Dispensationalism and the Interpretation of Scripture Part 1: Two Kinds of Hermeneutic

How are we to go about interpreting Scripture or some particularly troublesome passage of Scripture? Here's one thing we shouldn't do that lots of people seem to think is a good idea: interpret all of Scripture metaphorically, or at least those sections of it the literal meaning of which we don't particularly like (in particular, those which seemingly contradict our theological position). Call that the Hermeneutic of the Metaphorical ("hermeneutic", as I'm using it, refers to a method of interpretation). Here's another thing we shouldn't do that lots of other people who oppose the Hermeneutic of the Metaphorical seem to think is a good idea: interpret all of Scripture literally, or at least those sections of it which support our particular theological position (those that do not being interpreted metaphorically instead). Call that the Hermeneutic of the Literal.

Notice that these two hermeneutics are of a kind - they are both incarnations of a larger hermeneutic which we can call the Hermeneutic of the Present. Both ignore lots of relevant historical or literary facts or traditions of interpretation in their interpretation of Scripture, basing their readings instead on their own narrow contexts, interests, and theological positions. Both privilege a certain kind of reading (literal or metaphorical) over another (metaphorical or literal) but do so ultimately only arbitrarily and where it suits them (or their theological view) since to interpret everything consistently with the espoused principles of the hermeneutic would be implausible or inconsistent - some passages cannot be taken other than literally and some passages if taken literally would contradict each other. The key, unspoken principle of the Hermeneutic of the Present is that the text means what I (or my fellow countrymen or fellow members of my church or etc.) would have meant by it. Liberalism follows the Hermeneutic of the Metaphorical and Classic Dispensationalism follows the Hermeneutic of the Literal. But both are wrong, as the Hermeneutic of the Present is in general a misguided, me-centric way of reading the Scriptures.

Contrast now the Hermeneutic of the Present with the Hermeneutic of Context which tries to place the meaning of a text within its textual, historical, theological, grammatical, semantic, pragmatic, cultural, religious, sociological, anthropological, narrative, symbolic, scriptural and literary context and use that as the determiner for deciphering the original meaning of a given text. In the Hermeneutic of Context, one can go just as wrong in interpreting a passage literally that was meant symbolically as in interpreting a passage symbolically that was meant literally. The key is to look at the evidence of the context.

Principles like "interpret literally unless there is an overriding reason not to do so" or "interpret according to the plain meaning of the text" are overly simplistic and generally unuseful - which is why they are almost always espoused by those who ignore at least parts of the complex of context within which a given text was originally situated. These principles are the watchwords of the Hermeneutic of the Literal - principles not followed to a t but instead too often followed only insofar as it bolsters the theology of the interpreter. The former principle is not helpful since one must have evidence in interpreting a text of literary genre before one knows whether it is to be interpreted literally or otherwise - it is that which in large part decides whether it is to be interpreted literally, not this principle of literalism. The latter is not helpful since plainness differs from person to person and yields contradictory results. What is the plain reading to one person contradicts the plain reading for another. "Plainness" is, after all, a relational concept - it involves a relation between an interpretation and a person and so will differ from person to person. Indeed, sometimes a text has no "plain" interpretation at all and is in fact generally puzzling (one reason why there are so many debates and conflicting interpretations among well-meaning Christians).

So ultimately, the Hermeneutic of Context is preferable to the Hermeneutic of the Present in either of its incarnations. It promises to get at the original meaning of the text with less interference from one's own context, interests, or theological point of view than is found in the other hermeneutic. It is also truer to the way actual interpretation of texts in general proceeds anyway.

Further posts in this series: "Prophetic Literature", "Modern Israel and Biblical Prophecy", "The People of God, Israel and the Church" and "The Tribulation and Rapture"

Some Criteria for an Adequate Moral Theory

From some notes I made for tomorrow's Phil 1 class I teach (anything else I should add?):

The more plausible a moral theory is, the more it should…

1. Give plausible answers as to which actions are right and which are wrong.

2. Give the right reasons for why an action is right or wrong.

3. Make moral thinking rational in some sense.

4. Help guide us in doing the right thing.

5. Be the sort of thing that can be followed by a perfect human being leading a full human life – it shouldn’t require us to be omniscient or omnipotent.

