Tune in to KPFT for some stem cell talk sometime in the next few minutes!
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Tune in to KPFT for some stem cell talk sometime in the next few minutes!
Popcorn’s popping.
It’s amazing to hear the contrast between our two recent presidents… nice opening. Get ’em PZ!
Having technical difficulties… Live stream opens up Quicktime in a new window, but is on a fit of eternal buffering… Anyone else having problems like this?
@ #3 I’m not, opened in Windows Media Player and I’m listening to it just fine.
Oh wells…
So, this imbecile would rather these things be pitched in the toilet as opposed to being used for curing potential diseases?
Gyaaagh! It’s burning right off the bat.
Pontus @3
It’s either quicktime acting up or your connection is too slow. It is streaming on my box with only a 5 second delay, which means it is unusually healty.
If you have another player, give it a try.
PZ is creaming the guy. Phone lines are open 713 546 5738, somebody bring up the fact that this guys bullshit is all god-based stoopidity, he’s a creationist and he has an ad for EXPELLED on his blog.
Oh PZ. You live freely, you sassy kitten, you.
He views scientific data though bible glasses. CASE CLOSED, Ha
713 526 5738 is the right number sorry
PZ’s naturalistic views are equally religious. Right.
PZ: “Science works.” The “bitches” was sufficiently implied.
is reductionistic a word? My spell checker says no.
BAD CHISTIAN, NO CRACKER for YOU
Can’t figure out whether to rescue a baby from a burning building or a jar full of blastocysts.
Christian Morals!
An embryo is an automatic iron-clad guarantee of a baby in nine-months? If he thinks that, he’s never experienced the misfortune of a miscarriage or a stillbirth. There are no guarantees, biology is not deterministic.
I wonder if PZ’s opponent feels that any other animals, apart from humans, have the same “sacred” status reserved for them. You think other primates don’t have feelings? What about the chimpanzee who had the forethought to collect rocks and pelt them at his captors!? This served no useful outcome for him, except to express his feelings, yet he continued!
When you examine the other primates, as compared to humans, the dividing lines that separate us become really fuzzy.
What… the… hell?
Aaron, man? I hate to break it to you, cowboy. You might need to stop doing whatever it it you’re doing. Dig?
Wooohaaa! Flame on!
Great job, PZ. I know they needed to go to the callers, but I wish they hadn’t. I’d have loved to have just listen to you fillet the god-zombie.
Ray Bohlin, didn’t he play the cowardly lion in the Wizard of Oz?
I only caught the the last 10 minutes but something tells me that’s a good thing. Ron’s words were like fingernails dragging across a chalkboard to my ears. The caller named Bob said it right, Ron’s worldview is approaching Taliban territory.
I liked the only thing I got to hear from PZ, which was a summary of where to draw the line: not at what is life but at what is human.
Not Ron, but Ray. :P
Might as well have been Ray Comfort.
I don’t think the calls from the listeners really helped the program at all. They weren’t asking questions — they were making rambling statements touching on their own hot issues and, by and large, doing a poor job.
They should have left it to moderator and the two opposing sides.
You did a fine job, PZ. Interesting that Ray Bolin admitted that his opposition to embryonic stem cell research was entirely based upon his religious views, not science.
(Of course, Bolin didn’t explain how he got this religious view, nor how his position jibes with the god of the Old Testament calls for the Hebrews to rip babies from the wombs of their enemies’ women.)
The callers, for the most part, were encouraging.
The thing that scares me THE MOST about these god-heads is their seemingly complete indifference to real, living humans- especially when faced with anything that could potentially become one. What? Do blastocysts not yet contain Original Sin™? What makes them so over-poweringly important?
If original sin is not a genetic mutation (rather it’s a reaction to the environment), and original sin is passed down through bloodlines… does that make the whole concept of original sin Lamarkian? No wonder YECs hate Darwin so much!
It’s weird. We had a whole hour, I felt like I had about 5 minutes to say anything. Oh, well.
