(More) Christian Nationalism, Brain Decoders, A Surgery Anniversary, and (More) anti-MAiD Fallacies - Dinner Table Digest № 49
The Dinner Table Digest is an intermittent collection of interesting material from around the internet, curated by Peter Thurley at Dinner Table Don'ts. Subscribe today!
Before I get to today’s Digest, I just wanted to express how blessed I feel to be a part of the University of Waterloo Philosophy Department community. As most of you know, I have been sitting in on classes in the department for a few years now. This has been a boon for both my physical and mental health, allowing me the opportunity to both get out of the house and get into the community and to engage with incredibly smart academics and students who are just as cool as people as they are as academics and students.
As I am sure just about everyone knows by now, I have been really engaged with the Medical Aid in Dying discussion in Canada for a few months now. This has led me down the path of thinking through the nature of disability and how society should respond to people with disabilities. So I'm really excited to be able to sit in on Dr. Nicholas Ray's ‘Biomedical Ethics’ class this summer semester! While I expect to be interested in a number of topics, including questions of competence and decision making for incapacitated individuals, I am looking forward to using this class as an opportunity to develop my next piece on Medical Aid in Dying.
Sections:
Statement on Christian Nationalism / Recording People’s Thoughts with a Brain Decoder / Surgery Anniversary Day / Canada’s Permissive MAiD Laws Devalue People with Disabilities
Statement on Christian Nationalism and the Gospel - Various Authors
I haven’t written about Christian Nationalism (CN) in a while - though I do have another chapter overview from Stephen Wolfe’s book coming up shortly - but I noticed that there were some definition wars going on amongst the Twitter CNist community, and was so thrilled when a few of them decided to publish a ‘definitional statement.’ Protestant denominations love to create ‘statements' of belief’ that are usually styled after the old creeds, complete with Affirm and Deny clauses. This statement is no different. Statements like these are double-edged swords - while they serve to make a position clear in an effort to win proponents, they also lay bare any given position’s weaknesses.
One thing I want the reader to note in this instance is the extent to which the authors go out of their way to dissociate themselves with racial interpretations of CN, even as they embrace other heinous beliefs. This doesn’t mean that CN is not a white supremacist project, but it does mean that many of its most public proponents actively promote a multi-ethnic form of CN.
DEFINITION
CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM is a set of governing principles rooted in Scripture’s teaching on Christ’s rule as supreme Lord and King of all creation, Who has ordained civil magistrates with delegated authority to be under Him, over the people, to order their ordained jurisdiction by punishing evil and promoting good for His own glory and the common good of the nation. …
6. The Identity of Civil Officials and the Source of Their Authority
WE AFFIRM that civil officials are God’s deacons of justice. Therefore, they must obey His commands and rule under His authority. We affirm that all human authorities, including civil officials, possess authority only as it has been delegated to them by God and, accordingly, are accountable to Him for how they wield their delegated authority in accordance with God’s prescriptions for civil government as revealed in His Word.
WE DENY the authority of civil officials and documents to contradict what God has said in His Word or to govern beyond the bounds God’s Word has established for them.
Brain activity decoder can reveal stories in people’s minds - EurekAlert
As freaky as it is, I have often wanted the ability to just think my thoughts onto paper, rather than having to write them. My ADHD brain is always looking for shortcuts to getting something done, and my goodness, would that ever be a shortcut! Well, it seems that neuroscientists have figured out how to get the brain to interact with AI models. While not able to think novels into existence, it seems that these models are able to accurately record thoughts that subjects had and/or experienced while listening to stories while undergoing MRI brain scan.
Unlike other language decoding systems in development, this system does not require subjects to have surgical implants, making the process noninvasive. Participants also do not need to use only words from a prescribed list. Brain activity is measured using an fMRI scanner after extensive training of the decoder, in which the individual listens to hours of podcasts in the scanner. Later, provided that the participant is open to having their thoughts decoded, their listening to a new story or imagining telling a story allows the machine to generate corresponding text from brain activity alone.
May 2 is the 8th anniversary of my second surgery
which Dr. Husien was forced to carry out after he nicked my bile duct during the first surgery on April 22, 2015, wherein he removed the 25lbs tumour, parts of my duodenum and colon, and sewed me back together again, saving my life. During the second surgery he also removed my gallbladder. The few weeks I spent in the ICU (from about April 19 to May 8, 2015) was the most trying experience I have ever had. Here is a photo of me, all tubed up, and fighting for my life:
Canada’s permissive assisted-dying culture is devaluing people with disabilities - Janine Benedet and Isabel Grant - The Globe and Mail
This piece is an egregious example of a red herring in the discussion around Medical Aid in Dying. The authors tell a story about caregiver burnout and murder, and using the convicted murderer's stated rationale, attempt to tie it directly to legitimate end-of-life decision making.
… in Edmonton last month, a man who killed his wife in 2018 through a lethal injection of insulin was sentenced to just two years of house arrest after pleading guilty to manslaughter.
Why was the deliberate killing of 69-year-old Christiane Belzile by her husband Francois, then 73, treated so leniently? We believe the reason was simple: she was a woman with disabilities.
In 2011, after Mrs. Belzile had a stroke, her husband decided that he would be her sole caregiver, preventing her from receiving care from professionals. But she developed diabetes and dementia and, after a fall in 2018 that led to an infection, Francois told her they had “reached the end.” After the injection, when she stopped breathing, he tried to end his life.
If she had been a woman without disabilities, these actions might have been seen as examples of coercive control in an abusive relationship; instead, a combination of sexism, ableism, and ageism appears to have obscured the fact that she was exactly the kind of vulnerable victim the law must protect.
There are two immediately obvious things wrong w/ this view:
1. This perspective unfairly impugns the motives, wishes and desires of people with disabilities who autonomously desire #MAiD by suggesting that their highly individualized situations are no different than that of a domestic abuser and murderer.
2. It makes the same category mistake as folks in the social assistance discussion by placing a target on the back of a legitimate end-of-life health care choice rather than where it belongs: on the unseen and terrifying epidemic of men who abuse their disabled partners.
I get that there are concerns for people with disabilities when it comes to Medical Aid in Dying. The Canadian government's responsibility is to ensure that there are appropriate guidelines that both respect the autonomy of a patient and look to ensure better quality of life. But it does disability advocates no good when they make bad arguments. Generalizing the situation of a domestic abuser & murderer doesn't advance concerns about slippery slopes, it just highlights a data outlier. The same is true if we generalize the other way.
The suggestion that I have for disability activists opposed to #MAiD is to go parse the data. If you can show, from the hard data, that marginalized people with disabilities are a) being routinely targeted by health care pros for MAiD b) over-represented in # of MAiD provisions c) accepted for #MAiD specifically based on social situation and not their medical situation d) pressured to continue w the process if they change their mind, then you'll have a case that policy makers will care about. Not when you try and extrapolate from an abusive murderer.
All FREE subscribers have access to Dinner Table Digests, and to any past content that has been pulled from behind Peter’s Support (Pay)Wall.
Content behind the paywall will include Special Edition Digests, rough drafts of essays, shorter, more personal essays, and acerbic social commentary.
Thank you so much for supporting my writing, with your eyeballs, your time, and your $5 bills. I am deeply grateful, and I appreciate any feedback you might have. Please feel free you leave a comment below, or, if you’d like to connect with me directly, you can email me at peter(at)peterthurley(dot).ca. You can also connect with me on Facebook or on Twitter.