6. It should be difficult – morality should not be too easy but should be stringent and should set a very high standard for us to achieve. If a moral theory says we aren’t very good people, we should take that as an impetus to improve ourselves not to reject the theory.

7. Allow for error – sometimes we go wrong.

Simon Gathercole in Christianity Today on the New Perspective on Paul

In the latest issue of Christianity Today, the cover article is a piece by Simon Gathercole, a lecturer in New Testament, on the "New Perspective" (NP for short). For those who aren't up to speed on what the NP is, it's a new way at looking at and interpreting Paul's writings on Israel, Church, the Law and works of law, salvation and justification based on a new understanding of what first century Judaism was like. This new (or newish - it's been around for around half a century now) take on the Jewish milieu of Jesus' time has it that the old caricature of Jews and first century Judaism as ancient Jewish versions of Pelagius or Medieval Catholics who are trying to earn their way into heaven through doing good stuff is simply mistaken and that Judaism at that time was far more grace-based (God chose Israel out of sheer grace, for instance) than modern commentators have generally noticed. They then take this new understanding and use that to reinterpret Paul in this new, purportedly more accurate context.

The NP has taken the world of New Testament and Paul studies by storm and even those who disagree with it have been necessarily influenced by it at least to some degree. More and more evangelicals have hopped on board the NP bandwagon, this being facilitated in large part because a well-known evangelical, N. T. Wright, is one of the principle proponents of the NP.

I was a little surprised to see an article of this kind in CT. This is supposed to be a general magazine for evangelicals and to see a movement within biblical scholarship which doesn't seem to necessarily deny any portion of "mere Christianity" (or even any of the pillars of evangelicalism) criticized is a little odd. Hopefully, I'd like to see some sort of article in response defending the NP by some evangelical, fully orthodox member of said movement.

So what exactly were the criticisms? Gathercole lists six. The first is that the NP wrongly insists that Judaism in the first century didn't think in terms of salvation as something to be earned or gained through obedience to Torah. Here he gives some quotes from some non-canonical literature of the period which are supposed to support this contention. But these quotes weren't quite so clear as they were supposed to be - they seemed to me easily capable of being interpreted through an NP lense. Even if they weren't, it's not clear how damaging it would be to the NP if some Jews thought in terms of earning salvation if the majority didn't (some NPers, in fact, seem willing to concede as much). The use Gathercole wants to make of this, however, is that, given that some Jews thought that obedience to Torah would be rewarded in the end times with salvation, that "Paul's understanding of justification makes sense, then, as a criticism of law observance as the means to eternal life (see Romans 3:20)". But it equally makes sense - NPers would argue more so - as a criticism of law observances as the membership badge for or way of staying in God's people. Gathercole continues, "Many of Paul's contemporaries seem to have believed that obedience was possible without a radical inbreaking of God. For Paul on the other hand, salvation was impossible without...Cross, Resurrection and Pentecost". As if this was a point against the NP! NPers could perfectly well agree with this (at least qua NPers). At least Dunn and Wright seem to agree, if not all NPers generally. So I don't see any real problem necessarily for the NP presented in this first criticism.

The second criticism is that "works of the law" in Paul means doing the law as a whole, not just the particularly Jewish stuff. But, with many NPers, one could perfectly well interpret "works of the law" as meaning primarily the Jewish stuff but also maintain that Paul thought failure in any part of the law meant a failure to uphold the law period and as such meant one was under a curse. One needn't reject the latter to think the former, as Gathercole seems to me to think.

The third criticism is that many NPers throw the personal baby out with the individualistic bathwater when it comes to matters like salvation. But, again, not all NPers do in fact fall into this trap (Dunn and Wright, again, don't generally).

The fourth criticism is that "the core meaning of justification by faith is about how believers, despite their sin, can be reckoned as righteous before God". Now I'm not sure exactly how Gathercole is understanding what he says here, but on at least some understandings of it not all NPers fail in this regard. And since not all do, his final two criticisms, which are based on this one, also do not apply to all NPers.