One point I didn’t get to make: Ray kept saying he was following a biblical world view. Where’s the biblical injunction against stem cell research? Where does the bible say human life begins at fertilization? In fact, where are the bible verses that reveal the authors even knew about cells, let alone gametes and zygotes?
I missed it! Bummer. Short version?
Here is a link to the mp3 from the kpft archive:
http://archive.kpft.org/mp3/090311_220002gridlock.MP3
I agree with the commenters, and PZ. Call-in radio is highly over-rated, and usually it is just downright lazy, IMHO.
If you can’t keep a program going for an hour without resorting to constant random babbling from listeners, you are simply unprepared, or chicken.
If you feel you have to include listeners, 15 minutes at the end will do, and limit them to one question or short comment.
You don’t usually get much wisdom from the peanut gallery, I can hear the peanut gallery all day without a radio.
However my opinion is a minority around KPFT, and everywhere else for that matter
Why is the “expert” for the wrong side in this debate always some theologian or “reverend?” At least the creationists can occasionally trot out electricians or pilots or someone remotely involved in science to spout anti-evolution nonsense. How about the anti-stem cell bunch get a mortician or a god-bothering scientist like Francis Collins to actually give some sort of hokey evidence to back up their claims?
I remember somebody on the show briefly mentioning that the Bible doesn’t even say anything about the beginning of life. I wonder if they are basing their theistic beginning-of-life morality on the story of Onan? (link to The Brick Testament retelling of that story)
They could be frightened that Jesus will kill those who spill. There would be only one problem if they did, it would flip the conversation from “abortion is murder” to “masturbation is murder” and hurt their patriarchal sensibilities.
Was Onan the inventor of onanism?
Mike @ 28
He’s not, he’s worse:
Raymond G. Bohlin (July 1953) is the head of Probe Ministries and a promoter of creationism[1] as well as intelligent design. He has a BS from University of Illinois (1975), an MS from the University of North Texas (1980), and PhD in Biology from the University of Texas at Dallas (1991).[2] He is known for his activitism against stem cell research[3] and is a fellow at the Discovery Institute signing its A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism.[4] He has been noted as being one of the ID advocates who is both a “young earth creationist, and activist in the intelligent design movement.[5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Bohlin
Dr. Ray Bohlin’s main objection, as I made it, is that once an ovum is fertilised, it ipso facto becomes a human being, made in God’s image.
Not exactly a scientific claim.
A hearty congratulations to Wowbagger the Infinitely Justified
/applause
and to NoR, a brilliant star in the Pharyngula skies!! May the squids write about your constellations and make gods of ye, Molly forbid it to be taken as a slanderous patheon of mythical figures ;)
/bows, exits
Is anyone recording this? I can’t listen to it right now, but I don’t want to miss out.
What seems to be strange is that these people say they believe these stem cells constitute human beings, and are letting this go on. If we saw that the government was funding scientists who took, say, orphans or people off the street and euthanized them (the taking of human life for scientific benefit) then we’d have a revolution on our hands. The disparity between what they say they believe, and what their attitudes are towards embryonic stem cell research (merely a few strong words) seems to me an indicator that there are unpublicized motivations.
By the way, VoR is my gf. So just saying lol. She’s the reason i have so little time anymore :p
i picked a real winner lol. ^_^
/brag
Thanks for the link, Scooter; will go savor it now!
Meanwhile, for something completely somewhat different, there’s a mildly amusing “Playing God” t-shirt over at http://shirt.woot.com/.
@34:
The show is available from the radio station’s archive:
http://archive.kpft.org/
PZ is the perfect person to engage in these debates, especially when the show only gives him 5 minutes to talk.
He gets straight to the point. His responses are concise. He doesn’t use any um’s or “ya know”s. You could extract almost any of his sentences and they communicate the point clearly.
If only he could train other advocates to do the same!
I thought the caller Louis (Lewis?) with his thought experiment really ended the argument.
You have a burning building so which do you rescue, a newborn baby or a suitcase containing a million blastocysts.
Ah, lovely! But will Mr. Brolin and his fellow-drivelers even notice—let alone concede—that, amidst the civility and chuckles, he’s been incisively eviscerated?
