Secular Humanism and the Value of Human Life

Noted Christian apologist Thomas B. Warren observed that “[b]oth false philosophy and false theology greatly influence the world” (1975, p. 11). An investigation of the philosophy and theology of secular humanism unveils an immense impact on values, particularly the value attached to human life. It might seem that any form of humanism would have the logical, practical effect of an increase in the perceived value of human life. Fittingly, humanists use life-centered language to encourage this assumption. For example, the American Humanist Association has defined humanism as “a progressive lifestance that, without supernaturalism, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead meaningful, ethical lives capable of adding to the greater good of humanity” (“Definitions...,” 2006, emp. added). The 13th affirmation of the original Humanist Manifesto “maintains that all associations and institutions exist for the fulfillment of human life” (1933, emp. added).

The 34 liberal humanist authors of the first Manifesto used their final affirmation to explain their general stance on life: “We assert that humanism will: (a) affirm life rather than deny it; (b) seek to elicit the possibilities of life, not flee from them; and (c) endeavor to establish the conditions of a satisfactory life for all, not merely for the few. By this positive morale and intention humanism will be guided, and from this perspective and alignment the techniques and efforts of humanism will flow” (1933, parenthetical items in orig., emp. added). Later, Humanist Manifesto III (2003) confirmed, “Humanists are concerned for the well being of all.” Indeed, secularists seek to convince society that they place a fundamental, ultimate, overarching premium on human life.

Is this actually the case? What, for example, is the humanist position on abortion? Because it has been proven logically and scientifically that human life begins at conception (see Harrub, 2002), the question concerning the rightness or wrongness of abortion is an appropriate test of the fundamental value an individual or group attaches to human life. Consider the lengthy opinion of the British Humanist Association:

The current law is permissive: it does not impose abortion on anyone who does not want one or want to perform one. So even within the law, individuals have to make moral choices. [NOTE: Do not miss the humanistic deference to the state; see Colley, 2007b—CC] How do humanists pick their way between these conflicting ideas? Humanists value life and value happiness and personal choice, and many actively campaigned for legalised abortion in the late 1960s. Although humanists do not think all life is “sacred” they do respect life, and much in this debate hinges on when one thinks human life begins. Humanists tend to think that a foetus does not become a person, with its own feelings and rights, until well after conception.

Because humanists take happiness and suffering into consideration, they are usually more concerned with the quality of life than the right to life, if the two come into conflict. The probable quality of life of the baby, the woman, rights and wishes of the father and the rest of the family, and the doctors and nurses involved, would all have to be given due weight. There is plenty of room for debate about how much weight each individual should have, but most humanists would probably put the interests of the woman first, since she would have to complete the pregnancy and probably care for the baby, whose happiness would largely depend on hers. She also exists already with other responsibilities and rights and feelings that can be taken into account – unlike those of the unborn foetus which cannot be so surely ascertained (“A Humanist Discussion...,” 2006).

One might expect that those touting the value of humanity would seek to preserve every human life at nearly any cost. Secular humanism, however, diminishes the value of human life in society through abortion and other means, despite claims to the opposite.

Two philosophical mistakes cause this contradiction. First, secular humanists believe that mankind is the product of strictly naturalistic processes (see Colley, 2007a). Because humanity is merely a higher form of ordinary animal life, the life of a human is of no more intrinsic value than the life of any animal. “Humans are an integral part of nature, the result of unguided evolutionary change” (Humanist..., 2003). So, a secularist logically views humans as he views all “other” animals, measuring their worth “entirely by their usefulness, actual or potential, to the community” (Packer and Howard, 1985, pp. 157-158). A human life is a commodity, and just as in a cattle market, circumstances dictate the value of the commodity. An evolutionary concept of origins is the first mistake which leads secular humanism to denigrate the human life it claims to prize, and compromise the rights it claims to defend.