All in all, Gathercole seems to paint with too wide a brush (a common failing in writings attempting to critique the NP) and all his criticisms either aren't entirely persuasive or aren't so much criticisms of the NP as of specific pockets of scholars within the NP (there are a lot of non-evangelical, non-orthodox biblical scholars after all). It's a little hard, indeed, to see what all the fuss is supposed to be about. A lot of what he says in the rest of his article is of this nature as well. NPers qua NPers can agree with the essential spirit or points of what Gathercole says, for instance, about justification and righteousness even while having a different account of what these things mean. NPers can perfectly well reject any kind of Pelagianism or semi-Pelagianism, accept Christ's death as a propitiating sacrifice and even accept full blown five-point Calvinism all the while being an NPer. In the end, this article unintentionally comes across as an attempt to poison the well against NPers like Wright by offering criticisms that apply mainly only to others within the movement (something, again, that happens far too often).

Sometimes (though I'm not saying Gathercole does this) the anti-NPers seem to be mainly against Wright or the NP as a kind of reactionary move - they do not like the shift in how their old theological language or ideas are being used. Often, people seem quick to condemn anything that sounds different from the traditional formulas from their favorite dead theologians without stopping to try to see how everything in the new view actually fits together and how it jives with the biblical witness. Vitriolic accusation of heresy, indeed, seem to fall at the drop of a hat. If you don't believe me, check out some of the Reformed writers who are violently anti-NP on the Internet. Or read about the Reformed folks who are campaigning against the "Federal Vision" theology (a Reformed theological movement which has been influenced by many NP ideas and has been viciously and unfairly attacked by many of the fellow churchgoers). To see a dissenting voice, check out this piece here which argues that Wright's theology fits the Reformed view quite well.

Divine Hiddenness and the Problem of Evil

The problem of divine hiddenness, roughly, is this - if God's so keen on us believing in him, even to the point of possibly staking our salvation at least partly on it, why does he remain so hidden from us? In other words, how can a reasonable person be blamed for not believing in God if God hasn't made it as obvious to that person as it could possibly be?

For the purposes of this post, I'll leave aside the objection that God's existence is immediately obvious to everyone and so nonbelief is indeed always blameworthy in that sense. What I want to discuss is how distinct this problem really is - is this a problem that's somehow uniquely troublesome to Christians and similar sorts of theists? My answer is no. I'm not really sure what all the fuss has been about surrounding this issue of late (of course, I'm not as up to date on the literature on this topic as I'd like) - in my mind, the problem of divine hiddenness just seems to be one particular case of the problem of evil, albeit a somewhat striking one. Any answer to the problem of evil, it seems to me, will generally do just as well or just as badly as a response to the problem of divine hiddenness.

Now, why do I think this? Well, for one thing, divine hiddenness is just one example of the bad stuff that exists in our world - we were made for direct, "face-to-face" relationships with and knowledge of God and that lack is a bad thing. In that sense, divine hiddenness is just one more evil which God allows and yet which also perhaps results in people being punished, just like God's allowal of murder or rape. The connection with evil becomes even stronger if we take the biblical stance that sin has damaged and does damage our abilities to clearly perceive God or to assent our will to him or his truths. If that's so, and without sin we would in fact perceive God clearly and wonderfully, then the explanation for divine hiddenness lies in part in the explanation of sin and fallen, sinful state - that is, a solution to the general problem of evil. And if we're responsible for that bad stuff and it's that bad stuff that prevents us from knowing God then perhaps we are in fact responsible for any divine hiddenness we experience since it is brought upon us by ourselves.

This seems to me a much better way of approaching the topic than the well-worn answer I've heard some Christians give. According to some, God remains hidden because otherwise, (if, say, he started really obviously revealing himself to people, writing the gospel in the clouds in English, etc.) people would have to believe in him and so would have no free will. There's a couple things people could mean by this. If God revealed himself in this way then...

