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At the Guardian: The “widespread notion that academia is morally superior is ridiculous”

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Richard P. Grant

A former biochemist and now medical writer, he has tried both the academy and industry:

For the last 18 months or so I’ve been working very closely with people with different roles (medical affairs, marketing, access, etc.) of one particular company. We’ve been preparing for the launch of a new indication for their product, following a phase 3 clinical trial that was terminated early because of overwhelming benefit. The product itself was developed in the company, from scratch, in a programme focused on meeting a particular medical need.

And you have never met such dedicated, driven, hard-working and caring people. For sure, they are well-paid, but I am not convinced that the money can ever make up for the hours they have put in and the stress they have endured.

No. They are determined to see this project through because they believe in the benefits of this drug (extended lifespan, improved quality of that lifespan) for real people in the real world. (And I would not be as personally invested in this project if I wasn’t impressed by the data as well).

People in academic science can be just as avaricious or venal as people in any human endeavour. They are human, after all. The idea, pervasive as it is, that research in academia is somehow more noble or pure than working in the private sector is as outdated as blood-letting. Richard P. Grant, “Is Big Pharma really more evil than academia?” at The Guardian

“Outdated as bloodletting”? Yes, for sure, especially in the age of Retraction Watch.  The idea that academia is somehow above it all may date back to the days when most academics were clergy. It wasn’t true then either but you can sort of see how people might have got the idea.

See also: Mortarboard mob “disappears” respected mathematician

Comments
I am the Lord, your God http://www.10commandmentslist.comgerrard
November 7, 2018
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Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor states Darwinian explanations by themselves are ‘worthless to medicine’.
Darwinian Medicine and Proximate and Evolutionary Explanations – Michael Egnor – neurosurgeon – June 2011 Excerpt: 4) Evolutionary explanations by themselves are worthless to medicine. All medical treatments are based on detailed proximate explanations. – per ENV
Ferngren states “Darwin’s theory did not make a significant contribution to clinical medicine.”
Limited role of Darwinism in medicine – May 2, 2014 Excerpt: In eight well-written and thoroughly researched chapters, Ferngren takes the reader from ancient times to the Greco-Roman period, early Christianity, into the Middle Ages and the Islamic world, to the early modern period, and on into the 19th and 20th centuries. The roots of Western medicine, we learn, can be found in the transformative effects of Judeo-Christian traditions. But the story told here is also about the eclipse of those traditions. While it is not a book on or about Darwinism, Ferngren states accurately that “Darwin’s theory did not make a significant contribution to clinical medicine.” https://uncommondescent.com/evolutionary-psychology/limited-role-of-darwinism-in-medicine/
In fact, in so far as the Darwinian meta-narrative has influenced medical diagnostics, it has led to much medical malpractice in the past:
Evolution’s “vestigial organ” argument debunked Excerpt: “The appendix, like the once ‘vestigial’ tonsils and adenoids, is a lymphoid organ (part of the body’s immune system) which makes antibodies against infections in the digestive system. Believing it to be a useless evolutionary ‘left over,’ many surgeons once removed even the healthy appendix whenever they were in the abdominal cavity. Today, removal of a healthy appendix under most circumstances would be considered medical malpractice” (David Menton, Ph.D., “The Human Tail, and Other Tales of Evolution,” St. Louis MetroVoice , January 1994, Vol. 4, No. 1). “Doctors once thought tonsils were simply useless evolutionary leftovers and took them out thinking that it could do no harm. Today there is considerable evidence that there are more troubles in the upper respiratory tract after tonsil removal than before, and doctors generally agree that simple enlargement of tonsils is hardly an indication for surgery” (J.D. Ratcliff, Your Body and How it Works, 1975, p. 137). The tailbone, properly known as the coccyx, is another supposed example of a vestigial structure that has been found to have a valuable function—especially regarding the ability to sit comfortably. Many people who have had this bone removed have great difficulty sitting. http://www.ucg.org/science/god-science-and-bible-evolutions-vestigial-organ-argument-debunked/
In fact besides medical malpractice, Darwinian evolution, with its false predictions, such as ‘junk DNA, has a long history of sending all of biological science down blind alleys instead of fostering medical breakthroughs:
Why investigate evolution’s false predictions? Excerpt: The predictions examined in this paper were selected according to several criteria. They cover a wide spectrum of evolutionary theory and are fundamental to the theory, reflecting major tenets of evolutionary thought. They were widely held by the consensus rather than reflecting one viewpoint of several competing viewpoints. Each prediction was a natural and fundamental expectation of the theory of evolution, and constituted mainstream evolutionary science. Furthermore, the selected predictions are not vague but rather are specific and can be objectively evaluated. They have been tested and evaluated and the outcome is not controversial or in question. And finally the predictions have implications for evolution’s (in)capacity to explain phenomena, as discussed in the conclusions. https://sites.google.com/site/darwinspredictions/why-investigate-evolution-s-false-predictions
Moreover, if atheists were truly concerned with maintaining a healthy society, (instead of just trying to maintain their atheistic beliefs no matter what propaganda they have to spew), then they should be first and foremost to renounce their atheism since atheism is shown to be very unhealthy for individuals and for society as a whole: See top of post 10 for references to that effect. Also see euthanasia, eugenics and abortion. Moreover, in his statement Seversky also tried to imply that prayer was completely ineffectual and that miracles can NEVER happen. He is wrong on both counts:
Medical Miracles Really Do Happen Excerpt: No one knows exactly how often such cases occur. Approximately 3,500 medically documented cases of seeming miracles — based on reports from doctors in America and around the world dating to 1967 — have appeared in 800 peer-reviewed medical journals and cover all major illnesses, including cancer, heart disease, diabetes and arthritis.* http://www.care2.com/news/member/818150751/443473 It’s Okay to Expect a Miracle | Christianity Today – Keener Excerpt: I got seven eyewitness accounts of people being raised from the dead. One was my sister-in-law, Therese. I asked my mother-in-law to tell me about it, with my wife translating from one of the local languages. My mother-in-law described how Therese was bitten by a snake. By the time my mother-in-law got to her, she wasn’t breathing. No medical help was available. She strapped the child to her back and ran to a nearby village, where a friend who was an evangelist prayed for Therese. She started breathing again. http://www.christianitytoday.c.....ml?start=1 Miracles: Keener’s Reflections – video playlist http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....ature=plcp Miracles: Can a Scientist Believe in Miracles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9G8o7JXlbE at the 24:00 minute mark of the preceding video the speaker. who is a scientist, gives testimony of his son being miraculously healed of an incurable disease Testing Prayer: Science and Miraculous Healing – Candy Gunther Brown at Boston College – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRfLooh3ZOk A Systematic Review of the Empirical Literature on Intercessory Prayer – March 2010 Excerpt: Meta-analysis indicated small, but significant, effect sizes for the use of intercessory prayer,, http://rsw.sagepub.com/cgi/con.....t/17/2/174
Bottom line, Seversky dishonestly tried to say that Christianity was antagonistic towards medicine, and science in general, and that prayer was completely ineffectual. Seversky is, as usual, completely wrong in his bias against Christianity. The truth of the matter is that Darwinian Evolution in particular, and Atheism in general, have been disasters for both medicine and science. As stated previously in the middle of post 6, ” it would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science than Atheistic materialism, methodological naturalism and/or Darwinian evolution have turned out to be.” Verse:
Luke 8:43-48 And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any, Came behind him, and touched the border of his garment: and immediately her issue of blood stanched. And Jesus said, Who touched me? When all denied, Peter and they that were with him said, Master, the multitude throng thee and press thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me? And Jesus said, Somebody hath touched me: for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me. And when the woman saw that she was not hid, she came trembling, and falling down before him, she declared unto him before all the people for what cause she had touched him, and how she was healed immediately. And he said unto her, Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace.