The second reason secularists contradict themselves in this discussion is that that they place an ultimate premium on collective human reason (with rationality) as a foundation for ethics. “Reason and intelligence are the most effective instruments that humankind possesses. There is no substitute: neither faith nor passion suffices itself.... [R]eason must be tempered by humility, since no group has a monopoly of wisdom or virtue” (Section 4, Humanist..., 1973, emp. added). Later, secularists made their point even more clearly:

We are committed to the use of the rational methods of inquiry, logic, and evidence in developing knowledge and testing claims to truth. Since human beings are prone to err, we are open to the modification of all principles, including those governing inquiry, believing that they may be in need of constant correction. Although not so naïve as to believe that reason and science can easily solve all human problems, we.... know of no better substitute for the cultivation of human intelligence (Section 7, A Secular..., 1980).

The devastating problem with this approach is that, as even secularists recognize, different people reason in different ways and reach conflicting conclusions. Secular humanists, logically, are reduced to a vain attempt to ascertain the consensus of all people at a given time in order to develop moral imperatives. Only after finding the consensus of all human opinion may secularists impose their own interpretation of the data as rules for living.

Furthermore, according to this pattern of thought, if the reasoned consensus of the day acknowledged the sanctity of life in the womb, then secularists would be bound to accept and defend it, until the general consensus changed. On the other hand, if the majority reasoned that all sick children under age five and all people over age 85 should be drowned, consistency would demand that secularists go along with such maniacal genocide.

Secular humanists make lofty, unrealistic, impractical claims to pure democracy as a basis for ethical ideals, all the while basing these ideals on their own subjective ideology. As Ridenour noted, “Secular humanism has no set of moral absolutes like the Ten Commandments. At best, it comes up with numerous ‘suggestions’ for what people should do, based on their experience in the society in which they are living...” (2001, p. 195). The secularists’ subjective ethical approach leads them to contradict their general statements affirming life. Contradictions like this are evident in every major tenet of secularism (see Colley, 2007a; Colley, 2007b).

Webber summarized the secularist’s problem: “The secularist can speak about the value of human life, yet fail to have an ultimate reason why life is valuable” (1982, p. 71). Then, “In the secular society, spawned by the loss of belief in a God to whom we are accountable, it has become fashionable for modern man to be free—free from covenantal agreements, free from the responsibility to raise children, free to pursue his own selfish desires” (p. 74, emp. added). According to secular humanism, a human’s right to live goes only as far as his evolutionary development and strength. His right to kill, though, also goes that far. As Packer and Howard have noted:

[M]any humanists will justify the killing by abortion of a new person forming in its mother’s womb, and the killing by starvation of handicapped new-borns and by euthanasia, the killing of old persons who can no longer function skillfully and productively in society or in their own families. The same thinking was invoked to justify the killing, in Nazi Germany, of six million Jews lest their genes and influence should somehow corrupt the master race. The principle is the same in each case; some human beings are to be eliminated (a gruesome euphemism, suggesting excretion) from the social system for the convenience of other human beings who are strong enough to maintain a claim to be better developed than their victims. Ideological might thus becomes right, and cool clinical murder, a recognized social convention (1985, p. 141, parenthetical item in orig.).

Unsurprisingly, while secularists have claimed to believe in the value of human life, they also have belied a conviction to the contrary. The Humanist magazine revealed something very interesting when it observed that humanism derives “the goals of life from human need and interest rather than from theological or ideological abstractions, and asserts that humanity must take responsibility for its own destiny” (“Definitions,” emp. added). To simplify this statement, we might say that humans are responsible for taking care of themselves. Of course, harsh reality reminds us that not all humans are capable of taking care of themselves. The issue of how human society should treat its weakest members is a treacherous problem for humanists. The International Humanist and Ethical Union stated that “human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives” (“Glossary,” 2007). The Morains, prominent humanist authors, have agreed that humans must rely upon one another (“Chapter Three,” 1998). Preborn children, infants, and some elderly people are, to various degrees, incapable of “shaping their own lives,” and are reliant on the care of others. It seems that humanism provides little, if any, protection for fragile people such as these. It is doomed to allow or promote the very “suffering” it intends to “reduce” (Humanist..., 2003).