1. People would have no choice but to believe that God exists and so would have no free will.
OR 2. People would have no choice but to follow God and so would have no free will.

Now 1 is simply not true. Maybe people wouldn't have any choice but to believe that God exists, but that doesn't mean they have no free will. Free will pertains to willing to do something, not necessarily willing to believe something. There are all kinds of things we don't seem to have any choice (or at least very little) but to believe in it yet we still are free. Besides, believing that God exists doesn't necessarily change anyone's behavior - as James says, after all, even the demons believe - and shudder.

But neither is 2 necessarily true either. Why think that this would follow? Adam and Eve were in direct contact and fellowship with God and yet they still chose to disobey God and not follow him. So clearly the obviousness of God doesn't necessarily hinder our will in any way and still allows for us to reject him. Maybe there are some kinds of revelations that would do this, but I'm not sure what that would be or that anyone has ever experienced it (Paul perhaps?) and clearly God can be very obvious without things being like this (he walked with and had direct fellowship with Adam and Eve after all). So in either case - 1 or 2 - I think this sort of objection fails and that a better strategy would be to subsume the divine hiddenness problem under the problem of evil in general.

Notes for the Simply Christian Sunday School Class on Justice & Spirituality, God, and Israel

In case anyone was interested, I decided to post my notes on two recent adult Sunday School classes I led at FBC. We are going through the 10 week Sunday School course based on N. T. Wright's book Simply Christian (a great book, and a great course - highly recommended!). I actually did three sessions - one on Justice & Spirituality two weeks ago for one class and two (on God and Israel respectively) which were squeezed into a single morning yesterday. So here you are (hopefully it's understandable - they're just notes after all, though lightly edited to take time schedules and such off of them):

Simply Christian Session 2: Justice & Spirituality

Justice
* Discussion 1: What does Jesus have to do with justice, injustice, and “setting the world to rights”? Is a passion for justice integral to the Christian life? Why or why not? How, if at all, does it relate to the biblical commandment to forgive even one’s enemies?

* Discussion 2: Jesus says that the two greatest commandments are to love God and love one’s neighbor. In the Old Testament God’s heart for the latter is revealed in his passion for mercy and justice. This passion for justice is revealed especially in God’s heart for the poor, minorities, the weak, the disenfranchised, the oppressed, the disadvantaged, widows, orphans, aliens and indeed all who are vulnerable or not so well off. How well has today’s evangelical church reflected God’s passion and priorities in its own? Why? How could we do better?

Puzzle: Why is there this universal recognition of and thirst for justice even when we can’t get it, either in society or in ourselves?
Christian answer: God acts justly and is passionate for justice, and we were made in his image.

Micah 6:8

Christianity teaches that this passion for justice, and God’s plan to achieve it, finds its embodiment in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the focal point of God’s call for justice within us, his passion for it and plan to achieve it. Jesus is God’s ultimate answer to injustice by taking all the injustice of the world on himself and therefore all the justice of God against that injustice. And when he completes God’s plan, all will be set aright and injustice will be done away with forever.

How does this affect a Christian’s life? Heroes of the faith passionate for justice precisely because they were Christian. Because Christ is at the center of God’s passion for justice and his solution to injustice and we are in Christ, we too find ourselves called to be agents of justice and conduits for God’s passion for it. When we pursue justice, we are more fully implementing the image of God in which we are made and more fully being conformed to the likeness of God’s Son.

Proverbs 29:7, Amos 5:21-24

What’s the scope of this concern for justice? When we are passionate for justice, we no longer care only for ourselves, our family, our nation, people like us, or even the church. Justice calls us not to be insular: not ‘just us’. This is something the evangelical church is still in the process of trying to get things right. Zechariah 7:9-10. We are to seek justice and mercy for non-Christians, the disadvantaged, and all who are not like us or who do not like us or who we ourselves do not like.

What can we do? Look up IJM, get involved in petitioning leaders about cases of injustice around the world, get involved with World Vision or other similar groups, be a foster parent, environment, above all pray.