Good question. Nowhere. The bible also doesn’t mention abortion or evolution much less string theory, dark energy, or the cosmic background radiation. Or cars, computers, electricity and so on.
The short answer. These christofascist fundie retards are Just Making Stuff Up.
Tony Sidaway @40:
Agreed. Honestly he was the only caller I thought had anything worthwhile to say.
Ray’s non-response was:
We face moral dilemmas like that in, in the quick of the moment very rarely, and to try to come to a rational decision that’s going to affect tens of thousands, millions of people based on an emergency, gut-wrenching decision is usually not considered good ethics. And I’m not going to address it. I think it’s a ridiculous comparison to try to make.
Of course, he’s not actually being asked to make the decision in an emergency situation. The whole point of the emergency situation was to present a forced choice so that you could weigh the value of one against the other. But, of course, Ray missed the point.
Oh really? What do you do with them, plant them in the back yard or put them in a bowl with the goldfish?
Can I send away for one from an offer in the back of comic book?
Stupid nonsense. A blastocyst might end up as a baby after you spend a few tens of thousands of bucks getting it implanted in a fertile uterus of a willing female. Or it might not, full term success rates can be somewhere between 10% and zero.
Onan’s crime was disobeying god. God told him to knock up some chick. He ummm, sort of went through the motions without actually doing so.
The relevance to this to anything in the last 2,000 years is zero. God apparently gave up breeding humans after jesus. Nowadays, if you tell a judge that god made you impregnate that girl, you still have to pay child support.
Methinks Geoffrey @ 39 above is the Host of the program. If so, great first program, Geoffrey. I’d suggest holding back callers till the fourth quarter of the program if you are going to host a debate, the surface was barely scratched on the issue.
Other than that, excellent job, you sounded great, welcome to the KPFT Klusterfuck, it’s gettin to be PZs Texas Home away from Home. Can’t beat that.
When I saw you were havin PZ on as your first guest, I figured, okay, whoever this guy is, he is my kinda radio.
Happy Monkey
alex
“What seems to be strange is that these people say they believe these stem cells constitute human beings, and are letting this go on. If we saw that the government was funding scientists who took, say, orphans or people off the street and euthanized them (the taking of human life for scientific benefit) then we’d have a revolution on our hands. The disparity between what they say they believe, and what their attitudes are towards embryonic stem cell research (merely a few strong words) seems to me an indicator that there are unpublicized motivations.”
a good point and one that ive thought myself re evolution, if parents honestly feel their kids are being honestly lied to in schools by biol teachers why dont they actually do something about it instead of babbling on about teaching ‘all views’.
id pose a question to somebody saying life begins at the zygote: If you were forced to either boil a batch of 100 human zygotes or shoot a single baby in the head, which would you choose (or actually you caould ask them to keep things fair and boil the baby too).
tony #40.
ah, you preempted my post!
rays pathetic answer regarding the blastocysts and baby in a burning building show that he simply cannot justify what he believes (i assume is something like a zygote has a soul and its just as valuable as the soul of a fully developed human) if he were honest the situation would be simple, he’d rescue the blastocysts but the fool is forced to give a non answer because his hardwired reaction would be to rescue the baby and so undermine his idiotic beliefs.
hes incapable of putting his foot where his mouth is.
There is an ethical/moral problem only if you believe that…
1. Life ‘begins’ at fertilization
Nonsense… life ‘began’ a few billion… years ago. Once it began, it has progressed and advanced as a continuum.
2. An ‘animating spirit’ (soul) is imparted by a deity, at the moment of fertilization.
Nonsense… there are no compelling reasons to think that there is any such thing as a ‘soul’ OR a ‘deity’. This view originated with the idea that the human sperm consists of teeny-tiny humans, fully-formed (homunculus), and that ‘conception’ occurred when god ‘blesses’ the sexual union with a ‘soul’, animating the homunculus. Of course… as an adjunct to this… the newly ‘ensouled’ homunculus ALSO gets imbued with ‘original sin’, which gets passed down through the generations, carried in the males’ semen.