bornagain77
September 24, 2018
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Seversky in post 21 you specifically stated this,
"What we are criticizing are certain unsupported and insupportable claims concerning the role of Christianity in the development of modern hospitals. The articles and papers you cite refer mostly to a resurgence of religious belief in former communist states and the social and health benefits of belonging to a particular faith,"
And yet in post 13 you yourself cited the link where I laid out some of the evidence of Chistianity's integral role in the development of modern hospitals and modern medicine. Since you are, as usual for dishonest internet atheists, in denial of the evidence, I shall relist the entire post that you yourself linked to in post 13, for the sake of unbiased readers: it might surprise Seversky to know that modern day hospitals and medicine in general owe their existence to Christianity:
The Christian Origins of Hospitals – FEBRUARY 6, 2012 Excerpt: as Charles Rosenberg shows in his volume, The Care of Strangers, The Rise of America’s Hospital System*, the modern hospital owes its origins to Judeo-Christian compassion. Evidence of the vast expansion of faith-based hospitals is seen in the legacy of their names: St. Vincent’s, St. Luke’s, Mt. Sinai, Presbyterian, Mercy, and Beth Israel. These were all charitable hospitals, some of which began as foundling hospitals to care for abandoned children. Similarly, in Europe, great hospitals were built under the auspices of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Indeed, an ancient French term for hospital is hôtel-Dieu (“hostel of God”). In 1863, the Société Genevoise d’Utilité Publique called on Swiss Christian businessman Jean Henri Dunant to form a relief organization for caring for wartime wounded. Thus, the emblem of the Red Cross was codified in the Geneva Convention one year later. In Britain, Dame Cicely Saunders founded the hospice movement by establishing St. Christopher’s Hospice in the south of London in 1967. https://biblemesh.com/blog/the-christian-origins-of-hospitals/ The Christian Contribution to Medicine Many very important discoveries in many medical fields were made by people who held a Christian commitment and there is not room to mention them all here: William Harvey (circulation), Jan Swammerdam (lymph vessels and red cells) and Niels Stensen (fibrils in muscle contraction) were all people of faith, while Albrecht von Haller, widely regarded as the founder of modern physiology and author of the first physiology textbook, was a devout believer; Abbe Spallanzani (digestion, reproductive physiology), Stephen Hales (haemostatics, urinary calculi and artificial ventilation), Marshall Hall (reflex nerve action) and Michael Foster (heart muscle contraction and founder of Journal of Physiology) were just some among many others. The same can be said of the advance of surgical techniques and practice. Ambroise Pare abandoned the horrific use of the cautery to treat wounds and made many significant surgical discoveries and improvements. The Catholic Louis Pasteur’s discovery of germs was a turning point in the understanding of infection. Lister (a Quaker) was the first to apply his discoveries to surgery, changing surgical practice forever. Davy and Faraday, who discovered and pioneered the use of anaesthesia in surgery, were well known for their Christian faith, and the obstetrician James Simpson, a very humble believer, was the first to use ether and chloroform in midwifery. James Syme, an excellent pioneer Episcopalian surgeon, was among the first to use anaesthesia and aseptic techniques together. William Halsted of Johns Hopkins pioneered many new operations and introduced many more aseptic practices (eg rubber gloves), while William Keen, a Baptist, was the first to successfully operate on a brain tumour. Clinical medicine and patient care: It is not surprising to find that, again, due to their commitment to love and serve those weaker than themselves as Christ did, people of faith were at the forefront of advancing standards of clinical medicine and patient care throughout the ages. Thomas Sydenham is sometimes hailed as the ‘English Hippocrates’. He stressed the importance of personal, scientific observation and holistic care for patients, and he was one of the brave ‘plague doctors’ who did not desert the sick and dying during the Great Plague of London. Herman Boerhaave followed in Sydenham’s footsteps, and was very influential in pioneering modern clinical medicine, while William Osler taught all medical students to base their attitudes and care for their patients on the standards laid down in the Bible. https://www.cmf.org.uk/resources/publications/content/?context=article&id=827
Louis Pasteur, renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, thought materialistic philosophers to be foolish.
Louis Pasteur (December 27, 1822 – September 28, 1895) was a French chemist and microbiologist renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation and pasteurization. He is remembered for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and preventions of diseases, and his discoveries have saved countless lives ever since. per wikipedia Louis Pasteur on life, matter, and spontaneous generation – June 21, 2015 “Science brings men nearer to God.,, Posterity will one day laugh at the foolishness of modern materialistic philosophers. The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. I pray while I am engaged at my work in the laboratory.,, The Greeks understood the mysterious power of the below things. They are the ones who gave us one of the most beautiful words in our language, the word enthusiasm: a God within.,,, I have been looking for spontaneous generation for twenty years without discovering it. No, I do not judge it impossible. But what allows you to make it the origin of life? You place matter before life and you decide that matter has existed for all eternity. How do you know that the incessant progress of science will not compel scientists to consider that life has existed during eternity, and not matter? You pass from matter to life because your intelligence of today cannot conceive things otherwise. How do you know that in ten thousand years, one will not consider it more likely that matter has emerged from life? You move from matter to life because your current intelligence, so limited compared to what will be the future intelligence of the naturalist, tells you that things cannot be understand otherwise. If you want to be among the scientific minds, what only counts is that you will have to get rid of a priori reasoning and ideas, and you will have to do necessary deductions not giving more confidence than we should to deductions from wild speculation.” [en francais, Pasteur et la philosophie, Patrice Pinet, Editions L’Harmattan, p. 63.]
Edward Jenner, who, like Pasteur, was a devout Christian, and who also was instrumental in the smallpox vaccination, was an English physician who was a champion of vaccination in spite of ‘fierce opposition and in the teeth of threats against himself.’
“The most famous champion of vaccination was a Christian doctor, *Edward Jenner* who did his work against fierce opposition and in the teeth of threats against himself. In effect he wiped out smallpox from among the diseases that terrify mankind. He died from a cold caught carrying firewood to an impoverished woman.” http://www.rae.org/pdf/influsci.pdf
As to polio and measles, John Enders, “The Father of Modern Vaccines”, towards the end of his life stated that “There must be a mind behind it all.”