Spirituality
* Discussion 3: Look at the list below of the top sellers in Spirituality on Amazon. Considering this list and the success of books like The Da Vinci Code, other “alternative” pictures of Jesus and his message, and stuff like the Gospel of Judas, what can you conclude about our culture’s relationship with spirituality?

The Secret

God Is Not Great
The God Delusion

The Freedom Writers Diary

Left to Tell
The Secret (CD Set)
Law of Attraction: The Secret of Attracting More of What You Want and Less of What You Don’t
Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
The Four Agreements (A Toltec Wisdom Book)
Right People, Right Place, Right Plan
Blue Like Jazz
Ask and It is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Dreams
The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thought to Change Your Life and the World
Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith
The Success Principle
Your Best Life Now
The Law of Attraction: Teachings of Abraham
Battle of the Mind
Boundaries
The Law of Attraction
The Laws of Thinking: 10 Secrets to Using the Divine Power of Your Mind to Manifest Prosperity

El Secreto (The Secret in Spanish)
~ Other notable best-sellers from the Religion & Spirituality section: Witness to Roswell: The 60-Year Cover-Up; Zero Limits: The Secret Hawaiian System for Wealth, Health, Peace, and More; Atheist Universe

* Discussion 4: How would a religion that truly fulfills our needs for spirituality differ from one that was designed to make a maximum amount of money, converts, and popularity? Are what people want in a religion and what they need the same thing?

Spirituality: that awareness that all humans have that they are made for a relationship with someone or something much bigger, much greater, than anything we humans can know by our own will.

Puzzle: Why is there this universal hunger for spirituality?
Christian answer: We are made by God for a relationship with him, both individually and together.

Ecclesiastes 3:11

Spirituality is very popular now, but people don’t like authority or organized religion and want to, individualistically, create their own spiritual religion without the supposed constraints of Christianity or other such traditions. They want it to meet their wants and needs and to do so now. They are so thirsty for spirituality and so hardened against Christianity that they are willing to drink from polluted spiritual waters.

Chesterton: When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing – they believe in anything.

Romans 1:21-23

Christian spirituality is very different.
It is rooted in spontaneity, yes, but tradition as well. A personal, individually crafted thing but one that also answers to and is involved with both a community and a history. One that involves solitary contemplation and prayer but also a life of service to the Church and the world. It is intensely practical pursuit, not an idle practice of staring at your navel and thinking good thoughts while you hum a hymn or two. Christian spirituality involves relationship both with God and the community of saints throughout history – today’s private spiritual practices without authority or constraint miss out on all of these dimensions of spiritual richness.

The heart of Christian spirituality is in the foundation of our relationship with God in Christ through the Holy Spirit. One text that I think captures the dynamic at the heart of this spirituality is Romans 8.

Simply Christian
Sessions 4&5: God, Israel

GOD
* Discussion: What do you think of when you hear the word “heaven”? How is it the same or different from the three options mentioned? What might be some of the practical implications of these differences?

Heaven and Earth: Three Options
Option One: Heaven = Earth (and so God = Creation)
Option Two: Heaven and Earth fully distinct and completely separate (and so God is distant)
Option Three: Heaven and Earth distinct but overlapping and interlocking

Though Option One has become popular in some churches, Option Two is the most influential of the non-biblical options on people today who call themselves Christians. Option Two unfortunately has had a profound influence on Western Christianity and its influence can be seen in many evangelical churches and sermons.

Salvation for Option Two is escape to another realm, heaven, where one’s immaterial soul goes to after death and where it will dwell away from the material creation and in communion with God forever. Sound familiar? This is a close relative to the old Gnostic heresy, which involved a denial of the basic goodness of creation and views God’s original creation as something that God has or will ultimately abandon as unredeemed or unredeemable. The motto: "The earth is not our home".

