http://www.crisismagazine.com/2016/converting-wrong-reasons

On Converting for the Wrong Reasons

The last few weeks have seen the ranks of the #NeverTrump crowd dwindling somewhat as several once-staunch opponents of The Donald have concluded that, despite their myriad objections to Trump’s positions and personality, he would still be preferable to Hilary Clinton as president. Now, the dominance of the two-party system in the United States has resulted in many a voter casting his ballot less in support of one candidate than in opposition to another candidate over our nation’s electoral history—this would be nothing new. The difference, and the interest, lies in the apologia that some of these Trump converts make for their position: we are told by a number of new Trumpers that a President Trump is certain to be more friendly to traditional Republican interests, that his antics are only intended to rile up a key portion of the electorate to sweep him into the White House, and that post-inauguration we can trust him to appoint originalist Supreme Court justices, deal effectively with Congress, and charmingly engage our foreign allies. “He can change!” they plead.

Take radio host Hugh Hewitt. After pushing for changes to convention rules to thwart Trump’s nomination, Hewitt recently made an about-face and wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post backing Trump against Hilary Clinton—not because he supports Mr. Trump’s positions, mind you, but because “the prospect of another President Clinton, especially a Clinton who is so mired in scandal, compromised on national security and is the author of so many foreign-policy meltdowns, has a way of concentrating the mind.” While voicing his support for Trump as the only viable choice to prevent Secretary Clinton from being elected, Hewitt also signals what he expects, or would like, Trump to do going forward in his campaign: “Trump’s task now is clear: It’s time to abandon his off-the-cuff remarks, disengage from his battles with the media and methodically prosecute the case that throughout her career, [Hillary] Clinton has consistently displayed a disqualifying lack of judgment. He needs to develop this argument, detail it and drive it home.”

Any priest worth his collar would respond to an affianced person making such a plea about their intended by encouraging them to think carefully about their situation and seriously consider whether this was a proper match for them. A marriage that begins with the requirement that one party eventually change and the expectation that they will is not starting out on the best footing. (And here we mean significant changes—not so much “stop leaving your dirty socks in the living room” as “stop abusing alcohol and get a job.”) Choosing a marriage partner is a much more momentous and lasting choice than selecting a candidate to support in a given election, but the comparison holds in the crucial aspect: when we choose someone while hoping they’ll change, then what is it that we’re choosing?

My point here is not to focus on Trump himself, but to use the situation his presumptive nomination has created as an analogy for a certain type of convert to the Catholic faith. (The analogy limps, as all analogies do, but let’s take it as far as it can go.) I take as my exemplar former British prime minister Tony Blair, who converted to Catholicism shortly after leaving office in 2007. Mr. Blair’s wife and children were already Catholics, and he frequently attended Mass, so the news was not particularly surprising to many. Blair said of his conversion, “As time went on, I had been going to Mass for a long time … it’s difficult to find the right words. I felt this was right for me. There was something, not just about the doctrine of the Church, but of the universal nature of the Catholic Church.”

However, not long after being received into the Church, Mr. Blair began to openly criticize the Church for its teachings on several aspects of sexual morality. An article in Newsweek informed us that “Though a devout believer, he stands in opposition to his pope on issues like abortion, embryonic-stem-cell research and the rights of gay people to adopt children and form civil unions. ‘I guess there’s probably not many people of any religious faith who fully agree with every aspect of the teaching of the leaders of their faith,’ he says.” In an interview, Blair said, “Actually, we need an attitude of mind where rethinking and the concept of evolving attitudes becomes part of the discipline with which you approach your religious faith,” attributing the Church’s consistent teaching on these matters to a mere “generation gap.”

Is not such an attitude puzzling, event troubling? Just how did Mr. Blair feel “at home” in the Church if he considers it bigoted, benighted, and befuddled, like a grandparent who “was just raised that way”? The Church considers its teachings to be an integral whole, one inseparable from the other and all interwoven with one another. Does Mr. Blair accept that the Church is divinely guided in its teachings on the divinity of Christ and the grace of the sacraments but not in certain areas of morality? How could that be? The answer may come in that Mr. Blair is by trade a politician; I fear he, like too many others, views the teachings of the Church as though they were the planks of a political party platform—how often are they called “positions” in the media?—to be debated or negotiated at will.