John Enders, MD Death Bed: “On a September evening at their water front home in Connecticut, in 1985, Enders was reading T.S. Eliot aloud to his wife, Carolyn. He finished and went to bed, then quietly died. He was eighty-eight. At his memorial service his friend, the Bishop F.C. Laurence, said, “John Enders never lost his sense of wonder – wonder at the great mystery that exists and surrounds all of God’s creation. This awareness is what gave him his wide vision and open mindedness, his continued interest in all things new, his ability to listen, his humility in the presence of this great mystery, and his never-ending search for the truth.” His widow said that John briefly revealed his heart when he told her, concerning how creation ran, “There must be a mind behind it all.” http://www.scienceheroes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=69&Itemid=117 of note: T.S. Eliot’s extraordinary journey of faith http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2011/10/12/2972229.htm
The same can be found with the discovery of antibiotics. Antibiotics pioneer Ernst Chain said he “would rather believe in fairies than in such wild speculation” as Darwinism
Ernst Chain: Antibiotics Pioneer Excerpt: In 1938, Chain stumbled across Alexander Fleming’s 1929 paper on penicillin in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology, which he brought to the attention of his colleague Florey.7 During their research, Chain isolated and purified penicillin. It was largely this work that earned him his numerous honors and awards, including a fellow of the Royal Society and numerous honorary degrees,8 the Pasteur Medal, the Paul Ehrlich Centenary Prize, the Berzelius Medal, and a knighthood.9,,, Chain concluded that he “would rather believe in fairies than in such wild speculation” as Darwinism.,,, Chain made it very clear what he believed about the Creator and our relationship to Him. He wrote that scientists “looking for ultimate guidance in questions of moral responsibility” would do well to “turn, or return, to the fundamental and lasting values of the code of ethical behaviour forming part of the divine message which man was uniquely privileged to receive through the intermediation of a few chosen individuals.”19 http://www.icr.org/article/ernst-chain-antibiotics-pioneer/ Ernst Chain, who was awarded the 1945 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, and is considered to be one of the founders of the field of antibiotics, spoke strongly against Darwin’s theory. He said the theory of evolution was a “very feeble attempt to explain the origin of species based on assumptions so flimsy that it can hardly be called a theory.” He referred to evolution as a “hypothesis based on no evidence and irreconcilable with the facts.” He also said, “These classic evolutionary theories are a gross oversimplification of an immensely complex and intricate mass of facts, and it amazes me that they were swallowed so uncritically and readily, and for such a long time, by so many scientists without a murmur of protest.” Chain concluded that he “would rather believe in fairies than to ever believe in such wild speculation of Darwin.” https://biblicalsignsintheheadlines.com/2016/03/21/debunking-evolution-challenging-the-lie-that-challenges-god/
Philip Skell, another researcher in antibiotics, is scathing of the claim that Darwinian evolution has contributed to medicine
“Certainly, my own research with antibiotics during World War II received no guidance from insights provided by Darwinian evolution. Nor did Alexander Fleming’s discovery of bacterial inhibition by penicillin. I recently asked more than 70 eminent researchers if they would have done their work differently if they had thought Darwin’s theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: No.,,, Darwinian evolution – whatever its other virtues – does not provide a fruitful heuristic in experimental biology. Philip S. Skell – (the late) Emeritus Evan Pugh Professor at Pennsylvania State University, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.discovery.org/a/2816
In fact, it is by recognizing the limits of what unguided material processes can do, (recognizing that there are in fact strict limits to what Darwinian processes can do), that the most promising avenues of medical research into new drugs that combat disease are now being found:
Guide of the Perplexed: A Quick Reprise of The Edge of Evolution – Michael Behe – August 20, 2014 Excerpt: If there were a second drug with the efficacy of chloroquine which had always been administered in combination with it (but worked by a different mechanism), resistance to the combination would be expected to arise with a frequency in the neighborhood of 1 in 10^40 — a medical triumph. per ENV
The multiple drug cocktail that has been so effective in controlling HIV uses much the same strategy of being beyond the ‘edge of evolution’ that Dr. Behe elucidated in the preceding article:
When taking any single drug, it is fairly likely that some mutant virus in the patient might happen to be resistant, survive the onslaught, and spawn a resistant lineage. But the probability that the patient hosts a mutant virus that happens to be resistant to several different drugs at the same time is much lower.,,, it “costs” a pest or pathogen to be resistant to a pesticide or drug. If you place resistant and non-resistant organisms in head-to-head competition in the absence of the pesticide or drug, the non-resistant organisms generally win.,,, This therapy has shown early, promising results — it may not eliminate HIV, but it could keep patients’ virus loads low for a long time, slowing progression of the disease. http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/medicine_04
bornagain77
September 24, 2018
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bornagain77 @ 22
For crying out loud Seversky, you are confusing the posts I cited. As well as not even reading the posts of mine that you yourself cited.
I've read what you quoted and they don't come near to establishing your claim that modern hospitals owe their existence entirely to Christianity.
Here is one reference, among many, that you apparently completely missed in your rush to spew unsubstantiated claims:
Limited role of Darwinism in medicine – May 2, 2014 Excerpt: In eight well-written and thoroughly researched chapters, Ferngren takes the reader from ancient times to the Greco-Roman period, early Christianity, into the Middle Ages and the Islamic world, to the early modern period, and on into the 19th and 20th centuries. The roots of Western medicine, we learn, can be found in the transformative effects of Judeo-Christian traditions. But the story told here is also about the eclipse of those traditions. While it is not a book on or about Darwinism, Ferngren states accurately that “Darwin’s theory did not make a significant contribution to clinical medicine.” https://uncommondescent.com.....-medicine
This is a case in point. You are citing a brief review by ID proponent Michael Flannery, published at ENV of a book by Gary Ferngren about the history of the relationship between medicine and religion. Flannery notes that Ferngren writes “Darwin’s theory did not make a significant contribution to clinical medicine.” So what? Darwin's theory was about how life on Earth could have evolved through natural processes. It was not about medicine. Why on Earth would anyone expect it to make a significant contribution to clinical medicine? Yet again, yes, hospitals or their precursors, both in Europe and elsewhere have their roots in religious establishments - but not just Christian - and, yes, most if not all the great figures in European science were Christian. That is not denied. But it does not establish that either modern hospitals or modern science owe their existence solely to Christianity.Seversky
September 24, 2018
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RJS, it seems you have forgotten that in law people may designate power of attorney and have something called next of kin. Likewise, in haste to demand that anything can be established under colour of law and imposed by might and manipulation (with the linked how dare you object pretense to being in the right), you may be well advised to consider the Lincoln principle that merely saying that a sheep's tail is a fifth leg has no power to confer leg-like nature to the tail. KFkairosfocus
September 24, 2018
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For crying out loud Seversky, you are confusing the posts I cited. As well as not even reading the posts of mine that you yourself cited. In 14 you cited this, "First off, it might surprise Seversky to know that modern day hospitals and medicine in general owe their (very) existence to Christianity:,,, https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/must-christians-believe-in-the-big-bang-theory/#comment-665237 I suggest you read what you cited Seversky so you do not appear even more trollish than you actually are Here is one reference, among many, that you apparently completely missed in your rush to spew unsubstantiated claims:
Limited role of Darwinism in medicine – May 2, 2014 Excerpt: In eight well-written and thoroughly researched chapters, Ferngren takes the reader from ancient times to the Greco-Roman period, early Christianity, into the Middle Ages and the Islamic world, to the early modern period, and on into the 19th and 20th centuries. The roots of Western medicine, we learn, can be found in the transformative effects of Judeo-Christian traditions. But the story told here is also about the eclipse of those traditions. While it is not a book on or about Darwinism, Ferngren states accurately that “Darwin’s theory did not make a significant contribution to clinical medicine.” https://uncommondescent.com/evolutionary-psychology/limited-role-of-darwinism-in-medicine/
As well Seversky, your excuse making for the abject failure of animal testing to conform to Darwinian expectations is also disingenuous to put it mildly. But then again, when dealing with a pseudoscience that its practitioners refuse to accept falsification of, it is par for the course:
Darwin’s Theory vs Falsification – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rzw0JkuKuQ
bornagain77
September 23, 2018
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bornagain77 @ 17
It seems that none of the atheists on this thread want to actually defend their atheism but only want to attack and belittle Christianity by whatever means they can.