A LOGICAL SOLUTION

If humanists want a worldview that consistently affirms human life in every way, they should set aside their illogical atheistic bias in order to investigate honestly the Christian perspective. According to the Christian worldview, humans are different from animals because humans are endowed with an immortal spirit (see Genesis 2:7; Matthew 10:28; 16:26). This implies that human life has intrinsic value and cannot be taken indiscriminately (see Job 10:11-12; Psalm 139:13-16; Jeremiah 1:4-5; Isaiah 49:1; Galatians 1:15). While there are various types of Christian humanism (see “Welcome...,” 2006), a Christian, biblical view of humanity is in harmony with Webber’s statement: “It is the conviction of an authentic Christian humanism that all life is of value” (1982, p. 79). Packer and Howard echo, “To the Christian, every human being has intrinsic and inalienable dignity by virtue of being made in God’s image and realizes and exhibits the full potential of that dignity only in the worship and service of the Creator” (1985, p. 157).

Christianity also provides ultimate fulfillment. Jesus offers the “abundant” life (John 10:10), which includes a sure expectation of an eternal life to come (Mark 10:30; John 3:15-16). Far from coaxing weak-minded people to take leaps of blind “faith,” Christianity upholds human reason, requiring its adherents to believe only in those things which are reasonable and rational (see Warren, 1972). It demands that we protect innocent people, regardless of the consensus of humanity as a whole, which, as secularists and theists admit, will be erroneous in many cases (Proverb 6:16-19; cf. Matthew 27:3-4; Exodus 23:2; Matthew 7:13-14). Authentic love for human life requires that we protect it, whether or not secular humanists admit it.

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Knowledge, attitudes and perspective on adverse drug reaction reporting in a public sector hospital in South Africa: baseline analysis.
Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) can cause significant harm in patients; however, ADRs are under-reported in many countries, including South Africa, where evidence of a pharmacovigilance (PV) system to monitor and manage ADRs is a requirement for compliance with norms and standards for quality healthcare delivery. We conducted an analysis amongst health care professionals (HCPs) at Sebokeng Hospital to assess the situation there and make recommendations. Data were collected using a structured self-administered questionnaire, targeting all medical practitioners, nurses, pharmacists and pharmacist assistants in the hospital. Current procedures for reporting of ADRs were documented. Records were reviewed to determine the number of ADR reports submitted for the 18-month period prior to the study. Data were analysed with SAS. Ethical clearance was obtained. The questionnaire was completed by 132 HCPs (nurses: 58.3%; medical practitioners: 23.5%; pharmacist assistants: 11.4%; pharmacists: 6.8%). The vast majority indicated ADR reporting is necessary (96.2%) and their professional obligation (89.4%). Only 18.9% were aware of an existing PV system in the hospital, 15.2% had an ADR form available and 18.9% knew to whom the form should be submitted. The vast majority had never reported an ADR, had never received training in PV, but wanted training on ADR reporting. Factors discouraging ADR reporting included not knowing how to report them (53.8%), lack of time (37.1%), additional work load (22.0%), uncertainty about the outcome of reporting (32.6%), and lack of confidence to discuss ADRs with colleagues (22.0%). Only 2.3% knew how many ADRs were reported, that ADRs are discussed by a committee (6.1%) and that internal feedback is received on reported ADRs (6.1%). There is an extensive need in Sebokeng Hospital for training on ADR reporting and implementation of systems to facilitate relevant processes; a need which may also exist in other public hospitals in South Africa.


Q:

jQuery Ajax Post() geting responce with zero.. why?

