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Sunday, February 27, 2022

Freedom of Choice or Choice of Freedom?

I have a friend who, though vaccinated, thinks the vaccination mandates are wrong. I've tried telling her that she has freewill confused with licence. She won't even listen to the argument. I found an essay on freedom versus license posted by the Catholic Education Resource Centre. She wrote it off. She is not Roman Catholic.

The author saw freedom as taking responsibility for one's own life. Insofar as it is compatible with the common good, people should be allowed to choose freely how they want to live. On the other hand, licence is the throwing off of all responsibility. It is a carte blanche to do as we feel. As such, it is incompatible with virtue and destroys community.

Then I found a somewhat similar essay on a Seventh Day Adventist site: Freedom of Choice or Choice of Freedom?

Are vaccination mandates against the law of God? 

It is very hard to make a valid argument that laws enacted by the state for the preservation of life should be perceived by Christians as defying God’s law. From where, then, does this “freedom of conscience” come? Is this just worldly self-centredness? “It’s my body; I’ll do with it as I like”?

 

I am neither a Roman Catholic nor a Seventh Day Adventist but I agree, for the most, with both posts. I wish I could get through to my friend. I find my friend's position so damn self-centred and selfish. They fancy themselves Christian. No church to which I have gone would call this friend's actions Christian.

Saturday, November 6, 2021

Face masks: a lot of bang for the buck!


There is good reason to believe that wearing a mask is a very low-risk protective measure which can deliver a large positive impact. In other words, masks deliver a lot of bang for the buck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118?fbclid=IwAR0acQLrK5uzFbEsJE5E7lDgkcBVPB7b_2CjhPAy2yG2jDzEJ5H5ekpwVIk

Tuesday, November 2, 2021

Unspinning the misinformation web

I know a lot of folk who have fallen for misinformation and they are not all naive, simple folk. Some are well educated, degee-holding, university graduates. And some are reporters. 

Think of all the stories on liberation therapy that made the rounds some years ago. It was pushed on television news shows and in newspapers and magazines and it was totally false. Bright people died getting liberation therapy.

Now, fear of vaccines, most notably the COVID-19 vaccine, is the misinformation story of the year. And hundreds of thousands are dying because of the all-pervasive lies.

To fight misinformation I am posting the following links: read and learn.

FactCheck.org

Snopes 

If you would like to suggest other sites, please do. If I agree with you, I'll post the links.

The founder of Snopes, David Mikkelson,warned, "The fictions and fabrications that comprise fake news are but a subset of the larger bad news phenomenon, which also encompasses many forms of shoddy, unresearched, error-filled, and deliberately misleading reporting that do a disservice to everyone."

Monday, November 1, 2021

Why you don’t really know what you know

 

The MIT article was headlined: Why you don’t really know what you know. To cut right to the chase, the reason I am linking to the article is because our system for dispersing knowledge is breaking down. It is under attack by misinformation.

To paraphrase from the linked article, if society undermines its traditional systems of evidence and trust, our ability to know anything and do anything will break down. I fear the breakdown has begun.

https://outline.com/9ZdLwC