Tag: Science

Not Elves Exactly

A couple of years ago, I read an article about a man who was doing research on longevity with fruit flies. He said that it was actually a pretty simple thing to increase their lifespan because it was just a function of how late they were able to reproduce. All you had to do was force them to wait later until they were allowed to reproduce, and the ones that were still fertile at an older age also ended up living longer. I’m making these numbers up, but for instance: A typical fruit fly hits adulthood at 14 days and lives to be 30 days total. You select for flies that can reproduce at 3 weeks old, and you get a fly that dies at 42 days, etc.

The scientist extrapolated this onto people and said that we were basically doing this to ourselves right now. How many women put off children till after college? After a career? Some women don’t start trying until they’re nearly out of their 30s. And of course, most of those that wait so long usually have a hard time getting pregnant. But some do fine. Keep that program up and you’ve got a long-term plan for increasing human lifespan, at least for a part of the population.

From here it just gets fun to extrapolate: The key to extending life is therefore postponing menopause, and everything else stretches out proportionately. Postpone menopause, you postpone puberty as well, for both sexes.

So now I’m imagining a small portion of the population, say 10 percent, that lives to be 400 years old, but by that same measure, hits puberty in their early fifties and starts thinking seriously about marriage in their 80s.

I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly…

On Immunizations

What’s the deal with immunizations? One side is dogmatic about giving them and the other is dogmatic about refusing them. I’ve been recently looking at the controversy trying to decide whether to continue with the normal schedule of shots, to slow it down a bit (i.e. space out the shots over a longer period of time), or to discontinue them all together.

On one end of the spectrum I have my SiL who is staunchly against immunizations and has not immunized my two youngest nephews at all. She’s not alone as several young mothers in my church have made the same decision. On the other end of the spectrum is all my training in Public Health most of which can be boiled down into a single statement: an ounce of prevention goes a long way.

But it’s one thing to sit in a classroom and listen to lectures on preventative medicine and quite another to try and make informed decisions that could affect your baby’s whole life. Continue reading “On Immunizations”

A Single Line

that caught my attention:

“If death is to be approached as martyrdom” he says, in the context of dying of old age, as if that were an assumption that everyone had already thought of. We proceed from there:

If death is to be approached as martyrdom, i.e., as an opportunity to witness to our faith, what do services do we require or request of our healthcare especially at end-of-life? how can that goal be realized in the greater Chrisitian community, i.e., the Church. For example, individuals lifetime spending on healthcare is concentrated to an astounding degree on the final decade of life. Is that a Christian response to healthcare?

One could say that this single perspective could change your whole view on medicine at the end of life…

Christian Counseling

> When I consider your heavens and the work of your fingers,
The moon ad the stars, which you have set in place,
What is man that you are mindful of him
The son of man, that you care for him?
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
And crowned him with glory and honor.
You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
You put everything under his feet:
All flocks and herds, and beasts of the field,
The birds of the air and the fish of the sea
All that swim the paths of the sea.
*–Psalm 8:3-8*

This seemed as good a place to start an essay on the integration of theology and psychology as any.

Scripture tells us that Man was made to fill a very special role in creation. Created in the very image of God, he was intended to superintend (“have dominion” Gen. 1:28) over the earth, to reflect God’s goodness and authority over the earth and to reflect back to Him the glory of creation’s worship of the living God. Earth was to be a garden, and man the chief under-gardener.

It is fitting then, that God first placed man in a garden. Unfortunately, the story doesn’t stop there. Adam and Eve both sinned, turning away from their intended purpose, and directing their natures toward their own designs. Since then, Paul tells us, everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

And that’s how things got complicated. God’s ultimate purpose for man is the same as it ever was. Ephesians 1:10 tells us that ultimately everything in heaven and on earth will still be summed up in Christ. But now, everything has been distorted by sin. Where man’s purpose was merely to tend the earth, now it must be conformed. Instead of a garden, we face a wilderness. Worse still, man himself has become a wilderness, and bends away from God’s purposes for him (cf. Jer. 17:9).

It is my feeling that theology and psychology converge nicely at this point. Theology insists that there is a right way for man to be, a way called holiness. Psychology, while it doesn’t necessarily hold to a single “right way”, does recognize that a good number of people are not the way they want to be and sets about facilitating a change. Continue reading “Christian Counseling”

Peer Reviewed

As I was saying, I’m required by my class to read 1500 pages in addition to the assigned text, so I’ve been browsing the academic archives for articles relevant to pastoral counseling.

Be forewarned: Stay away from the Journal of Pastoral Counseling. It gives a whole new meaning to the concept of Peer Review. Apparently, the question to consider is ever “who are the peers?”

Just a few salient quotes:

> Secularization is based on fact and therefore it will inevitably dismiss beliefs that cannot be proven.
*From: “Psycholgy Versus Religion” (2001)*

Continue reading “Peer Reviewed”

Nice

Via [William Dembski](http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/652)

All the fuss causes the critically minded to speculate if it’s for the sake of the children or rather about something else the hypertolerant malcontents themselves do not want to confront. A child not belonging to the Christian faith is not going to necessarily pick up on any Christian motifs Lewis might have incorporated into the text.

To pick up on any parallels, one would already have to be familiar with Christian doctrine. Thus to be offended by Aslan as a perceived Christ-figure is to have a problem with an intellect more formidable than even that of C.S. Lewis, namely God Himself.