Correspondence
How to reform health care Kip Sullivan's article on health-care reform [April 24] remains timely. Congress has been debating an HMO "patient bill of rights" that would not even begin to give...
...precisely the power given to tradition and its agents by their assimilating the text's inspiration and authority into their own--these are troublesome tendencies that have sometimes done damage to persons and communities of faith...
...WILLLIAM A. DONOHUE New York, N.Y...
...In this sense a detective may say: "We thought at first that the victim had died of natural causes but discovered upon examination that he was murdered...
...This cell-biology view of genetic change is fundamentally different from the assumptions of neo-Darwinism and leads to alternative naturalistic hypotheses about the origin of complex adaptations...
...Readers may be surprised to know that once inside a local, state, or federal prison, access to a private physician, prescription medications, and special diet are left behind...
...Philosophically, there is a difference...
...As long as the number of uninsured continues rising by 100,000 every month and people's lives continue to be treated as commodities, we will all still need health-care reform...
...needs to be acknowledged, a side that is darker and more dangerous...
...Unfortunately the federal constitutional standard for challenging the deprivation of a prisoner's right to medical care is extraordinarily high...
...I agree with them and make two further arguments relevant to evolution...
...No to means testing I find the letter from James and Catherine Pfiester on Social Security, together with the editors' reply, helpful in almost, but not quite, clarifying the meaning of "means testing" with C@rrecti@ns ~ The phrase "and plenty of saccharine" was included in Mary Pat Kelly's review of The Sound of Music [June 19] through editorial error...
...405, N.Y., N.Y...
...I wish to correct these errors...
...MATER DEI INSTITUTE at Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA 99202-1849.1-800-986-9585 ext 6012...
...Luke Timothy Johnson is the author of The Real Jesus...
...In state courts, I am told, common law medical malpractice has been used successfully to correct the kind of delays in the delivery of care that Williams describes...
...Regardless of the prisoner's crime, humane prison medicine is an area of need that cries out for our attention...
...To reject that concept of divinity doesn't require us to reject the Trinity and the personal God-become-man, Jesus...
...Excluding natural processes in production of "anything...analogous to sophisticated computers" leaves only the supernatural...
...IDA HOLLANDER, M.D...
...Ministry Program DESIRE LAY MINISTRY...
...Whose stereotype...
...respect to Social Security [Correspondence, June 191...
...ALL TYPES...
...It should be obvious that I both admire and appreciate Kugel's accomplishment...
...that would be the biggest "baby with the bath water" mistake in 2,000 years...
...Kelly's assessment of the play...
...precisely the ways in which communities have simply read their own ideologies into and out of the text without remainder...
...To some extent, Kugel's placing of discrete and interested readings into contact with each other as parts of a larger conversation itself mitigates the ambiguous power of isolated and exclusionary interpretations...
...Zen-Christian Retreat A ZEN 'SESSHIN' (AN EXPERIENCE OF ZEN MEDITATION AND ITS INTEGRATION INTO CHRISTIAN LIFE) will be offered at Ignatius Retreat House, Manhasset, NY (August 2-8...
...ROBERT N. BELLAH Berkeley, Calif...
...The mindset of the editors was also revealed when it was argued that the league's protest actually reinforces anti-Catholic stereotypes...
...Retreat is initially open to fellow Jesuits, but after May 31, space permitting, open to others...
...One error was Johnson's claim that my "program is identical to that of Michael Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box...
...We know that to sophisticates it may sound corny to say that God is love...
...Manuscripts Wanted MANUSCRIPTS WANTED...
...The universe as we know it must be completely natural and completely God-saturated...
...rather it is those disaffected Catholics who continue to live vicariously through this now defunct and discredited program...
...I would contend that the real stereotype is the one the editors are advancing: Catholics ought to pare back and not engage the culture too much lest their provisional status be revoked...
...It does not represent Ms...
...Johnson's other error was the following rather astonishing sentence: "But the systems he describes are analogous to sophisticated computers, and there is no known natural process tbat can produce anything of that kind...
...Correspondence ELMER HEFFELMIRE, 92Bl195, Mohawk Correctional Facility, Box 8451, Rome, NY 13442, Convert to Catholicism, 34 years old, wishes to correspond with a Catholic woman under 30...
...But it is true...
...Congress has been debating an HMO "patient bill of rights" that would not even begin to give patients the most elementary right of all, the right to health care...
...The writer is president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights...
...The Director is Robert Kennedy, S.J., Professor of Theology (Saint Peter's College), Zen Master (Roshi), Psychologist, and Author (Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit, 1995...
...No Designer needed In your issue of June 5, Professor Phillip E. Johnson made two erroneous statements in his reference to my article in the Boston Review on scientific alternatives to Darwinism...
...When we find arsenic in the bloodstream we may reasonably conclude that there was a murderer, even though chemical analysis cannot tell us who it was...
...It is true even though one can speak loosely of the "evolution" of computer hardware and software--from DOS to Windows to Windows 95, for example...