I am working with word press . to submit a form with Ajax i use this code .. my php code is working fine and also j Query.
But when i am getting responce from post() and printing it..
it is printing with 'zero' means '0'..
As "Mail send 0"
PHP Code
 /* Apply Online form enqueue/localize/add action/function script start*/

    wp_register_script("ajax-apply_online", get_bloginfo('template_directory')."/js/custom_js.js", array( "jquery"));
    wp_enqueue_script('ajax-apply_online');
    wp_localize_script("ajax-apply_online","the_ajax_apply_online", array("ajaxurl_apply_online" => admin_url("admin-ajax.php")));

// add actions
   add_action( "wp_ajax_apply_online", "ajax_action_apply_online" );
   add_action( "wp_ajax_nopriv_apply_online", "ajax_action_apply_online" );

   function ajax_action_apply_online(){
     echo "Mail Send";
  }
/* Apply Online  form enqueue/localize/add action/function script end*/

jQuery Code
 jQuery.post(the_ajax_apply_online.ajaxurl_apply_online,
                    jQuery("#apply_online_form").serialize(),
                        function(response_from_the_action_function){

                            jQuery("#errfrmMsg").val(response_from_the_action_function).css({"display":"block"});
                        }
            );

A:

try adding exit; after echo "Mail Send";
If some other part of the php that executes after the mail send is adding additional text this will stop it from running


Stretching the Truth in Arkansas

The conservative group Americans for Prosperity stretches the truth to attack Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas for “higher gas and grocery bills.”

AFP blames Pryor’s vote to ban drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for higher gas prices. But the Energy Information Administration says drilling in ANWR would translate to little, if any, drop in prices at the pump.

As for higher grocery bills, AFP cites Pryor’s vote to increase ethanol production, which raised the demand for corn and the price of livestock. But the Department of Agriculture says the impact on overall retail food prices was less than 1 percent.

The Arkansas race is one of nine competitive races considered critical to whether Republicans can regain control of the Senate. Already, there has been more than $7.5 million in outside money spent on the race, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The ad from Americans for Prosperity claims Pryor has “made things harder” for the state’s unemployed and working families “living paycheck to paycheck.” It shows images of downcast men and women, who could be “your neighbor, your friend, your daughter.”

It’s true, as the ad claims, that were 84,000 Arkansans out of work in May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But that’s the fewest number since November 2008.

As for the claim that Pryor has voted with President Obama 90 percent of the time, that was true last year, according to a vote analysis by CQ Weekly. But as we noted once before, Pryor also voted against Obama more than any other Senate Democrat last year.

More importantly, AFP provides weak evidence to support its claims that Pryor is responsible for such things as “higher gas and grocery bills” and “higher healthcare costs from Obamacare.”

Gas Prices

AFP cites three votes Pryor cast against domestic drilling to support its assertion that Pryor is responsible for higher gas prices. The three votes were for amendments which would have banned drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

ANWR covers over 19 million acres of land and water in northeastern Alaska. In 1980, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) designated most of the area as protected wilderness, except for a section of about 1.5 million acres. This area along the coast — since referred to as the “1002 Area” after the section of the bill that defined it — is subjected to studies that relay to Congress the potential impacts of oil and gas exploration and development. ANILCA placed the area in limbo, and whether or not to authorize drilling in ANWR has been a political issue for nearly 40 years.

A 2008 report by the Energy Information Administration examined the impact of drilling in ANWR and concluded that oil production in that area would not significantly influence world oil prices. The projected potential price reduction would be around 41 cents to $1.44 per barrel of low-sulfur, light (LSL) crude oil in 2026/2027. The price of oil is currently a little over $100 per barrel. According to EIA, U.S. refineries produce about 19 gallons of motor gasoline from one barrel of crude oil. So, that translates to pennies per gallon at the gas pump. But since oil is a global commodity, EIA warned that there may not be any impact at all.

EIA, 2008: Assuming that world oil markets continue to work as they do today, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) could neutralize any potential price impact of ANWR oil production by reducing its oil exports by an equal amount.

