Category: Rants

Step Away from the Category

I recently stumbled across an interesting blog dedicated to the union of the Christian Church, an admirable goal. But being always on the lookout for sloppy logic, I noticed one article in which the author attempts to show that:

Within Protestantism there is not some one additional entity to which the term “visible catholic Church” refers, consisting of these denominations, congregations, believers and their children.

As opposed to the one entity which is the Roman Catholic Church, of course.

Unfortunately, the only thing the author shows is that philosophy students should be forced, at gunpoint if necessary, to take a formal course in logic before they graduate.

His argument is as follows:

This was the error of assuming that unity of type is sufficient for unity of composition. In actuality, things of the same type do not by that very fact compose a unified whole.

At first glance this might suffice for a Platonist, but consider this: who gets to decide which collections of things of the same type get their own unified whole, and which don’t?

If the Westminster Confession defines the “visible catholic Church” as the unity of Protestant Christians, then who is the author to claim that that entity does not exist, whilst the entity known as the Roman Catholic Church does?

I assume that the author would assert that the doctrines of the Roman Catholic church hold more authority than the Westminster Confession. But this is not an argument, it is an axiom: he has not “shown” anything, but simply restated his underlying assumption.

I can, in fact, refute his argument by construction.

Consider the set C, defined as the set of persons adhering to a Christian tradition descended from those developed in the Protestant Reformation.

If mathematics has any access at all to the world of Platonic ideals, then I have just shown that there exists, both in our world and in the ideal world, an entity, C, which is identical to the “visible catholic Church” as defined in the Westminster Confession.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum

Why We Vaccinate Redux

The latest Wired has a great article on vaccination (emphasis mine).

There is no credible evidence to indicate that any of this [vaccines harm America’s children] is true. None. Twelve epidemiological studies have found no data that links the MMR (measles/mumps/rubella) vaccine to autism; six studies have found no trace of an association between thimerosal (a preservative containing ethylmercury that has largely been removed from vaccines since 20011) and autism, and three other studies have found no indication that thimerosal causes even subtle neurological problems. The so-called epidemic, researchers assert, is the result of improved diagnosis, which has identified as autistic many kids who once might have been labeled mentally retarded or just plain slow. In fact, the growing body of science indicates that the autistic spectrum — which may well turn out to encompass several discrete conditions — may largely be genetic in origin. In April, the journal Nature published two studies that analyzed the genes of almost 10,000 people and identified a common genetic variant present in approximately 65 percent of autistic children.

I am proud to say that Emily had another round of vaccinations the other day. Her risk of dying from a host of fatal childhood diseases has gone down significantly.1 Her risk of developing autism has increased by an amount so small it would take a scanning electron microsocope to detect.

We evaluate risks every day. There is a small but non-zero chance that I will be run over by a truck while biking to work. Should I then refuse to get out of bed?

My extremely fetching orange and yellow reflective vest is made of plastic, which is flammable, and might melt itself into my skin if it catches on fire. Is the risk of my vest catching on fire (perhaps from static electricity generated by rubbing against my jacket) greater than the risk of a truck driver not seeing me on a dark rainy evening if I don’t wear it?

Sounds crazy, but that’s how anti-vaxxers sound to me. Is the infinitesimal (and in fact made up out of whole cloth) risk of autism greater than the risk of brain damage or death from rubella or measles, or pertussis?

  1. However, if enough people in her community refuse to vaccinate their children, her risk of dying from an infectious disease actually goes up. The more people in a community who are vaccinated against an infectious disease, the less chance the infection has to spread. Not rocket science, people. ↩

Religious Double Standard

Turns out there’s still at least one religion whose priests can sodomize children and be excused and even applauded.

The religion I speak of is, of course, Progressivism, whose self-appointed high priests are the glitterati of Hollywood. Roman Polanski, a genius at film directing, admitted to drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl, and then fled the country. Now his extradition to the US is being protested by a large number of hollywood celebrities. (Thankfully there are some, both celebrities and non, who are rightly appalled by this.)

It’s a little ironic, don’t you think, that in this day and age a high-status male can sexually assault a child and be excused and applauded. How very . . . patriarchal.