the cries of the supposed immorality of stem cell research in the U.S. would ebb some. For sure some would still claim that it's wrong but if it presented a cure I'd be willing to bet that it would be a little less evil to quite a few.
It was 3 years ago that scientists announced they had completed mapping the basic sequence of human DNA. What does this mean for you and me, probably not much but for our children and children's children it could mean a future where disease is genetically cured in infancy if not later. But what about today, what can you do with this information today. One, perhaps unsettling, thing you can do is have your genome sequenced and scanned for literally hundreds of diseases and your propensity to get things like cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, or even have a heart attack. The question then becomes is this a good idea?
Would you want to know if you would get any disease in advance of it actually happening? I'm not sure, I think it depends on whether there's a cure or not. On the other hand, perhaps you might live your life differently, take more chances or do more things in the time alloted to you. If you knew you had a better than even chance of getting say cancer, would you maybe contribute more to cancer societies and research? Would this speed up the process of finding a cure? Public health funds may be better allocated if the public knew of their chances of getting disease "X".
I have to bring some religion into this I suppose so here goes. What would happen if more folks of the religious right knew they were going to get Parkinson's? I wonder if the cries of the supposed immorality of stem cell research in the U.S. would ebb some. For sure some would still claim that it's wrong but if it presented a cure I'd be willing to bet that it would be a little less evil to quite a few.