To be clear, not every person who struggles with an aspect of Church teaching falls under this criticism. It is one thing to approach the Church and say, “I would like to enter the Church, but the Church’s teaching on X, Y, and Z is very different from the way I am used to thinking; I am still working that out, but I trust Our Lord when he said that the Spirit would lead the apostles into all truth, and I will be docile and listen.” It is another thing to say, “I would like to enter the Church, but the Church is in error on X, Y, and Z, and I trust that the Church will bow to the spirit of the times, and I will be vocal and intractable.” The former shows humility; the latter, stubbornness at best, arrogance at worst.

To return to our earlier analogy: if you think Donald Trump would make a good president, by all means, follow your judgments and support him. But why would you support him then demand he change, in such fundamental ways? He is unlikely to suddenly transform into some cross between Pericles and Benjamin Disraeli. This is to support a candidate not for what he is, but for what he might be, or what you wish he were—the very phenomenon many saw surrounding Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. If you think the Catholic Church teaches the fullness of truth and possesses the fullness of the means of grace by which men can be saved, by all means, follow your judgments and enter the Church. But would you enter the Church then demand radical change? The Church is unlikely to suddenly morph into some version of the United Nations with occasional ritual practices.

The Catholic faith presents the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ as God’s personal fulfillment of His promises to humanity. It teaches us how to live lives of goodness and holiness in accord with our God-given natures, to love God and neighbor with the love of Christ. This is the saving message the Church proposes to the world. If it is accepted in its entirety, it is the start of a lifelong journey toward ever-deeper friendship with God. If it is carved up and taken piecemeal, it will not satisfy, but will become a mere accoutrement to your daily activities—something you do, and not who you are (as my wife has wisely put it). And such accessories are all too easily shunted off when they no longer fit our tastes.

(Photo credit: Reuters)

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CREATION: ORIGIN OF LIFE

Institution for Creation Research

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The question about the origin of life is more complicated than that. Non-living chemicals can't create life. So, how did life begin? 

Investigate this question further: http://www.icr.org/creation-origin-of-life/

HENRY PATINO:

Who Came First the Chicken or the Egg?

The cell uses a chemical known as adenosine triphosphate (ATP) or a similar one called guanosine triphosphate (GTP) by breaking off one of the phosphate groups. This release of one or more phosphates can then be used for the energy to carry out various tasks. It is the portable battery that pushes forward chemical reactions.

Normally, inside the living cell, there is this extremely complicated, well-organized chemical powerhouse, known, as the mitochondria made of specialized proteins. For a cell to function it must be able to create a mechanism for producing usable energy to accomplish the many varied tasks that it must perform to stay alive. But the chemical process involved in the mitochondria is so complex that it is impossible for it to have come first; and yet without it the cell could not exist. The cell needs energy to create proteins, but it needs proteins to create the mitochondria that creates energy.

This "organic power plant" or powerhouse allows the cell to do its many metabolic functions. The ingenious way in which the molecules of Adenosine Tri Phosphate (ATP) carries energy by giving off one of the phosphates and becoming Adenosine Diphosphate allows the cell the raw energy to accomplish many of its functions.

The ATP is manufactured from glucose through a process known as glycolosis. But this process of glycolosis is accomplished through ten discreet steps, each catalyzed by a specific protein. And these specific proteins are in turn created from the genetic information of the DNA. 

Evolution has a problem here. You cannot have the process of translation and transcription without energy from the ATP through glycolosis, but you cannot have glycolosis without the DNA. How did the DNA develop its complicated double helix structure containing the master genetic code without ATP? Or how did ATP develop through glycolosis without the proteins created by the DNA? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? But, this is not the only place where evolution meets such an impossible conundrum:

“Besides transcribing and translating, the cell’s information-processing system also replicates DNA. This happens whenever cells divide and copy themselves. As with the process of transcription and translation, the process of DNA replication depends on many separate protein catalysts to unwind, stabilize, copy, edit, and rewind the original DNA message. In prokaryote cells, DNA replication involves more than thirty specialized proteins to perform tasks necessary for building and accurately copying the genetic molecule. These specialized proteins include DNA polymerase, primases, helicases, topoisomerases, DNA-building proteins, DNA ligases, and editing enzymes. DNA needs these proteins to copy the genetic information contained in DNA. But the proteins that copy the genetic information in DNA are themselves built from that information. This again poses what is at the very least, a curiosity; the production of proteins requires DNA, but the production of DNA requires proteins.” (Signature in the Cell by Stephen C. Meyer, Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2009, pg. 131) (Emphasis mine)

It poses more than a curiosity. It means that the DNA language and the double helix metastructure, as well as the protein language and the ribosomal metastructure which manufactures them, must have all evolved simultaneously. There are no small gradual and incremental evolutionary steps that can account for the gene expression system.