For some context, the average price of regular conventional gasoline was $2.34 per gallon when Pryor cast the last of the three votes cited by AFP, and it was $3.56 on July 14, according to EIA data. The price of gasoline fluctuated a good deal between those dates, and was $1.83 per gallon when Obama took office in January of 2009. In 2011, we looked into some of the claims about whether Obama was to blame for higher gasoline prices and found that much of the rhetoric was misplaced.

Finally, the claims about higher gas and grocery bills come immediately after the ad blames Pryor for “voting with Barack Obama 90 percent of the time.” That may leave the false impression that Pryor voted with Obama to raise prices, but, in fact, the ANWR votes cited by AFP were cast in 2003 and 2005, long before Obama became president — although then-Sen. Obama voted in favor of the two bills in 2005.

In 2005, a section of the Energy Policy Act created the Renewable Fuel Standard program. That program mandates that a specified level of renewable fuel be blended into gasoline. In 2007, the program was expanded, increasing the required volume of renewable fuel. The rapid increase in demand for ethanol, which increased prices of livestock and corn products.

However, increased renewable fuel mandates were not the only cause of rising food prices. Other factors, such as “low global stocks, droughts, exchange rates, policy responses by some major trading countries, and rising incomes in some countries such as India and China, have also contributed to price increases,” according to the USDA.

In fact, the USDA said, in 2008, that the inflated price of corn had very little affect on overall retail food prices. According to the USDA’s Economic Research Service, “higher corn prices increase animal feed and ingredient costs for farmers and food manufacturers, but pass through to retail prices at a rate less than 10 percent of the corn price change.” Because food using corn as an ingredient makes up less than one-third of retail food spending, the report states, “overall retail food prices would rise less than 1 percentage point per year above the normal rate of food price inflation when corn prices increase by 50 percent.”

In April 2009, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that about 10-15 percent of the rise in food prices in 2008 could be attributed to ethanol subsidies. Food prices that year rose 5.1 percent, so the effect of ethanol subsidies was responsible for less than a 1 percent increase in the price of food that year.

CBO, April 2009: CBO estimates that from April 2007 to April 2008, the rise in the price of corn resulting from expanded production of ethanol contributed between 0.5 and 0.8 percentage points of the 5.1 percent increase in food prices measured by the consumer price index (CPI). Over the same period, certain other factors — for example, higher energy costs — had a greater effect on food prices than did the use of ethanol as a motor fuel.

The retail cost of food has, historically, risen about 2.5 percent to 3 percent a year, said Ephraim Leibtag of the USDA’s Economic Research Service. Factors such as weather, production issues and changing consumer demand, all effect the overall price of food, he said. And a spike in the price of any single commodity, such as corn, generally translates to only a small overall increase in retail food prices.

It is worth noting that the Energy Independence and Security Act passed the Senate with bipartisan support, 86-8. (Seven Republicans and one Democrat opposed it; and then-Sens. Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, as well as John McCain, did not vote). And it was signed by then-President George W. Bush, not Obama, although the ad implies otherwise.

Food prices are up under Obama, but not as much as they were before he took office. The index measuring the average consumer price of all food and beverages (including restaurant meals) was 10.7 percent higher in May than it was when Obama took office five and a half years earlier, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For some perspective, food prices rose by 21.9 percent in the five and a half years prior to Obama taking office.

Health Care Costs From Obamacare

The ad also claims Pryor’s vote for the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, is responsible for higher health care costs. AFP cites a Forbes story reporting on an analysis from the conservative Manhattan Institute that concluded that individual market premiums would rise by an average of 49 percent due to the new health care law.

But the ad does not mention that it is referring only to those who buy insurance on their own as opposed to through an employer. Just over 120,000 Arkansans, or 4 percent of the state’s population, purchased insurance on the individual market in 2012, according to the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

A couple other big qualifiers (which we have noted previously when the Manhattan Institute report has been cited in attack ads): The institute didn’t adjust for the fact that the ACA requires certain minimum benefits, which many pre-ACA individual market plans didn’t meet. By and large, the post-ACA plans are more robust (whether purchasers like or want that or not). So it is not comparing similar types of plans before and after the ACA. And the institute’s figures don’t account for federal subsidies, which the Congressional Budget Office estimated would be extended to 80 percent of all those buying exchange plans nationwide.