...Subsidy Publisher with 75-year tradition...
...The number after the name is a necessary part of the address...
...in the script, Baroness Schrader was the children's rival for their father's affection...
...Much confusion can be avoided if we avoid pejorative words like "occult" and speak of the well-recognized difference between unintelligent (or "natural") causes and intelligent causes...
...In the spirit of Vatican II, we will stick to the vernacular in the future...
...The prison system is given to delay, inefficiency, and, worst of all, an ingrained attitude of indifference toward the delivery of medical care conditions that are exacerbated by overcrowding...
...That leaves the question, "What is the source of all that built-in intelligence...
...Behe and I agree on the inadequacy of Darwinian accounts of evolution, we disagree profoundly on the possibility of formulating satisfactory scientific explanations of the evolutionary process...
...Included in the symposium should be all those Jewish rabbis who have called the Catholic League commending us for our stand...
...The most appropriate comment on these three articles may be one already made in your pages [May 8] by Sidney Callahan: "To me it looks virtually certain that God created a freely operating natural world of independent secondary causes open to rigorous scientific inquiry and discovery...
...By the way, it is not the Catholic League that is obsessed with "Nothing Sacred...
...Clouded dialogue The "new science" seems to offer wonderfut ground for dialogue such as the exchange in your issue of June 5 among Chet Raymo, John Wright, and Phillip Johnson...
...9 The power of prayer: In the opinion of all the scientists I know, looking for statistically valid proof of answered prayers is the antithesis of Commonweal 2 9 July 17, 1998 both science and belief...
...Peggy Wood played the Mother Abbess in the 1965 film...
...ROBERT LAUDISE Berkeley Heights, N.J...
...I do, however, work where the rubber hits the road--that is, as a practicing scientist trying to figure out what, if anything, science has to do with God...
...First, computer-like information-processing systems have been shown to op(Continued on page 29) Commonweal 4 July 17, 1998 against the hegemonic impulses of the historical-critical approach, but proposes, reasonably enough, that any renewal of biblical theology must take this ancient tradition of reading, as well as its premises, into account...
...The author replies: I wrote that "Scientifically, Shapiro's program is identical to that of Michael Behe...
...Precisely the ways in which the readings of the text can stand as equally authoritative as the text itself, so that in some instances, it is impossible to disentangle them...
...Behe, Iike Johnson, appears to believe that evidence of design in living organisms requires an intelligent (and, ipso facto, supernatural) designer...
...Similarly, Shapiro describes the "unanticipated realm of complexity and interaction" in cellular processes, which he says are "more consistent with computer technology than with the mechanical viewpoint which dominated when the neo-Darwinian Modem Synthesis was formulated...
...our regrets to Ms...
...The writer is professor of microbiology in the department of biochemistry and molecular biology, University of Chicago...
...The usual meaning of "means testing" is that a certain benefit is available only to those below a certain income...
...Disenfranchised prisoners and their families without lobbying clout are not in a strong position to change the status quo...
...Residential program...
...The 8,000 physician-members of Physicians for a National Health Program prescribe a not-for-profit, singlepayer national health insurance...
...In my experience as an attorney dealing with medical issues for only a handful of prisoners, I can attest to conditions that would amaze the average citizen...
...a spontaneous heart attack is not...
...To the unprejudiced, this description implies an intelligent source, especially when one understands that all efforts to find a materialistic alternative to neoDarwinism have foundered...
...This is true even though the computer, like the organism, is a material entity existing in the natural world...
...Advance payment required...
...Interested persons should phone 914/694-3425 or e-mail rdowd@mville.edu...
...Under the requirement of "deliberate indifference," negligence--or "mere" medical malpractice does not make the grade...
...Don't get sick in prison Your cover story by an articulate prisoner [May 22] gives a too true picture of what passes for medical care inside the jailhouse...
...Our thanks to Professor Laura Gellott for these corrections of fact...
...In the case of computers, the source is an intelligent designer...
...1-800-695-9599...
...Professor Shapiro confirms that by saying that he sees intelligence manifest in living systems, that those systems are comparable to sophisticated computers, and that he agrees with Behe and me that the Darwinian mechanism was not adequate to design them...
...For a systematic treatment of the concept of intelligent design in science, I highly recommend The Design Inference by William Dembski, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press...
...Why the editors of this publication are far more exercised about the Catholic League's protest of a blasphemous play than about the play itself is worthy of a symposium ["Shut Up, He Said," June 19...
...Commonweal 3 0 July 17, 1998...
...As I explained in my review of Behe's book (National Review, September 16, 1996), I believe that intelligence is a natural phenomenon manifest at many levels in biological systems...
...10115...
...If you are using "means testing" loosely to mean more of the kind of mechanisms that the Pfiesters are talking about--such as making all of Social Security taxable for upper-income Americans, or, even better, raising the tax rates for the top brackets--I would strongly support you, but that is not the literal meaning of "means testing...