Again, I agree with R J Sawyer, nobody is attacking or belittling Christianity. What we are criticizing are certain unsupported and insupportable claims concerning the role of Christianity in the development of modern hospitals. The articles and papers you cite refer mostly to a resurgence of religious belief in former communist states and the social and health benefits of belonging to a particular faith, none of which is disputed but none of provide direct support for the claim. On the other hand, it is easy to find accounts of hospitals and their precursors arising in past cultures that were denied the blessings of Christianity but still managed to muddle through somehow. As for the limitations of animal models in drug research and development, researchers are well aware of these and it has nothing to do with "erroneous Darwinian presuppositions of common descent". It is simply that they are employed where it is neither practical nor often even ethical to conduct the tests in human volunteers.Seversky
September 23, 2018
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Moreover, not only was Christianity behind the development of modern hospitals and modern medicine, Christianity was also behind the development of modern science itself:
Science and Theism: Concord, not Conflict* – Robert C. Koons IV. The Dependency of Science Upon Theism (Page 21) Excerpt: Far from undermining the credibility of theism, the remarkable success of science in modern times is a remarkable confirmation of the truth of theism. It was from the perspective of Judeo-Christian theism—and from the perspective alone—that it was predictable that science would have succeeded as it has. Without the faith in the rational intelligibility of the world and the divine vocation of human beings to master it, modern science would never have been possible, and, even today, the continued rationality of the enterprise of science depends on convictions that can be reasonably grounded only in theistic metaphysics. http://www.robkoons.net/media/69b0dd04a9d2fc6dffff80b3ffffd524.pdf The Threat to the Scientific Method that Explains the Spate of Fraudulent Science Publications - Calvin Beisner | Jul 23, 2014 Excerpt: It is precisely because modern science has abandoned its foundations in the Biblical worldview (which holds, among other things, that a personal, rational God designed a rational universe to be understood and controlled by rational persons made in His image) and the Biblical ethic (which holds, among other things, that we are obligated to tell the truth even when it inconveniences us) that science is collapsing. As such diverse historians and philosophers of science as Alfred North Whitehead, Pierre Duhem, Loren Eiseley, Rodney Stark, and many others have observed,, science—not an occasional flash of insight here and there, but a systematic, programmatic, ongoing way of studying and controlling the world—arose only once in history, and only in one place: medieval Europe, once known as “Christendom,” where that Biblical worldview reigned supreme. That is no accident. Science could not have arisen without that worldview. http://townhall.com/columnists/calvinbeisner/2014/07/23/the-threat-to-the-scientific-method-that-explains-the-spate-of-fraudulent-science-publications-n1865201/page/full Several other resources backing up this claim are available, such as Thomas Woods, Stanley Jaki, David Linberg, Edward Grant, J.L. Heilbron, and Christopher Dawson. The truth about science and religion By Terry Scambray - August 14, 2014 Excerpt: In 1925 the renowned philosopher and mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead speaking to scholars at Harvard said that science originated in Christian Europe in the 13th century. Whitehead pointed out that science arose from “the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher”, from which it follows that human minds created in that image are capable of understanding nature. The audience, assuming that science and Christianity are enemies, was astonished. http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/08/the_truth_about_science_and_religion.html The Christian Origins of Science - Jack Kerwick - Apr 15, 2017 Excerpt: Though it will doubtless come as an enormous shock to such Christophobic atheists as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and their ilk, it is nonetheless true that one especially significant contribution that Christianity made to the world is that of science.,,, Stark is blunt: “Real science arose only once: in Europe”—in Christian Europe. “China, Islam, India, and ancient Greece and Rome each had a highly developed alchemy. But only in Europe did alchemy develop into chemistry. By the same token, many societies developed elaborate systems of astrology, but only in Europe did astrology develop into astronomy.”,,, In summation, Stark writes: “The rise of science was not an extension of classical learning. It was the natural outgrowth of Christian doctrine: nature exists because it was created by God. In order to love and honor God, it is necessary to fully appreciate the wonders of his handiwork. Because God is perfect, his handiwork functions in accord with immutable principles. By the full use of our God-given powers of reason and observation, it ought to be possible to discover these principles.” He concludes: “These were the crucial ideas that explain why science arose in Christian Europe and nowhere else.” https://townhall.com/columnists/jackkerwick/2017/04/15/the-christian-origins-of-science-n2313593 "Did Christianity (and Other Religions) Promote the Rise Of Science?" - Michael Egnor October 24, 2013 Excerpt: Neither the Greeks nor Islam produced modern theoretical science. The Greeks produced sublime philosophy and mathematics, but no theoretical science. They excelled in mathematics but never applied mathematical models to the systematic study of nature. Islam produced no real theoretical science. It invaded the Christian Middle East, Christian North Africa and Christian Spain, and expropriated the culture and work of Christians and Jews and pagans in the conquered lands. Centralized government and fresh availability of booty fostered a modest bit of science produced by the conquered locals -- the vast majority of whom were not Muslim for centuries. It took several centuries before most of the conquered peoples under the Islamic boot converted to Islam -- Islamic rulers coveted the dhimmi taxes and were not quick to force conversion -- and when Islamic lands became wholly Islamic, science became wholly dead. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/10/did_christianit078281.html The War against the War Between Science and Faith Revisited - July 2010 Excerpt: …as Whitehead pointed out, it is no coincidence that science sprang, not from Ionian metaphysics, not from the Brahmin-Buddhist-Taoist East, not from the Egyptian-Mayan astrological South, but from the heart of the Christian West, that although Galileo fell out with the Church, he would hardly have taken so much trouble studying Jupiter and dropping objects from towers if the reality and value and order of things had not first been conferred by belief in the Incarnation. (Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos),,, Jaki notes that before Christ the Jews never formed a very large community (priv. comm.). In later times, the Jews lacked the Christian notion that Jesus was the monogenes or unigenitus, the only-begotten of God. Pantheists like the Greeks tended to identify the monogenes or unigenitus with the universe itself, or with the heavens. Jaki writes: Herein lies the tremendous difference between Christian monotheism on the one hand and Jewish and Muslim monotheism on the other. This explains also the fact that it is almost natural for a Jewish or Muslim intellectual to become a pa(n)theist. About the former Spinoza and Einstein are well-known examples. As to the Muslims, it should be enough to think of the Averroists. With this in mind one can also hope to understand why the Muslims, who for five hundred years had studied Aristotle’s works and produced many commentaries on them failed to make a breakthrough. The latter came in medieval Christian context and just about within a hundred years from the availability of Aristotle’s works in Latin,, If science suffered only stillbirths in ancient cultures, how did it come to its unique viable birth? The beginning of science as a fully fledged enterprise took place in relation to two important definitions of the Magisterium of the Church. The first was the definition at the Fourth Lateran Council in the year 1215, that the universe was created out of nothing at the beginning of time. The second magisterial statement was at the local level, enunciated by Bishop Stephen Tempier of Paris who, on March 7, 1277, condemned 219 Aristotelian propositions, so outlawing the deterministic and necessitarian views of creation. These statements of the teaching authority of the Church expressed an atmosphere in which faith in God had penetrated the medieval culture and given rise to philosophical consequences. The cosmos was seen as contingent in its existence and thus dependent on a divine choice which called it into being; the universe is also contingent in its nature and so God was free to create this particular form of world among an infinity of other possibilities. Thus the cosmos cannot be a necessary form of existence; and so it has to be approached by a posteriori investigation. The universe is also rational and so a coherent discourse can be made about it. Indeed the contingency and rationality of the cosmos are like two pillars supporting the Christian vision of the cosmos. http://www.scifiwright.com/2010/08/the-war-against-the-war-between-science-and-faith-revisited/ 50 Nobel Laureates and other great scientists who believed in God by Tihomir Dimitrov PART IV. FOUNDERS OF MODERN SCIENCE (16th - 21st Century) - page 89 http://nobelists.weebly.com/uploads/4/0/2/0/4020654/50-nobelists-english.pdf
bornagain77
September 23, 2018
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as to: "Nobody is attacking and belittling Christianity. We are just responding to ludicrous claims about Christianity." Contrary to what you may think, it was certainly not a 'ludicrous claim' on my part to say that Christianity was behind the development of modern hospitals and modern medicine.
modern day hospitals and modern medicine in general owe their (very) existence to Christianity:,,, https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/must-christians-believe-in-the-big-bang-theory/#comment-665237 Moreover, It turns out that the Darwinian presupposition of common descent in medical testing, since it is a erroneous assumption, has also had a negative impact on the development of new medicines: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/researcher-the-widespread-notion-that-academia-is-morally-superior-is-ridiculous/#comment-665361
What is a ludicrous claim from atheists is the claim that atheism has in any way contributed to the betterment of mankind as a whole. (reread post 17)bornagain77
September 23, 2018
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BA77
It seems that none of the atheists on this thread want to actually defend their atheism but only want to attack and belittle Christianity by whatever means they can.