This DNA is suspended in a salt solution, the cellular fluid, so that it may be accessed in order to replicate itself. Without the ability of DNA to replicate, cells could not divide and life could not endure beyond the age of a single cell. Life could not replicate without DNA. The DNA also provides for the cell the ability to assemble amino acids into precise types of proteins. Without it the metabolism of the cell could not exist. The code (software) and the hardware that it uses to function are both highly elaborate and incredibly sophisticated. Through this code, proteins are fabricated to tailor made designs that serve an enormous number of specific tasks. But the DNA itself needs some of these specific proteins to replicate. Without these many specified proteins DNA could not replicate. Which came first?

“The integrated complexity of the cell’s information-processing system has prompted some profound reflection. As Lewontin asks, ‘What makes the proteins that are necessary to make the protein?’ As David Goodsell puts it, this ‘is one of the unanswered riddles of biochemistry: which came first, proteins or protein synthesis? If proteins are needed to make proteins, how did the whole thing get started?’ The end result of protein synthesis is required before it can begin.

The interdependence of proteins and nucleic acids raises many obvious ‘chicken and egg’ dilemmas- dilemmas that origin-of-life theorists before the 1960’s neither anticipated nor addressed. The cell needs proteins to process and express the information in DNA in order to build proteins. But the construction of DNA molecules (during the process of DNA replication) also requires proteins. So which came first the chicken (nucleic acids) or the egg (protein)? If proteins must have arisen first, then how did they do so, since all extant cells construct proteins from the assembly instructions in DNA? How did either arise without the other?” (Signature in the Cell by Stephen C. Meyer, Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2009, pg. 134)

It has taken us the concerted effort of thousands of brilliant minds continuously working for the span of several decades, just to decipher the meaning of the human genetic code. The sheer brainpower and countless man-hours involved in the Genome Project are quite impressive. And, it has been stated that its completion is perhaps one of science’s most incredible accomplishments in our entire human history.

Cracking the human genetic code is in fact one of the most impressive milestones in our scientific accomplishments. Surely the efforts of the best minds in our generation need to be applauded. But, if interpreting the language is that complicated, am I to believe that the creation of this magnificently designed language was merely accidental?

The assertion that this wonderfully complex biological language, contained within our DNA, which uses two codes and integrates them in a circular closed loop system, developed by random chemical processes is nothing more than a statement of blind faith based on no scientific empirical data.

http://www.mylifetree.com/soulfeed/lets-stop-seeing-age-18-parenting-finish-line-mmm-k/

LET’S STOP SEEING AGE 18 AS THE PARENTING FINISH LINE, MMM K?

When I was an eighteen-year-old college freshmen, during spring break my friends and I (all females) hitchhiked  from a grimy bar in Matamoros, Mexico across the US border in a stranger’s van at 2AM in the morning.

Why??? Because we were eighteen and livin’ the dream! (Translation: we were being naive, risky and incredibly stupid in a drug-cartel-ridden city best known for kidnapping and murder.) And apparently this was our version of “problem solving” when after a few hours of karaoke and dancing around the dirt floor of a bar with some charming locals, we discovered that we were stranded on the wrong side of the border—with no money and no means of transportation back to our hotel in South Padre Island, Texas.

We were also VERY lucky as the driver of the creepy white van who picked us up along a dark road on the outskirts of town must have been a patron saint of foolish college coeds disguised as a nice young man from Texas. He safely drove us home without incident. Disaster averted. (Thank you, God! Seriously, you sent us an angel that night, didn’t you?)

Needless to say, this less-than wise decision was just one example that proved I hadn’t mastered “adulting” at eighteen-years-old. (I still haven’t really mastered adulting, but at least I’m self-aware of it and certainly not hitching rides in stranger’s vans in Mexico.)