As we have said repeatedly, premiums in the individual market can go up or down, perhaps significantly, depending on the individual.

And most Arkansans — 40 percent of the population — have insurance through their workplaces. Nationwide, employer-sponsored premiums for family plans went up 3.8 percent, on average, in 2013, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s annual employer health benefits survey. Since the ACA was passed in 2010, those premiums have gone up 5.9 percent, on average, per year, while in the five years before the ACA, premiums went up 4.8 percent, on average, per year.

When we have explored this issue in the past, we noted that experts attributed a small increase in work-based premiums directly to the ACA. When family premiums jumped 9 percent from 2010 to 2011, for example, experts told us that the law was responsible for a 1 percent to 3 percent increase, with the remainder due to higher medical costs. That was expected, as the law required the elimination of preexisting condition exclusions for children, the coverage of dependents on their parents’ plans up to age 26, free coverage of preventive care, and an increase in caps on annual coverage. Since that initial jump, however, the yearly employer-based premiums have risen at historically low rates.

Another 38 percent of Arkansans have government-sponsored health insurance, primarily Medicare or Medicaid, which would not be affected by the changes in the individual market.


A typical fuel cell has a structure in which a membrane-electrode assembly (MEA) is sandwiched by separators, each having a flow path for supplying raw materials, the MEA having a fuel electrode catalyst layer provided on one surface of an electrolyte membrane and an oxidant electrode catalyst layer provided on the other surface of the electrolyte membrane so that the two catalyst layers face each other across the electrolyte membrane, and further having diffusion layers provided outside the respective catalyst layers sandwiching the electrolyte membrane therebetween, and such structure serves as one unit, i.e., a so-called unit cell. A common fuel cell system uses a cell stack having a plurality of such unit cells stacked therein so as to obtain a desired amount of electric power. Electric power is generated by supplying raw materials, such as hydrogen and oxygen (hereinafter also referred to as source gases or reactant gases), to each catalyst layer.
When generating electric power at the fuel cell by using hydrogen as a fuel gas to be supplied to the fuel electrode and using air as an oxidant gas to be supplied to the oxidant electrode, hydrogen produces hydrogen ions and electrons at the fuel electrode. The produced electrons travel through an external terminal and external circuit and reach the oxidant electrode. At the oxidant electrode, water is produced from: oxygen included in the supplied air; hydrogen ions that have passed through the electrolyte membrane; and electrons that have reached the oxidant electrode through the external circuit. Through these electrochemical reactions occurring at the fuel electrode and the oxidant electrode, the fuel cell functions as an electric cell.
In many fuel cell systems, an output drawn from the fuel cell is not constant. The fuel cell has a voltage varying according to an output drawn from the fuel cell, and the fuel cell voltage decreases when the output drawn from the fuel cell increases. If an oxide film formed on the surface of the oxidant electrode catalyst is reduced upon a decrease of the voltage, a metallic component (e.g., platinum supported on carbon) in the catalyst will be eluted when the fuel cell voltage again increases (when the output drawn from the fuel cell decreases).
To respond to the above, Patent Document 1, indicated below, proposes a fuel cell system aimed at suppressing the elution of catalysts, such as platinum, occurring due to changes in the output of the fuel cell. The fuel cell system disclosed in Patent Document 1 comprises an output control means for supplying electric power to a motor from a fuel cell and from a secondary battery and controlling the output of the fuel cell based on the SOC (State of Charge) of the secondary battery. If the SOC of the secondary battery is greater than 10%, the output control means limits the output of the fuel cell so that the fuel cell voltage does not go below a predetermined voltage. It is stated that this fuel cell system can suppress degradation caused by the elution of catalysts (e.g., platinum) in the oxidant electrode due to changes in the fuel cell voltage.