Nobody is attacking and belittling Christianity. We are just responding to ludicrous claims about Christianity.R J Sawyer
September 23, 2018
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It seems that none of the atheists on this thread want to actually defend their atheism but only want to attack and belittle Christianity by whatever means they can. This is a sure mark that we are not dealing with honest people who want to critically evaluate their own worldview to see if it is actually true, but are dealing with propagandists who could care less about the truth and are only concerned with maintaining their fraudulent atheism no matter what lie they have to tell or truth they have to ignore. Seeing as atheism has a absolutely horrid history at trying to govern societies, I can see why these atheists would be so reluctant to honestly evaluate their own worldview. It ain't pretty. For instance, this recent article on the atrocities of atheistic ideology within the Soviet Union,
Among the Disbelievers: Why atheism was central to the great evil of the 20th century - GARY SAUL MORSON / SEPT. 17, 2018 Excerpt: In its 300-year history in Spain, Portugal, and the New World, the Spanish Inquisition killed a few thousand, perhaps even a few tens of thousands, while in the atheist Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, that was the average toll every week or two. To this objection, the atheist has a ready reply: Atheism had nothing to do with Bolshevik carnage. As Richard Dawkins explains in The God Delusion: “What matters is not whether Hitler and Stalin were atheists, but whether atheism systematically influences people to do bad things. There is not the smallest evidence that it does.” This comment displays an ignorance so astonishing that, as the Russian expression goes, one can only stare and spit.,,, Bolshevik ideology demanded that religion be wiped out. Perhaps even more than constructing dams and factories, creating a population of atheists became the regime’s most important criterion of success. “Atheism [was] the new civilization’s calling card,” as S.A. Kuchinsky, director of the Leningrad State Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism, explained. Communist society could be built only by a new kind of human being, one who would at every moment be guided by partiinost (party-mindedness), a singular devotion to the Party’s purposes. Partiinost demanded militant atheism (mere unbelief was not enough), and atheism became, as Smolkin observes, “the battleground on which Soviet Communism engaged with the existential concerns at the heart of human existence: the meaning of life and death.” https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/among-the-disbelievers/
As this following recent article highlights, China's atheistic atrocities were even worse than the Soviet Union's atrocities.
Who Killed More: Hitler, Stalin, or Mao? Ian Johnson - February 5, 2018 Excerpt: In these pages nearly seven years ago, Timothy Snyder asked the provocative question: Who killed more, Hitler or Stalin? As useful as that exercise in moral rigor was, some think the question itself might have been slightly off. Instead, it should have included a third tyrant of the twentieth century, Chairman Mao. And not just that, but that Mao should have been the hands-down winner, with his ledger easily trumping the European dictators’. https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/02/05/who-killed-more-hitler-stalin-or-mao/
The former Soviet Union after such unmitigated horror is, thank God, experiencing a explosive revival in Christianity
Pew: Here’s How Badly Soviet Atheism Failed in Europe In 18 nations across Central and Eastern Europe, religion is now essential to national identity. (massive study based on face-to-face interviews with 25,000 adults in 18 countries} Jeremy Weber - 5/10/2017 Excerpt: “The comeback of religion in a region once dominated by atheist regimes is striking,” states Pew in its latest report. Today, only 14 percent of the region’s population identify as atheists, agnostics, or “nones.” By comparison, 57 percent identify as Orthodox, and another 18 percent as Catholics. http://www.christianitytoday.com/images/76841.png?h=717&w=380
And China, although it was also recently seeing an explosion in Christianity,,,
China on course to become ‘world’s most Christian nation’ within 15 years – 19 Apr 2014 Excerpt: Officially, the People’s Republic of China is an atheist country but that is changing fast as many of its 1.3 billion citizens seek meaning and spiritual comfort that neither communism nor capitalism seem to have supplied. Christian congregations in particular have skyrocketed since churches began reopening when Chairman Mao’s death in 1976 signalled the end of the Cultural Revolution. Less than four decades later, some believe China is now poised to become not just the world’s number one economy but also its most numerous Christian nation. “By my calculations China is destined to become the largest Christian country in the world very soon,” said Fenggang Yang, a professor of sociology at Purdue University and author of Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule. “It is going to be less than a generation. Not many people are prepared for this dramatic change.” China’s Protestant community, which had just one million members in 1949, has already overtaken those of countries more commonly associated with an evangelical boom. In 2010 there were more than 58 million Protestants in China compared to 40 million in Brazil and 36 million in South Africa, according to the Pew Research Centre’s Forum on Religion and Public Life. Prof Yang, a leading expert on religion in China, believes that number will swell to around 160 million by 2025. That would likely put China ahead even of the United States, which had around 159 million Protestants in 2010 but whose congregations are in decline. By 2030, China’s total Christian population, including Catholics, would exceed 247 million, placing it above Mexico, Brazil and the United States as the largest Christian congregation in the world, he predicted. “Mao thought he could eliminate religion. He thought he had accomplished this,” Prof Yang said. “It’s ironic – they didn’t. They actually failed completely.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10776023/China-on-course-to-become-worlds-most-Christian-nation-within-15-years.html
Although China was also experiencing and explosion in Christianity, China has apparently not learned from its horrid past under atheism and has recently renewed its vicious attack on the exploding Christian population, (as well as on other religions), within China:
China's war on religion, academics: Xi Jinping moves to reassert Communist Party dominance - 14 Aug, 2018 Excerpt: Images of Christ are being replaced with posters of President Xi. As with the Tibetans and Uighur's before them, Christian children are no longer allowed to attend church. "The move is aimed at Christian families in poverty, and we educated them to believe in science and not in superstition, making them believe in the party." One Beijing pastor told AP otherwise: "A lot of our flock are terrified by the pressure that the government is putting on them," he said. "It's painful to think that in our own country's capital, we must pay so dearly just to practice our faith.",, Beijing sees Christianity as a Western threat, and its 67 million followers as infected by dangerous Western ideals. President Xi stated in 2016: "We must resolutely guard against overseas infiltrations via religious means." And any community that places any entity above himself is not putting the Party first. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12106917
I wonder how many of the atheists on this thread are actually happy that China is returning back to its horrid and repressive atheistic ways where Christianity is brutally suppressed and millions of people are killed and suffer unimaginable horror? I would wager that all of the atheists on this thread are! Since this thread is concerned about medicine and health in general, this following recent study from Harvard is also of related interest.
