The evidence of science, when brought together with an ancient
argument, provides a very powerful case against the existence of a soul
that can carry forward your essence once your body fails. The case runs
like this: with modern brain-imaging technology, we can now see how
specific, localized brain injuries damage or even destroy aspects of a
person’s mental life. These are the sorts of dysfunctions that Oliver
Sacks brought to the world in his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat.4
The man of the title story was a lucid, intelligent music teacher, who
had lost the ability to recognize faces and other familiar objects due
to damage to his visual cortex.
Since then, countless examples of such dysfunction have been
documented—to the point that every part of the mind can now be seen to
fail when some part of the brain fails. The neuroscientist Antonio
Damasio has studied many such cases.5
He records a stroke victim, for example, who had lost any capacity for
emotion; patients who lost all creativity following brain surgery; and
others who lost the ability to make decisions. One man with a brain
tumor lost what we might call his moral character, becoming
irresponsible and disregarding of social norms. I saw something similar
in my own father, who also had a brain tumor: it caused profound changes
in his personality and capacities before it eventually killed him.
The crux of the challenge then is this: those who believe they have a
soul that survives bodily death typically believe that this soul will
enable them, like Nathalie in the story above, to see, think, feel,
love, reason and do many other things fitting for a happy afterlife. But
if we each have a soul that enables us to see, think and feel after the
total destruction of the body, why, in the cases of dysfunction
documented by neuroscientists, do these souls not enable us to see,
think and feel when only a small portion of the brain is destroyed?-http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/13-03-20/#feature
Friday, March 29, 2013
Blacks and Guns
Juan Williams, a black commentator, wrote an interesting article recently entitled “Race and the Gun Debate.”
(Wall St. Journal, Mar 27, 2013) Among the statistics he cites are that
54% of all murders involve black victims, virtually all of whom were
probably killed by black murderers, and yet blacks comprise only 13% of
the population.
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Monday, March 11, 2013
The Filibuster Against Murder
Last Tuesday, Senator Rand Paul filibustered the nomination of John Brennan as CIA director. This was not unusual as I recall Democratic Senators filibustered (or threatened to) judicial appointments under President George Bush (because democracy needs to be overridden by the court system populated by Leftist Statists). What was different about this filibuster was that it was a real filibuster, in that Senator Rand Paul stood and talked for 13 hours.
He didn’t do this because he hated John Brennan. He did this because John Brennan was the grandfather of the use of military drones and he wanted to highlight the current presidential regime’s use of them. Recall that a couple of years ago, President Obama approved drone strikes that killed Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki. The father was accused of colluding with terrorists in order to attack the United States. Really all they could possibly pin on him was the Fort Hood shootings as he was the cleric allegedly in contact with the deranged shooter. His son was another problem entirely.
His son, you see, was taken out because the CIA feared that he might join up with terrorists following his father’s death. In other words, not only did the Obama administration act as judge, jury, and executioner in killing Anwar al-Awlaki, who they charged with riding in the wrong SUV in Yemen, but they also charged his son with pre-crime and summarily executed him as well. The United States Federal government murdered two American citizens on foreign soil because of either what they might have done or what they might have done.
What does this have to do with the filibuster? Well, Senator Rand Paul asked Attorney General Eric Holder if he believed the President had the power to murder assassinate Americans on US soil with drone attacks if they are deemed to be terrorists (or, as Homeland Security Secretary Miss Hardcastle Janet Napolitano would label them: war veterans and libertarians).
The response he got was vague, wordy, and ambiguous at best. You know, the kind of bullshit lawyer-speak we all get from time to time from people. And so, without a real answer from the Whitehouse, Senator Paul took to the Senate floor and stood for the most basic right of every person: the right to life.
You see, the President wants full authority to murder people like you and me. It doesn’t matter what ideology you possess or how much in the inner circle you are, if a man has the authority to kill other people without any check in place, he is effectively the dictator of the realm he oversees. There is nothing more coercive than having your life threatened.
Of course, the Democrats (mostly), the Republicans (mostly), and just about everyone in this country don’t see it that way. Like Federal tax dollars going to Planned Parenthood (which never, ever, ever go to abortions**wink, wink**), everyone assumes that such power will be used on the “right” people and never themselves.
Because it can’t happen here.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Wacko Bird Responds to John McCain
After Rand Paul's courageous filibuster, John McCain called people concerned with drones and due process "wacko birds."
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