A short review of some good stuff:
The NY Times has an article on the failure of AA programs. Being familiar with drug abusers and programs like Teen Challenge, I am not surprised at all by this report. I'm not knocking it for those for whom it works, but it is clearly a para-church, and ought to be supplanted with secular alternatives like the SOS program. As a teen, I got a little wild and was told I had a "disease" of addiction that I never believed. People like me living proof that those subjected to the AA creed/motto "moderate drinking is impossible" (echoed from the AA/NA) for people who have a few wild times is false. Those who say you are completely unable to alter your actions and become capable of self-restraint are wrong. From the article:
And no data showed that 12-step interventions were any more — or any less — successful in increasing the number of people who stayed in treatment or reducing the number who relapsed after being sober...
“A.A. has helped a lot of people,” Dr. Nunes said. “There are a lot of satisfied customers. On the basis of that, we have to take it seriously.”
- Ouch. Poor Disco Institute...
Barbara Forrest absolutely demolishes ID in her new CSISOP article "The 'Vise Strategy' Undone."
Mel Gibson more than apologizes as he tries to convince the world that he doesn't share the anti-semitic views of his father, Hutton Gibson. Ed Brayton had this hilarious bit to say,
ABC, in a stunningly obvious move, has pulled the plug on a forthcoming Mel Gibson-directed miniseries on the holocaust. No word on whether they will also be cancelling David Duke's series about slavery or Osama Bin Laden's documentary on the evils of religious extremism.
- Six days for God, Six days for Israel
Massimo Pigliucci has a great summary of his thoughts on the mess in the Middle East, and I have to say I agree with his views on this matter nearly to a "t". Will the War of '67 start again?
- No Fan of the "Christ Myth"
Gary Habermas has a critique of the work of G.A. Wells. Wells is a well-known writer on the question of "Christ-myth" -- which denies that Jesus was a historical figure. I tend to agree with mainstream historians and scholars that a real person either named Jesus or re-named Jesus by his followers existed, around whom the myths of the Christ were constructed. While some of the elements of the Jesus stories are certainly borrowed from previous myths, the evidence just doesn't yet support his personhood being a total myth.
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