Breaking News from Harvard: Faith is Good for You - September 18, 2018 Excerpt: "Compared with never praying or meditating, at least daily practice was associated with greater positive affect, emotional processing, and emotional expression; greater volunteering, greater sense of mission, and more forgiveness; lower likelihoods of drug use, early sexual initiation, STIs, and abnormal Pap test results; and fewer lifetime sexual partners." https://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=WA18I30&f=WU18I10 Associations of Religious Upbringing With Subsequent Health and Well-Being From Adolescence to Young Adulthood: An Outcome-Wide Analysis Ying Chen, Tyler J VanderWeele - Sept. 10, 2018 Excerpt: Compared with no attendance, at least weekly attendance of religious services was associated with greater life satisfaction and positive affect, a number of character strengths, lower probabilities of marijuana use and early sexual initiation, and fewer lifetime sexual partners. Analyses of prayer or meditation yielded similar results. Although decisions about religion are not shaped principally by health, encouraging service attendance and private practices in adolescents who already hold religious beliefs may be meaningful avenues of development and support, possibly leading to better health and well-being. https://academic.oup.com/aje/advance-article/doi/10.1093/aje/kwy142/5094534
Bottom line, atheism is profoundly detrimental to both your mental and physical health, (I might add that it is profoundly detrimental to your 'spiritual' health as well):
Study: Religiously affiliated people lived religiously affiliated lived “9.45 and 5.64 years longer…” July 1, 2018 Excerpt: Self-reported religious service attendance has been linked with longevity. However, previous work has largely relied on self-report data and volunteer samples. Here, mention of a religious affiliation in obituaries was analyzed as an alternative measure of religiosity. In two samples (N = 505 from Des Moines, IA, and N = 1,096 from 42 U.S. cities), the religiously affiliated lived 9.45 and 5.64 years longer, respectively, than the nonreligiously affiliated. Additionally, social integration and volunteerism partially mediated the religion–longevity relation. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/study-religiously-affiliated-people-lived-religiously-affiliated-lived-9-45-and-5-64-years-longer/ Can Religion Extend Your Life? - By Chuck Dinerstein — June 16, 2018 Excerpt: The researcher's regression analysis suggested that the effect of volunteering and participation accounted for 20% or 1 year of the impact, while religious affiliation accounted for the remaining four years or 80%. https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/06/16/can-religion-extend-your-life-13092 “I maintain that whatever else faith may be, it cannot be a delusion. The advantageous effect of religious belief and spirituality on mental and physical health is one of the best-kept secrets in psychiatry and medicine generally. If the findings of the huge volume of research on this topic had gone in the opposite direction and it had been found that religion damages your mental health, it would have been front-page news in every newspaper in the land.” - Professor Andrew Sims former President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists - Is Faith Delusion?: Why religion is good for your health - preface “In the majority of studies, religious involvement is correlated with well-being, happiness and life satisfaction; hope and optimism; purpose and meaning in life; higher self-esteem; better adaptation to bereavement; greater social support and less loneliness; lower rates of depression and faster recovery from depression; lower rates of suicide and fewer positive attitudes towards suicide; less anxiety; less psychosis and fewer psychotic tendencies; lower rates of alcohol and drug use and abuse; less delinquency and criminal activity; greater marital stability and satisfaction… We concluded that for the vast majority of people the apparent benefits of devout belief and practice probably outweigh the risks.” - Professor Andrew Sims former President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists - Is Faith Delusion?: Why religion is good for your health – page 100
Just these facts on personal health alone, without delving into the Christian birth of modern medicine, should be enough to turn these atheists in this thread from their atheism, but alas, as I said at the start of this post, we are dealing with propagandists who could care less about the truth and are only concerned with maintaining their fraudulent atheism no matter what lie they have to tell or truth they have to ignore. Verse:
Proverbs 3:1-2 My son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands in your heart, for they will prolong your life many years and bring you peace and prosperity.
bornagain77
September 22, 2018
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And if we relied on Christian hospitals, would we have hormone therapy, contraceptives, gene therapy, stem cell research, safe abortions, a same sex partner being allowed at the bedside at the point of death, a same sex partner being allowed to make decisions for his/her mentally incompetent partner...R J Sawyer
September 22, 2018
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additionally this was interesting stuff easily found at wikipedia:
In ancient cultures, religion and medicine were linked. The earliest documented institutions aiming to provide cures were ancient Egyptian temples. In ancient Greece, temples dedicated to the healer-god Asclepius, known as Asclepieia , functioned as centres of medical advice, prognosis, and healing.[1] At these shrines, patients would enter a dream-like state of induced sleep known as enkoimesis not unlike anesthesia, in which they either received guidance from the deity in a dream or were cured by surgery.[2] Asclepeia provided carefully controlled spaces conducive to healing and fulfilled several of the requirements of institutions created for healing.[3] In the Asclepieion of Epidaurus, three large marble boards dated to 350 BC preserve the names, case histories, complaints, and cures of about 70 patients who came to the temple with a problem and shed it there. Some of the surgical cures listed, such as the opening of an abdominal abscess or the removal of traumatic foreign material, are realistic enough to have taken place, but with the patient in a state of enkoimesis induced with the help of soporific substances such as opium.[2] The worship of Asclepius was adopted by the Romans. Under his Roman name Æsculapius, he was provided with a temple (291 BC) on an island in the Tiber in Rome, where similar rites were performed.[4] Institutions created specifically to care for the ill also appeared early in India. Fa Xian, a Chinese Buddhist monk who travelled across India ca. 400 AD, recorded in his travelogue [5] that The heads of the Vaishya [merchant] families in them [all the kingdoms of north India] establish in the cities houses for dispensing charity and medicine. All the poor and destitute in the country, orphans, widowers, and childless men, maimed people and cripples, and all who are diseased, go to those houses, and are provided with every kind of help, and doctors examine their diseases. They get the food and medicines which their cases require, and are made to feel at ease; and when they are better, they go away of themselves. The earliest surviving encyclopaedia of medicine in Sanskrit is the Carakasamhita (Compendium of Caraka). This text, which describes the building of a hospital is dated by the medical historian Dominik Wujastyk to the period between 100 BCE and 150 CE.[6] The description by Fa Xian is one of the earliest accounts of a civic hospital system anywhere in the world and this evidence, coupled with Caraka’s description of how a clinic should be built and equipped, suggests that India may have been the first part of the world to have evolved an organized cosmopolitan system of institutionally-based medical provision.[7] ...
random.dent
September 22, 2018
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If you'd looked around the world at a certain point thousands of years ago you'd say, "My heavens. The Egyptians are clearly the superior culture of the globe." 1000 years ago you'd say the same thing about the Muslims. At different points you'd have picked the Chinese. At another point, Europeans. Later, Americans. 100 years from now it'll be someone different. Smart people understand this, but partisans reject it and believe their tribe superior. That's silliness and poor thinking.random.dent
September 22, 2018
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bornagain77 @ 6
Of related interest to that altruism that is inherent in working in the medical industry, is this quip against my Christian faith that I received from a Darwinist the other day,
False beliefs can certainly have unfortunate consequences for believers. Jumping off a tall building in the false belief that you can fly unaided like Superman will bring you up against hard reality somewhat abruptly – and fatally. But then so did the sincere belief that the effects of diabetes could be cured by prayer lead to the death of the daughter of the devout family that prayed so hard.
