 using the AQ platform to better manage research and improve participant compliance.
Working with the AscensionQ team has facilitated delivering research on a automated study platform. It provided us with a visit schedule system which was fast and easy to use. We were able to create the fields which would be relevant to our study, not just initial appointments but the whole visit schedule. It provided us with the options to add in the data we needed for our participants. The system enabled us to contact our participants directly from the platform, via text and email, to set reminder appointment texts in the time frame we wanted and to flag any missing visits.
Working directly with the team as we set up our first study was great – they listened to what we needed, added in new functions that we decided were needed after we had started, and even provided us with the ability to pull off reports and statistics, based on live or previous clinic data. We were able to indicate which participants had attended appointments, which rearranged, and which had DNA’ed.
This is a flexible system which works brilliantly with researchers, and at the same time would have the same facility to run a normal clinic setting. It would be great for NHS patient and researchers to use this, as well as private medical and non-NHS research use. As a researcher working across several NHS Trusts and Universities, I would recommend AQ to anyone undertaking research or needing a flexible enhanced system for managing clinics.
Sen. Bernie Sanders is way behind Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in the delegate count, and yet, suggestions he should drop out? “Absurd!” he says.
"When only half of the American people have participated in the political process, when some of the larger states in this country, people in those states have not yet been able to voice their opinion on who should be the Democratic nominee, I think it's absurd for anybody to suggest that those people not have a right to cast a vote," Sanders told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow.
"I am extremely proud that in state after state we are winning the votes of working people," Sanders added. "So to suggest that we don't fight this out to the end would be, I think, a very bad mistake."
President Obama has begun urging Democrats, although privately, to rally behind Clinton, suggesting Sanders’ campaign is nearing its end.
Sanders, despite his delegate deficit, believes he will do better in states that haven’t voted yet.
"People want to become engaged in the political process by having a vigorous primary and caucus process," he said in the interview, suggesting it’s important he stay in the race.
"I think we open up the possibility of having a large voter turnout in November and that is exactly what we need. A low voter turnout, somebody like a Trump can win. High voter turnout, the Democratic candidate will win."This article first appeared in Christian Research Journal, volume 34, number 04 (2011). For further information or to subscribe to the Christian Research Journal go to:
Season One of AMC’s The Walking Dead is gory, brutal, and not for the faint of heart. Yet I’m fascinated by it and think Christian apologists may want to give it a watch. I can live without the blood, thank you, and Episode 2 contains a graphic sex scene I chose not to watch. What grips me, nevertheless, is the drama of a tiny group of humans fighting to survive against overwhelming odds. This is not your daddy’s 1970s zombie film. Indeed, unlike those earlier offerings, this one has believable characters in a realistic location (Atlanta). Its realness is gripping.
The basic plotline tells the story of what happens after a zombie apocalypse. A small group of human survivors moves about in search of protection from shuffling hordes of the walking dead.1 If bitten by one of the be stopped only with a gunshot through the head or a pickaxe through the skull.
It’s gruesome stuff. And it’s loaded with ideas worth discussing within the context of a Christian worldview.
FINDING PHILOSOPHY AMONG THE ZOMBIES
Episode 6 is a case in point. Rick and his tiny band of survivors arrive at the Centers for Disease Control. Jenner then narrates a video clip to demonstrate how a zombie bite destroys the victim’s brain. Speaking of the brain, he states, “It’s a person’s life—experiences, memories, it’s everything. Somewhere in that organic wiring, all those ripples of light, is you, the thing that makes you unique and human.” To make sure the point is not lost, he zooms in on the frontal lobes for a closer look: “Those are synapses, electric impulses in the brain that carry all the messages. They determine everything a person says, does, or thinks from the moment of birth until the moment of death.” In short, Jenner says that we are nothing but our physical brains. All of our thoughts, feelings, and convictions are determined by synapse firings. When synapse activity ceases, you cease. At this point, Jenner is no longer doing science. He’s doing philosophy. He’s espousing a philosophical worldview known as scientific materialism (SM). According to SM, everything in the universe must be explained in strictly physical terms, meaning that nonmaterial things such as souls, God, and human dignity are not items of true knowledge. Matter alone constitutes ultimate reality. True, the universe may look designed, but it’s really the product of strict physical laws and blind random chance. Science alone tells us truth.2
Right away there are difficulties, as Jenner never says how nonmaterial minds emerge from purely physical processes. Nor does he show how consciousness arises from unconscious brain matter. As John Searle points out, “The leading problem in the biological sciences is the problem of explaining how neurobiological processes cause conscious experience.”3 If that were not challenging enough, Jenner’s materialism must also explain how these nonmaterial minds cohere with the physical states of the brain. The interaction between nonmaterial minds and physical bodies is difficult to explain, given materialism.4
Jenner’s speech, however, suffers from an even bigger flaw. If everything about human beings can be reduced to predetermined patterns of synapse firings in the brain, why is he trying to persuade his guests to adopt his point of view? After all, their thoughts are also predetermined by their individual synapses, meaning they are not free to think any differently than they already do. Thus, in the very act of trying to persuade, Jenner undermines his own case for determinism. His predetermined thoughts can be no more rational than theirs.
Moreover, if our minds are the result of blind and irrational forces of nature, why trust them to give us the truth about the world? Darwin himself doubted whether human beliefs were any more reliable than those of a monkey. “With me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind which has been developed from the mind of lower animals are of any value or are even trustworthy.”5 Evolution, in other words, is concerned with preserving adaptive behavior, not giving us an accurate picture of the world. Patricia Churchland (an atheist) puts it this way: “The principle chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive….Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.”6 In short, if our cognitive faculties only tell us what we need to survive, not what is true, why trust them about anything at all?
A CHRISTIAN VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE
Orthodox Christianity has a different take on human nature, known as substance dualism that does a better job accounting for human equality and personal identity through time and change. Christian philosopher Paul Copan writes that humans are comprised of both physical body and nonphysical soul, and the soul gives humans their continued identity even though the body may change. “Body and soul are distinct but deeply interactive, organically integrated substances—physical and nonphysical.”7
According to substance dualism, I am not my body. Rather, I’m a soul that has a body and it’s my soul that gives me personal identity through time and change. As Copan points out, Scripture strongly supports this view.8 Jesus tells a dying thief, “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43) and elsewhere states that humans can kill the body, but not the soul (Matt. 10:28; Luke 12:4–5). Paul writes that to be “absent from the body” is to be “present with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8) and later describes a heavenly vision where he’s unsure if he was “in the body” (i.e., experiencing a vision) or “apart from it” (i.e., dead) (2 Cor. 12:2–3; cf. Acts 14:19–20, where many scholars believe this occurred). Either way, his recounting of the vision assumes personal identity beyond a physical self.
Meanwhile, Christian philosophers J. P. Moreland, Scott Rae, and Francis J. Beckwith (among others) defend the substance view by drawing careful distinctions between substance things and property things. Substances are living organisms that maintain their identities through time and change while property things, like my car, do not.9 What moves a puppy to maturity or a human fetus to adulthood is not a mere collection of parts, but an underlying immaterial nature or essence (soul), the dog’s particular nature, not the realization of some capacity he may or may not develop, determines what kind of thing he is.) Put simply, you remain yourself through all of the various changes you go through during your lifetime