Now, as the mom of an eighteen-year-old son heading off to college in a few months, I can’t help but cringe when I hear people say they’re looking forward to parenting being “done” when their kids turn eighteen and leave the nest.

Frankly, it’s just hogwash.

Some things change when kids turn eighteen, but not everything

The idea that kids reach adult maturity at age eighteen has been around a long time. It’s so ingrained in our culture that we’ve established significant legal milestones on the 18th birthday. For instance, when my son turned eighteen:

• I lost all access to his medical records and information
• He can vote (yikes!)
• He can enlist in the military and go fight in a war.
• He can go to “big boy” prison (with serial killers and drug cartels) if he commits a crime.
• He can get his own credit cards—and wreck his credit score for a decade.
• I won’t even be able to attend his course planning sessions at college orientation (a painful fact I learned while ugly-crying on the other side of the adviser’s door at his older sister’s college orientation)

Because of my legal guardianship abruptly ending when my son turns eighteen, it’s easy to feel like the world is has declared that my parenting job has officially ended—like I’ve completed the course and crossed the finish line of the final exam.

Dear imaginary parenting exam proctor: I’m NOT finished yet! Your nerve-wracking call for “Pencils down, hands up” is bogus!

I have two bones of contention to pick with you, and here’s what they are:

1. First, an eighteen-year-old’s brain is still developing. (Please continuing reading for the real science behind this!)
2. Secondly, I’M NOT DONE YET, and I don’t appreciate being told “Parenting is over—here’s your final grade on this project!” (We’ll get to that in a minute.)

News Alert: Brain science agrees with me!

The idea that my eighteen-year-old son has reached adult maturity is plainly ridiculous. Have you met him? He’s a smart, wonderful kid, and I’m so proud of him, but he appears consistently incapable of thinking beyond his own needs. (Especially about anything occurring beyond tomorrow.)

I’ve tried my best to teach him all of the important life skills, but there are so many, and there hasn’t been enough time for him to practice! He’s still overwhelmed at the thought of scheduling a series of physical therapy appointments on his own—let alone battle with health insurance claims. His mastery of cooking stops at pancakes. He always mixes his light and dark laundry and doesn’t read garment labels (yup, he was the varsity baseball pitcher in the pink pants!) He gets ridiculously grumpy about “having” to hand-write thank you notes. He leaves a massive trail of dirty socks, fast food cups, athletic cups, and other various sports equipment all over the house. He drives too fast and can’t parallel park without running over my petunias. And he has something that smells like rotting meat in his bedroom and he. Doesn’t. Even. Care.

So…he’s still exactly what most normal teenagers are like—and nothing magical happened on his 18th birthday that turned him into a fully functioning adult.

Also, I remember what I was like at eighteen and clearly “mature” isn’t the word I’d use to describe myself.

And fortunately it’s not just some maturity deficit that runs in our family, because recent brain science confirms: a teenager’s brain is NOT fully developed at eighteen-years-old.

>>Related: A Parent’s Guide to Understanding Teenage Brains

This brain research is actually really interesting (and relieving for parents!). People used to believe that kids’ brains were 95% developed by age six (as if!). And since puberty has fully occurred by age eighteen, kids were considered adults at that point.

But thanks to MRI technology and advances in neuroscience in the last decade, we have a much clearer picture of the structure and functioning that occurs inside a teenager’s brain.  It’s now believed that their brains are only at 80% of full maturity by age eighteen, and often aren’t done completing the full synapse connections until the age of 25-30.

So basically my teenage son’s brain is like a pan of under-cooked brownies: firm around the perimeter but still squishy in the center.

And that under-cooked part? It’s solely located in the prefrontal cortex—the very important part of the brain that controls the exact behaviors that cause parents to face-palm on a daily basis! This is the part of the brain that controls impulses, risk-taking behavior, emotional reactions, moderates social behaviors, decision-making, long-range planning, understanding future consequences of current behavior…maturity.

Yes, that’s right! Eighteen-year-old’s are not finished cookin’! They might look like they’re fully ready from the outside, but stick a fork in ’em and you’ve got a hot mess with no structure.

In other words, STILL SQUISHY.

As long as his gooey brownie center is still cooking (and even after that), I’m going to remain an important guiding influence in his life. (And since I love brownies—and my son, I’ll not ever relinquish my title as his mother!)