...E ' [ ' ] ;11 ;11 :ll-'tl ~i[.] : | . ] 1 ', E~l ! (Continued from page 4) erate in living cells...
...But there is another side to the interpretive tradition he so masterfully sketches that also...
...12 word minimum...
...Professor Shapiro is within his rights to resist that conclusion, but his resistance comes from his philosophical outlook and not from what he knows as a biologist...
...For additional information call 212-662-4200 or write COMMONWEAL, 475 Riverside Dr., Rm...
...The article was a noble attempt to move in a new direction, but I would question whether many scientists share the author's views...
...He is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University...
...All inquiries: 516/621-8300...
...A murderer is an intelligent cause of death...
...I wish Raymo and his colleagues well...
...Of course, human intelligence and creativity were essential ingredients, but to many neuroscientists and psychologists, these are complex natural phenomena accessible to scientific exploration...
...Priesthood...
...You made that point for me so nicely when you printed a letter that ran under the banner, "To Save 'Nothing Sacred.' Thank you for your support...
...This is not evolution in the Darwinian sense, but the gradual development of a progressive design program...
...Our thanks as well to Hieronymus Filteau, who found yet another error in yet another of our attempts to be funny in Latin...
...PHILLIP JOHNSON Ours is not the 'gimme God' In commenting on Chet Raymo's article on prayer, I claim no special theological or philosophical insights...
...Second, evolutionary genetic change is a cellular process subject to regulation by these computational systems...
...Although the dangerous flooding problem Raymond E. Williams describes may not be common, I am not surprised at the rest of his painful tale...
...9 Spiraling galaxies as a replacement for God: Improved scientific understanding-peeling another layer from the onion--teaches most scientists humility and awe in the face of the universe, but almost all would agree that this sort of approach may be a substitute for belief but should not be mistaken for belief...
...But theirs is very much a work in progress, and I believe they are off on the wrong track--one that could cause much confusion, loss of credibility in scientific and theological circles, and heartbreak if many are somehow led to believe that Jesus is a figment of mystic whatever...
...Some further comments: _9 "Now I lay me down to sleep": The "gimme God" is not the God of well-formed adult Christian believers...
...My Native American relatives might say another Amen...
...Amen...
...10 percent, 6 times...
...JACK HOLTERMAN West Glacier, Mont...
...Publication of letters in our Correspondence column does not imply agreement with their content...
...The following are corrections of factual errors that also occurred...
...15 percent, 12 times...
...Apart from physical medicine, the psychiatric side presents a professional anomaly that prisoners are often not aware of and that many lawyers fail to inform them of: In a court-ordered psychiatric examination, there is no patient confidentiality...
...Theology degrees...
...JAMES A. SHAPIRO Chicago, Ill...
...If our new conversations are to broaden beyond the merely historical and include this tradition of reading that Kugel has so brilliantly presented--and I have recently argued in these pages (January 16) that it should--the historical-critical moment also should not be ignored but should in some fashion (it is not yet clear how) be dialectically incorporated...
...Shapiro still insists that the intelligence is a "natural phenomenon," so that it is not necessary to credit an Intelligent Designer...
...Celebration CELEBRATING CROSS CURRENTS Barat House at Manhattanville College will celebrate the retiring editors of Cross Currents and the retiring founder Joseph Cunneen on Sunday, October 4, Reid Hall, Manhattanville Campus, 2900 Purchase Street, Purchase, NY 10577...
...Yet that dialogue remains clouded by the deeply ingrained gnostic dualism of American culture, now institutionalized, on the one hand, by the creationists and, on the other, by the anticreationist 1981 resolution of the National Academy of Scientists referred to by Professor Johnson...
...A. LAWRENCE WASHBURN, JR...
...But at the same time this world and the people in it live, move, and have their being in God...
...Does Professor Johnson really believe that...
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...I'd feel comfortable, too, with squeezing in a word for my beloved animals along with the "world and the people in it...
...New York, N.Y...
...And Kugel's anthology, even in this first popular form, offers valuable resources for a fuller and more organic engagement with Scripture...
...We will never scientifically demonstrate the existence of a personal God, or that Christ is our brother...
...While Dr...
...Any effort to introduce "means testing" that would lead to the denial of benefits to Americans over a certain income would be fatal to the future of Social Security, for it would turn it into "welfare," something Americans don't like at all, and Social Security would soon go the way of other forms of welfare...
...Kelly for changing her meaning...
...Chicago, Ill...
...But it should also be acknowledged that these are also the tendencies a g a i n s t which the best in historical-critical scholarship fought when it sought to establish the "voice of the text" as something distinct from "the voice of tradition...
...If organisms are truly like computers, then they were designed--by a Designer...
...The Benedictine convent was Nonnberg ("Nun's Mountain"), not Nurnberg...
...RATES: $1.10 per word...
...We have a fully documented history of computer evolution (as well as a complete "fossil record"), and nowhere does divine or occult intervention play a role...
...emphasis added...
...Discounts 5 percent, 3 times...
Vol. 125 • July 1998 • No. 13