In Option Three, God is not a distant God who abandons his creation. Heaven is not a wholly separate realm but one which overlaps with earth. And in the biblical story, these two will be joined together permanently when Christ returns. So salvation ultimately doesn’t mean to live in a disembodied existence away from the earth, but in the end means to be resurrected and live with God forever on the earth. In option three, we will literally and completely have heaven on earth and with Christ this inbreaking of heaven onto earth has already begun – Christ himself is the ultimate overlap and interlocking between heaven and earth and so now we too can be places where heaven and earth meet and where God is present in a living and active way in his Creation. Ephesians 1:3 Ephesians 2:6 “Being in heaven” or “going to heaven” isn’t something exclusively for those who die, but in a very real and important sense on the biblical picture we are already in heaven, though not yet completely or fully – our heavenly, eternal life and communion with God has already begun. What our job is is to live and think this important truth and to constantly remind ourselves of it – salvation is future but it’s importantly present as well.

Salvation on the biblical option involves renewal of and in creation and enjoyment of heaven on earth, not the abandonment of creation and enjoyment of heaven away from the earth. Salvation is about redemption, not escape!

ISRAEL

* Discussion: Consider the following two pictures of Jesus:
1) Jesus came with a message about love and timeless moral truths. The Jewish trappings of what he said are secondary and not necessary to consider for interpreting his universal message.
2) Jesus came with a message directed to the very specific situation of first century Jews and their place in God’s timeline. The Jewish trappings of what he said are essential to it and necessary to consider for interpreting his particular message.
Which picture best captures the Jesus of the Bible? Why? How do these two pictures relate to the three options about God and heaven from the previous session on God?

The biblical story is one of fall/slavery/exile/curse and creation/exodus/return/restoration. These are interwoven throughout Scripture and each member of one of the two categories is spoken of using imagery and terms drawn from others in that same category.
For example, Exodus = Beginning of New Creation,
Return = New Exodus = New Creation,
Restoration = Full Return = New Exodus = New Creation

The Fall and the reign of sin which accompanied it represents for the world the ultimate exile or slavery. The call of Abraham and God’s election of Israel represents the beginning of God’s great rescue plan. Israel was to be God’s means for putting things right. Genesis 12:2-3
But Israel itself was sinful, so they repeated the Fall over and over again and suffered from exile and slavery over and over again.

The king was supposed to be Israel’s representative and take Israel’s job on himself and to be responsible to see that Israel completed God’s job given to them. But the kings were themselves sinful and suffered from the same fate as their people. Messiah was to be the one king to change this – to go through exile and the consequences of sin and then to experience a return from that condition on Israel’s behalf so that Israel might have a full return from ultimate exile and thus have their job fulfilled by this promised king. Restoration of Israel in the person of Messiah meant fulfillment of Israel’s job and thus the setting of things to rights for the whole world – healed relationships and justice, true spirituality, and the full beauty of creation as God intended it. Heaven on earth. We as Christians, of course, believe that this Messiah was none other than Jesus.

Isaiah 49:1-7

Replies ad infinitum

Here is a reply to my reply to a reply to my reply to a paper. And my reply to that reply to...wait, where was I?

Politics Trumps Facts In Editorial Hostile To Administration

The title of this post is meant to poke a bit of fun at an editorial by one Cynthia Tucker you can find here on Yahoo! News, which is entitled "POLITICS TRUMPS FACTS IN ADMINISTRATION HOSTILE TO SCIENCE". I don't often post on things like this, but I just saw this and these kinds of things really annoy me, whether it's coming from the Left or the Right. Now, granted, some of the stuff she says here is, if true, probably damaging and might be a case of politics "trumping facts" or "trumping the hard facts of science", whatever that's supposed to mean. But by no means all. In fact, the stuff that does seem damaging might even be seen as cases of "facts" of science trumping "facts" of science - opinions of some scientists (those who dissent from the views of others on global warming, for instance) trumping those of others. In such a case, it might even be charitable to interpret the administration as shaping its political views to the views of those scientists it treats as more trustworthy or shapes it with the idea in mind that issue X is indeed controversial despite protestations to the contrary by the vocal majority. Not that that's probable, but it's at least conceivable - and this editorial does nothing to rule out such explanations but automatically demonizes the admistration.