To which I responded…
First off, it might surprise Seversky to know that modern day hospitals and medicine in general owe their (very) existence to Christianity:,,, https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/must-christians-believe-in-the-big-bang-theory/#comment-665237
After that quote I listed articles showing how modern day hospitals grew out of the altruism inherent in Christianity. As well, I listed how major breakthroughs in medicine were made by Christians,,
Yes, the hospitals of Christian Europe can trace their roots back to medieval monasteries and convents, for example, which provided what health and social services were available in those times. But there is evidence that the same was true in ancient Rome, Greece, Assyria, India and China, to name but a few. On that basis, there is no reason to think that Christianity alone was either necessary or sufficient to account for hospitals. The same argument applies to science. Yes, most if not all of the great figures in European science were Christian - to some extent. But the work for which they are renowned was all their own. God did not appear in a dream to Newton and explain gravity or the laws of motion, He didn't even provide a calculus primer to help him along. The equations describing electromagnetism were not dictated to Maxwell by a voice from a burning bush. Whatever their personal beliefs, the hard science produced by these men - and women - does not include God as a causal agent or variable, hidden or otherwise. Now, are you familiar with the Causal Fallacy cum hoc ergo propter hoc, in other words, "Correlation doesn’t prove causation."? I ask because, in my view, this whole line of argument, which asserts that Christianity is the sole and necessary cause of hospitals or science, is an extended form of that fallacy.Seversky
September 22, 2018
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I would agree with RJ and Sev and add that the US system is fundamentally flawed because it is based on private-sector insurance. You have all the money passing from the citizens to the health care providers first pass to large corporations whose goal is to keep as much as possible for themselves. A terrible, stupid system that we only have as an accident of history.random.dent
September 22, 2018
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R J Sawyer @ 1
Academia is just a microcosm of society in general. It has noble people, venal people, altruistic people, vindictive people, etc. Academics fight for grant money just as private researchers in large companies fight for research money for their own projects.
I fully agree. The only thing I would add is that the pharmaceutical industry exists, like any other industry, to make a profit. However altruistic the motives of their researchers, if they don't make a profit they don't have money to invest in the research and development of new therapies. This inevitably skews R&D towards disorders that affect the largest number of people because that means a big market for any effective drug. Diseases which may be devastating for the victims but afflict only a relatively small number of individuals are less likely to be investigated if they offer no worthwhile RoI. This is a systemic weakness of any form of private healthcare industry.Seversky
September 22, 2018
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It may just be me, but Recent Comments doesn't seem to be updating correctly.random.dent
September 22, 2018
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Now Now Now R J Sawyer, if you saw the people in and around the 'occupy Wall Street' movement, a movement which left wing academia, and democrats largely supported, "unwashed socialists" is a fairly accurate portrayal of the group and is certainly not 'namecalling'. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2046586/Occupy-Wall-Street-Shocking-photos-protester-defecating-POLICE-CAR.html Democrats have a history of being far more messy than Conservatives: VIDEO : Trump Supporter Cleans Up After #WomensMarch Protesters TRASH the Environment - 2017 https://truthfeed.com/video-trump-supporter-cleans-up-after-womensmarch-protesters-trash-the-environment/48007/ UNLIKE THE TEA PARTY, LEFTIST POLITICAL RALLIES LEAVE MOUNDS OF TRASH https://dailycaller.com/2017/03/06/a-comparison-of-tea-party-rallies-and-recent-leftist-rallies/bornagain77
September 22, 2018
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BA77
Yet, first off, the “unwashed socialists” in Academia are known to be notoriously biased, i.e. hostile, petty, vindictive etc.. , against Christian conservatives.
Nothing stimulates a fair and honest debate like namecalling and demeaning an identifiable group.R J Sawyer
September 22, 2018
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What I left out of my preceding response to Seversky's quip against Christianity is this little tidbit. It turns out that the Darwinian presupposition of common descent in medical testing, since it is a erroneous assumption, has also had a negative impact on the development of new medicines:
Animal Testing Is Bad Science: Point/Counterpoint Excerpt: The only reason people are under the misconception that animal experiments help humans is because the media, experimenters, universities and lobbying groups exaggerate the potential of animal experiments to lead to new cures and the role they have played in past medical advances.,,, The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has noted that 92 percent of all drugs that are shown to be safe and effective in animal tests fail in human trials because they don’t work or are dangerous.,,, Physiological reactions to drugs vary enormously from species to species. Penicillin kills guinea pigs but is inactive in rabbits; aspirin kills cats and causes birth defects in rats, mice, guinea pigs, dogs, and monkeys; and morphine, a depressant in humans, stimulates goats, cats, and horses. http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/animal-testing-bad-science.aspx What scientific idea is ready for retirement? – Mouse Models Excerpt: A recent scientific paper showed that all 150 drugs tested at the cost of billions of dollars in human trials of sepsis failed because the drugs had been developed using mice. Unfortunately, what looks like sepsis in mice turned out to be very different than what sepsis is in humans. Coverage of this study by Gina Kolata in the New York Times incited a heated response from within the biomedical research community. AZRA RAZA – Professor of medicine and director of the MDS Centre, Columbia University, New York http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jan/12/what-scientific-idea-is-ready-for-retirement-edge-org Mouse gene expression reveals “widespread differences” from humans - Nov. 22, 2014 Excerpt: an international group of researchers has found powerful clues to why certain processes and systems in the mouse — such as the immune system, metabolism and stress response — are so different from those in people.,,, Mice are widely used to model human metabolism, disease, and drug response. But results published today (November 17) in PNAS reveal widespread differences between human and mouse gene expression, both in protein-coding and noncoding genes, suggesting that understanding these disparities could help explain fundamental differences in the two species’ physiology. Michael Snyder of Stanford University and his colleagues compared how genes are expressed in 15 different human and mouse tissues, including brain, heart, liver, and kidney. They found that gene expression patterns clustered by species rather than tissues. For example, gene expression in a mouse liver more closely resembled the patterns observed in a mouse heart than those observed in a human liver. https://uncommondescent.com/genetics/mouse-gene-expression-reveals-widespread-differences-from-humans/ Comparing the human and chimpanzee genomes: Searching for needles in a haystack – Ajit Varki1 and Tasha K. Altheide – 2005 Excerpt: we have many characteristics that are uniquely human. Table 1 lists some of the definite and possible phenotypic traits that appear to differentiate us from chimpanzees and other “great apes”2. For the most part, we do not know which genetic features interact with the environment to generate these differences between the “phenomes”3 of our two species. The chimpanzee has also long been seen as a model for human diseases because of its close evolutionary relationship. This is indeed the case for a few disorders. Nevertheless, it is a striking paradox that chimpanzees are in fact not good models for many major human diseases/conditions (see Table 2) (Varki 2000; Olson and Varki 2003). http://genome.cshlp.org/content/15/12/1746.full
The reason why other animals are not good test subjects for human diseases, and new medicines, is because, contrary to erroneous Darwinian presuppositions of common descent, the physiology among even supposedly closely related animals is drastically different than what Darwinists had presupposed it to be: These drastic difference in physiology. and/or alternative splicing patterns. includes humans and chimpanzees:
Evolution by Splicing – Comparing gene transcripts from different species reveals surprising splicing diversity. – Ruth Williams – December 20, 2012 Excerpt: A major question in vertebrate evolutionary biology is “how do physical and behavioral differences arise if we have a very similar set of genes to that of the mouse, chicken, or frog?”,,, A commonly discussed mechanism was variable levels of gene expression, but both Blencowe and Chris Burge,,, found that gene expression is relatively conserved among species. On the other hand, the papers show that most alternative splicing events differ widely between even closely related species. “The alternative splicing patterns are very different even between humans and chimpanzees,” said Blencowe.,,, http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view%2FarticleNo%2F33782%2Ftitle%2FEvolution-by-Splicing%2F
And also please note, Alternative splicing can produce variant proteins and expression patterns as different as the products of different genes.,, and,,, As many as 100,000 distinct isoform transcripts could be produced from the 20,000 human protein-coding genes (Pan et al., 2008), collectively leading to perhaps over a million distinct polypeptides obtained by post-translational modification of products of all possible transcript isoforms (Smith and Kelleher, 2013).
