Jonathan's blog

From a post of the same title on the Dilbert blog:

Speaking of skeptics, a reader pointed me to a web site titled Why Won't God Heal Amputees? The rhetorical point of the question is that God only heals the sort of people that might have gotten better on their own, such as cancer patients and the like. That always leaves some ambiguity as to whether it's a true miracle or a routine remission. Why are there no clear miracles such as God making an arm grow back? That's just one argument of many on the site: http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/

From that web site:

For this experiment, we need to find a deserving person who has had both of his legs amputated. For example, find a sincere, devout veteran of the Iraqi war, or a person who was involved in a tragic automobile accident. Now create a prayer circle like the one created for Jeanna Giese. The job of this prayer circle is simple: pray to God to restore the amputated legs of this deserving person. I do not mean to pray for a team of renowned surgeons to somehow graft the legs of a cadaver onto the soldier, nor for a team of renowned scientists to craft mechanical legs for him. Pray that God spontaneously and miraculously restores the soldier's legs overnight, in the same way that God spontaneously and miraculously cured Jeanna Giese and Marilyn Hickey's mother. If possible, get millions of people all over the planet to join the prayer circle and pray their most fervent prayers. Get millions of people praying in unison for a single miracle for this one deserving amputee. Then stand back and watch. What is going to happen? Jesus clearly says that if you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. He does not say it once -- he says it many times in many ways in the Bible. And yet, even with millions of people praying, nothing will happen. No matter how many people pray. No matter how sincere those people are. No matter how much they believe. No matter how devout and deserving the recipient. Nothing will happen. The legs will not regenerate. Prayer does not restore the severed limbs of amputees. You can electronically search through all the medical journals ever written -- there is no documented case of an amputated leg being restored spontaneously. And we know that God ignores the prayers of amputees through our own observations of the world around us. If God were answering the prayers of amputees to regenerate their lost limbs, we would be seeing amputated legs growing back every day. Isn't that odd?

What do you think? I think this is thought-provoking and brings to light the fact that something isn't quite right about the conventional understanding of the purposes and of prayer.

From an opinion piece of the same title by Kathleen Parker, originally printed in the Orlando Sentinel and reprinted here in the Chicago Tribune:

Britain's Sunday Times reported that more than 20 babies had been aborted in advanced stages of gestation between 1996 and 2004 in England because scans showed they had clubfeet. Had these parents never heard of Dudley Moore, the British actor who also had a clubfoot? Another four babies were aborted because they had extra digits or webbed fingers, according to the same story. In 2002 a baby was aborted at 28 weeks because of a cleft palate. Last year, a 6-month-old fetus was aborted when ultrasound revealed that part of a foot was missing, according to the Times. One doesn't have to believe in the supernatural to wonder what might have been. . Since abortion was legalized in 1973, estimates are that some 50 million of them have been performed in the U.S. Of that number, relatively few have been owing to fetal defects, compared with lifestyle concerns, according to a 2004 Alan Guttmacher Institute study. While it may be intellectually easier to justify aborting a fetus in cases of severe abnormalities, terminating a pregnancy because of easily corrected imperfections should disturb our sleep. If parents can be moved to abort their babies because of smallish flaws, how long before designer babies become the norm--or abortions are performed when babies have the wrong eye color or are the wrong sex? The list of accomplished people with birth defects, meanwhile, is long. Two born with clubfeet are Kristi Yamaguchi, the 1992 Olympic champion figure skater, and U.S. Rep. Thaddeus Stevens (1792-1868), who helped draft the 14th Amendment and the Reconstruction Act. Imagine what our cultural conversation would have been without Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish existentialist philosopher--a hunchback with uneven legs. Or Juan Ruiz de Alarcon, the 17th Century Mexican dramatist, who also was a hunchback and wrote some 20 dramas, including "La Verdad Sospechosa." Translated, "The Suspicious Truth" is an apt title for the argument that reproductive choice always trumps all other considerations, or that any and all birth defects conscribe a child to a life not worth living. If we don't want to grant life to those afflicted with small deformities, where do we set the bar for "good enough"? More important, perhaps, what is the cost to our humanity--not to mention the poet's soul--when the imperfect have no place among the living?

From an AP story of the same title from last month:

The Vatican issued a sweeping condemnation Tuesday of contraception, abortion, in-vitro fertilization and same-sex marriage, declaring that the traditional family has never been so threatened as in today's world... However, the document did not mention an ongoing debate within the Vatican on whether the Roman Catholic Church could permit condoms to battle AIDS in a particular circumstance - when one partner in a marriage has the virus... The document did not break any new ground but summarized traditional Vatican positions... It reaffirmed the famous 1968 encyclical "Humanae Vitae" that stated the Vatican's opposition to contraception. Since then, it said, couples "have been limiting themselves to one, or maximum two children." "Never before in history has human procreation, and therefore the family, which is its natural place, been so threatened as in today's culture," said the 57-page document. It also condemned in-vitro fertilization, artificial insemination and the use of embryos. "The human being has the right to be generated, not produced, to come to life not in virtue of an artificial process but of a human act in the full sense of the term: the union between a man and a woman," the document said.

We decided to go visit Lisa's cousin Jon in New York City before he moves to London this fall. The weather was pretty rotten (rain nearly all weekend and a cancelled flight home), but we had a great time none the less. As our tour guide, Jon showed us many sights around the city. He lives in a small apartment on Mulberry Street near Chinatown and Little Italy. He took us to his office building at One Liberty Plaza where we had an great view of Ellis Island, ground zero, etc. The highlight of the trip for Jonathan was attending a taping of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (with Lance Armstrong as guest). Lisa's favorite part was catching up with Jon, with the "intense" spectacle of Times Square a close second. We visited Ellis Island and the Guggenheim museum, saw a couple films (A Prairie Home Companion and An Inconvenient Truth), walked through Central Park, stumbled upon the annual gay pride parade, ate at several interesting places, and hoofed it around the city.

The last weekend of June, while Jonathan and Lisa were in New York City, the boys stayed with Grandma and Grandpa B in Troy. We're not sure if they even missed us. Activities included: a picnic at Mercy Bellbrook where Allison works, putt-putt, swimming, and (allegedly) ice cream after every meal.