"Unpersuaded by the broad scientific consensus that endorses evolution, the president has argued for teaching the phony science of so-called intelligent design, arguing that "both sides ought to be properly taught ... so people can understand what the debate is about." "

That intelligent design is "phony science" is disputable and the fact that something has a broad scientific consensus does not make it true or beliefworthy. That something scientific enjoys a majority assent among scientists working in that field means that, all else being equal and in the absence of other relevant considerations, we are justified in believing it (though even with this, many philophers of science would disagree). But where all else is not equal and where there are many scientific and extra-scientific considerations to take into account, the fact that some theory enjoys such wide assent no longer means it can be treated as automatically justified or true. It may be science (and opposing theories might not count as "science" even) but it doesn't follow that that is what ought to be believed. This editor seems to be falling into a blind scientism where all truth is mediated by "science" and "science" alone and where all authority over fact and truth is governed by the majority opinion of scientists, scientism's infallible priests and prophets.

The rest of the editorial is typical rhetoric - it's not even about science at all, yet it's implied that it is and that if you disagree you're being unscientific or "going against science". It says,

"And he has stood firm against the advance of embryonic stem cell research, a promising avenue that might eventually lead to cures for such maladies as diabetes, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's. Stingy with his veto pen, the president has exercised it only three times -- two of those to block measures to broaden federal research on embryonic stem cells.
Last month, the president clung to a dubious rationale that values the "lives" of embryos, about the size of a pencil-point, over the lives of full-fledged children suffering with juvenile diabetes. His argument is even less rational if you consider the fate of the vast majority of leftover embryos: They will eventually be destroyed. Apparently, it's perfectly acceptable to dump those blastocysts in the trash. But using them to cure hideous diseases? That's unacceptable, according to Bush's moral principles. "

These issues are about ethics, not science - it's one ethical or political view versus another. To use it as an example of politics trumping science is simply dishonest, though unfortunately often effective at persuading people. Yes, embryonic cell research might lead to cures, but it might not - it's not a sure thing (in an example of the other side really putting scientific fact to one side, it's often spoken of as if it was certain that this research is going to save thousands of lives and improve the quality of everyone's lives). Nor is it mentioned that there has been success with adult stem cell research and, even though it is not quite as promising as embryonic stem cell research, it still has a chance of doing the same sort of stuff but without the ethical costs or controversy. Instead, the picture is painted thusly: those against embryonic stem cell research are against curing people of disease. If that was what is really going on, that would indeed be awful. But, again, it's incredibly dishonest when people, predictably, put things that way. Those against the research are not against curing disease - they're against killing or causing harm, no matter who it might be, including embryos.

As for the last argument that embryos aren't important, it's a nonstarter. For one thing, what does size have to do with moral importance? Are we to treat babies or small children (or midgets or dwarfs for that matter) as of less importance simply because they are smaller? To treat all people equally and refuse to kill one innocent person for the sake of another is about human decency and rights - it has nothing to do with valuing one life over another as the editorial indicates. That's just incredibly wrong-headed - equality and respecting of human rights does not mean valuing one life over another!

When the editorial talks about the fate of the embryos, that is indeed unfortunate and is an issue that has been sorely neglected by the pro-life movement. But why does she talk as if the administration or people against embryonic stem cell research are okay with that? So far as I know none of them have expressed such a view and I think they would all be against such a waste of human life. The fact that something is going on and I haven't tried to stop it yet doesn't mean that I approve of it or that that thing is acceptable. Perhaps the argument is that the embryos are going in the trash anyway, so we might as well use them for research. But that's not a very good argument either. That's like being in Nazi Germany and approving of the execution of Jews and other undesirables for medical experiments since "they're all going to die anyway" in the gas chambers. That's a morally abhorrent argument to make and if that's what's being claimed here, I can't see much of a relevant difference.

Ultimately, this editorial is a prime example of what happens when partisan politics trumps clear thinking. It's an example of waving around the word "science" as a kind of magic word to get people to join your own side and hate the other - all without actually dealing with real science or the issues actually involved in it or really stopping to consider whether any of this has much of anything to do with science in the first place.