Frequent Alternative Splicing of Human Genes – 1999 Excerpt: Alternative splicing can produce variant proteins and expression patterns as different as the products of different genes. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC310997/ Widespread Expansion of Protein Interaction Capabilities by Alternative Splicing – 2016 In Brief Alternatively spliced isoforms of proteins exhibit strikingly different interaction profiles and thus, in the context of global interactome networks, appear to behave as if encoded by distinct genes rather than as minor variants of each other.,,, Page 806 excerpt: As many as 100,000 distinct isoform transcripts could be produced from the 20,000 human protein-coding genes (Pan et al., 2008), collectively leading to perhaps over a million distinct polypeptides obtained by post-translational modification of products of all possible transcript isoforms (Smith and Kelleher, 2013). http://iakouchevalab.ucsd.edu/publications/Yang_Cell_OMIM_2016.pdf
Thus, besides the overall Darwinian 'survival of the fittest' morality being antithetic to the inherent altruism that is such a shining feature of medical workers, it turns out Darwinian ideas, in so far as they influence medical research, are also harmful to the research.bornagain77
September 22, 2018
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R J Sawyer claims that Academia is not all that different,,,
If there is a difference it is that in the private sector, there is a greater bias towards applied science whereas academics have a little more flexibility to indulge in “pure” science. And by “pure” I don’t mean more noble, just that it is pursued for the sake of increasing knowledge without any predicted potential for benefits to mankind.
Yet, first off, the "unwashed socialists" in Academia are known to be notoriously biased, i.e. hostile, petty, vindictive etc.. , against Christian conservatives.
The Academic Reason Why There Are So Few Conservatives in Academia - SEPTEMBER 18, 2017 Excerpt: So let’s look at the empirical evidence indicating that academic bias is a problem. Of course I have to start with my own work in Compromising Scholarship. I sent a survey out to academics in several disciplines and asked whether they would be more or less likely to hire someone if they were a members of certain groups. I included political, sexuality, religious, lifestyle and age groups. About half of the respondents stated that they would be less likely to hire someone if they were a conservative Protestant. Think about that. Half of the respondents, who are professors at various colleges, openly state that they are willing to engage in religious discrimination. We can only imagine how many are willing to discriminate but choose to not put that on a survey. As it concerns political conservatives, I found almost a third of the respondents were less willing to hire someone if they are a Republican, but about forty percent were less willing if they are an NRA member. Not as bad as it is for conservative Protestants but unacceptable nonetheless. Now you can see why generic measures of Christians and Republican are not as useful as talking about conservative Protestants or NRA members. The bias in academia is less when just talking about Republicans or Christians in the abstract. When you have an actual Republican who advocates for 2nd amendment issues or a Christian who believes the Bible to be the Word of God, then the situation dramatically changes. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/shatteringparadigms/2017/09/the-academic-reason-why-there-are-so-few-conservatives-in-academia/
And dare one speak against the prevailing Darwinian pseudoscience in academia, even though Darwinian Evolution is about as unscientific as any supposedly scientific theory can possibly get,,,
Darwin’s Theory vs Falsification – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rzw0JkuKuQ
,,, Dare one speak against this prevailing Darwinian pseudoscience in Academia, and in favor of Intelligent Design, one will soon find that he is personal non gratis in Academia..
Discrimination is a pervasive reality in Academia Scott Minnich Richard Sternberg Günter Bechly Eric Hedin Don McDonald David Coppedge Caroline Crocker Bryan Leonard Martin Gaskell Dean Kenyon Roger DeHart Granville Sewell https://freescience.today/stories/ Here are many more examples of blatant discrimination against people who dare question Darwinism in Academia https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/review-of-darwins-doubt-slams-id-theorists-for-not-publishing-in-darwinist-run-journals/
As to this quote from the article in the OP,,
"Pharma is full of good people, doing good work – and having an effect on people’s lives that the majority of academics can only dream of."
Of related interest to that altruism that is inherent in working in the medical industry, is this quip against my Christian faith that I received from a Darwinist the other day,
False beliefs can certainly have unfortunate consequences for believers. Jumping off a tall building in the false belief that you can fly unaided like Superman will bring you up against hard reality somewhat abruptly – and fatally. But then so did the sincere belief that the effects of diabetes could be cured by prayer lead to the death of the daughter of the devout family that prayed so hard.
To which I responded...
First off, it might surprise Seversky to know that modern day hospitals and medicine in general owe their (very) existence to Christianity:,,, https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/must-christians-believe-in-the-big-bang-theory/#comment-665237
After that quote I listed articles showing how modern day hospitals grew out of the altruism inherent in Christianity. As well, I listed how major breakthroughs in medicine were made by Christians,, I also briefly listed how Darwinian explanations/presuppositions were worthless, even harmful, to medical science. And how ID assumptions are beneficial to medical science.bornagain77
September 22, 2018
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Mike@2, I hate to say it but your rant sounds more like bitterness and sour grapes than an astute observation. I have run laboratories in both the government and private settings (I now work in the private, not-for-profit sector). I always get mad when people say that government workers are lazy and privileged. Yes, some government workers are lazy, as are some private sector workers. I had serious challenges in both government and commercial labs. The challenges were different, but no less difficult. But the thing that becomes obvious is that there is politics, back-stabbing, vindictiveness, lying in both settings. As there is selflessness, strong work ethic, innovation and initiative in both. Academia is no different.R J Sawyer
September 21, 2018
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Yes, but it is an absolutely crucial point Mike makes that, for some people, at least, needs to be made. Actually for the miscreants themselves - the types who not only blame the homeless for being unworldly, ergo poor, but blame them for being vulnerable to moral hazard by maybe falling into a spirit of sloth, and shock-horror, immorally making the worldly-wise feel guilty at their own reluctance to be their brother's keeper ! At least, those with at least, or rather, at most, a vestigial conscience. You know... the beyond surreal imputation of a welfare safety-net courting 'moral hazard' on the part of the poor. What they'd make of the reckless imprudence of the widow who put her last mite in the synagogue treasury, doesn't bear thinking about.Axel
September 21, 2018
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Let us be careful pointing fingers, "the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being", Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.Fasteddious
September 21, 2018
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My best friend has a PhD in mathematics from Harvard University. Adjuncted at MIT, Princeton and Yale. Finally got tenure at USC, landing in Inglewood. Stayed there for about five years then bailed out for Wall Street. ("I can't take these unwashed socialists anymore.") He's a mild mannered kind of guy, brilliant and very likeable. He published several papers while he was in the academic world in the field of algebraic topology, if I remember correctly. I say all that as background to say this: From one end of his experience in post-grad academic to another (but it was worse at the doc and post-doc stages) there were petty, vile, lying, thieving, miscreants swirling around the mathematics subculture. MATH! Of course, most people are just fine, but it's amazing that such a significant portion of them are wicked pieces of crap that will lie and steal you blind if given half a chance. And some of them rarely bathe. YES, MATH! Vying for status, ideas, promotions, positions, fame, money, all the normal stuff that humans crave. No such thing as the navel-gazing, enwizened, self-sacrificing philosopher kings in white coats who labor tirelessly and selflessly for the greater good of humanity, as some might imagine. Not in even close.mike1962
September 21, 2018
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Academia is just a microcosm of society in general. It has noble people, venal people, altruistic people, vindictive people, etc. Academics fight for grant money just as private researchers in large companies fight for research money for their own projects. If there is a difference it is that in the private sector, there is a greater bias towards applied science whereas academics have a little more flexibility to indulge in "pure" science. And by "pure" I don't mean more noble, just that it is pursued for the sake of increasing knowledge without any predicted potential for benefits to mankind.R J Sawyer
September 21, 2018
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