I think that these christ-cult delusionists are being arbitrary with their decision to cut-off their concern at the moment of conception. If they were to track their reasoning back to its proper termination point, they should be advocating that wankers be stoned to death.
Greetings!
In RE: Onan and his crime…
Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn’t the ‘some chick’ he was supposed to get pregnant his sister-in-law? And *that* was his primary objection, that he didn’t want to dishonor his dead brother by siring kids on his (his brother’s) widow?
Perhaps I am remembering incorrectly…
That is what Onam claimed. Modern biblical scholars think that Onam was being less than clear about the truth. It seems his sister in law wasn’t very good looking and had an unpleasant personality. LOL
Who says theology isn’t sophisticated and intellectually challenging?
Often the problem in these discussions is that they get bogged down in the “When does the thing become a Human life?”. This is the crucial question for the theistic side because, for them the human / non-human distinction is the morally relevant one. The whole “in the image of God” business.
For me and I presume PZ and others, the morally relevant distinction is not Human v Non-human but is rather the capacity to suffer.
If something has no capacity to suffer, then it is the moral equivalent of a lump of putty. It’s potential, given all the right conditions and a following wind, to develop into something with the capacity to suffer is not relevant.
Of course in the real world, the probelm with the capacity to suffer criterion is that it is fuzzy. There isn’t a clear moment where this is switched on or off compared with the theists clear “moment of conception” cut off. but that’s just life folks. Moral judgements just ARE a matter of trade offs, hard choices and fuzzy distinctions.
I like this channel. Most of the callers are really smart and just lay it into Ray.
Scooter said:
“However my opinion is a minority around KPFT”
Being a former Houstonian, I can tell you that’s really saying something!
Sorry I missed The Inner Side radio program, when did you start broadcasting down there? I moved away from Houston in late 2007. From the look of your web page, sounds like a cool show I would like.
I used to listen to the Atheist Hour (actually only 30 min) back in 2005-2006, but that show was poorly organized and painful to listen to because the hosts just never seemed prepared worth a damn. They did interview the Infidel Guy once and that was cool, but I guess they couldn’t keep their pledge numbers up ’cause that show got yanked.
Otherwise KPFT is one of the things that helps you keep your sanity in Houston. I sometimes forget that I can listen online. Up here in the DFW area we have KNON, our local community radio station, but it can’t hold a candle to KPFT, IMHO.
Plus, the history of the station is cool; Not everyone can say they got bombed off the air by the KKK in the 1970s…
RE: Onan
Yes, Onan was supposed to marry his (sonless) sister-in-law, and sire children on her at least until a son was produced. His objection was that the children would be accounted his brother’s and raised in Er’s name: the whole purpose of the levirate marriage thing, in which nobody had a say, especially the women involved, since it was a custom to preserve each tribe.
Onan would thus have the onus of raising his brother’s children, along with his own, for the purpose of continuing that line. Any eventual profit would accrue to those sons and their families, not to Onan.
But primarily Onan was slain because god spake, yet Onan spilt. Bad doggie!
To the extent that PZ had a chance, he done good. Couple of weird calls. Overall, as these things go, it was a thoughtfully done show, and “Ray” had mostly to fall back on religious tropes.
Before hearing this show, I put in my two cents on my blog.
@ scooter, #31:
Wow, so he actually is a scientist by degree, but he doesn’t use any scientific evidence in his arguments. Hmmm…I wonder why not. Methinks he took the time to get his degrees so he has scientific street cred within the kook establishment. Then, at least, they have one “authority” to point to and help fleece the general public. But here’s what I wonder, as I’m sure many here do–why start with defining human life at the embryonic stage? It can’t be because it’s “human looking,” as vertebrate embryos look similar during many steps of their development. If there isn’t any real reason, why not go back to the sperm and egg, or even further, like the cheeseburger you eat for lunch, which is digested and harvested for nutrients which the cells in your body use for fuel, some of said fuel going toward gametocyte production? If you keep regressing far enough, everything in the universe could be defined as human life.