Please don’t grade my parenting

Which brings me to my second point (Dear self—listen up!): I don’t appreciate my parenting being judged based on how my kid has “turned out” at age eighteen. In fact, I don’t appreciate it being judged, period.

The love I have for my kids, and the energy I’ve invested into their hearts, bodies, and minds, isn’t the kind of thing that can be graded.

Feeling like I’m “getting a grade” once they reach this mystical milestone of eighteen-years-old is living under the law, and Jesus sets us free from the law. ALWAYS. I’m NOT graded by anything, and especially not by how my kids are going to “turn out. ”

Yes, I have a responsibility to raise them well. Yes, I need to pay attention to appropriate developmental milestones throughout their life in case something needs some extra intervention. Yes, I can take pride in their accomplishments. And yes, I’ll grieve their failures with them.

But my value and my kids’ value isn’t measured by the “results” of my parenting. It’s measured exclusively by Jesus.

Jesus offers grace, not a grade.

Fellow parents, unite with me against these imaginary notions that  age-based milestones define who are kids are, and who we are as parents. When we hear the false command, “Pencils down, hands up,” let’s ignore it, mmm k?

Instead, let’s let go of the pressure we’re feeling to produce super-human adults by the age of eighteen and instead simply savor our kids exactly as they are in this squishy-messy season.

Let’s not feel like we have to rush them into adulthood, nor hold them back from it.

Let’s encourage them to venture out into the world (but maybe avoid Matamoros) and gain their independence, remembering that their inevitable stumbles and screw-ups will be an important part of their maturing process.

Let’s stop feeling the guilt of “parenting fail” when our kids make poor or immature choices and instead find relief in trusting that God’s plan is still in place. (Remember—our kids see the next few months of their lives, parents see the next few years of their lives…but only God knows the whole path of their life journey.)

And let’s look beyond their achievements or failures as defined by the world, and take the time to see them through the eyes of Jesus.

May we breathe a deep sigh of relief and remember that no matter what, Jesus loves them unconditionally, and he’s not tracking their score or yours.

Age eighteen is not the finish line—for them, or for their parents.

Truth? There is no finish line.

Written by Kami Gilmour, co-host of They Say podcast, wife and the mom of 5 teen and young adult kids. She’s also the co-creator of SoulFeed college care packages, designed to help keep parents and college kids connected to what matters most.

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http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/09/opinion/being-dishonest-about-ugliness.html?mwrsm=Facebook&referer=

Being Dishonest About Ugliness

ADULTS often tangle themselves in knots when discussing physical appearance with children. We try to iron out differences by insisting they don’t matter, attribute a greater moral fortitude to the plain or leap in defensively when someone is described as not conventionally attractive, or — worse — ugly or fat. After all, there are better, kinder words to use, or other characteristics to focus on.

The Australian author Robert Hoge, who describes himself as “the ugliest person you’ve never met,” thinks we get it all wrong when we tell children looks don’t matter: “They know perfectly well they do.”

A former speechwriter, he has written a book for children, based on his own life story, called “Ugly.” He finds children are relieved when a grown person talks to them candidly about living with flawed features in a world of facial inequality. It’s important they know that it’s just one thing in life, one characteristic among others.

That appearance, in other words, means something but it doesn’t mean everything.

Mr. Hoge was born with a tumor on his face, and deformed legs.

He describes his face by asking us to imagine being in art class after the teacher has presented you with a lump of wet clay and asked you to sculpt a baby’s face. You labor and sweat, tearing off lumps, smoothing lines, shaping a nose, eyes, chin. Beautiful. Then a kid tears across the room and smashes a clay lump into the middle of the face, pushing the eyes apart.

That’s what he looked like when he was born; his parents burst into tears.

Mr. Hoge says that his mother left him in the hospital, wishing he would die. It was not until he was almost five weeks old, after a family meeting where his siblings voted for him to be brought home, that his parents returned for him. He grew up to be a political adviser to the most senior politician in his state: the Queensland premier.

So how is a child to grapple with the savage social hierarchy of “lookism” that usually begins in the playground, if adults are so clumsy about it? The advantage of beauty has been long established in social science; we know now that it’s not just employers, teachers, lovers and voters who favor the aesthetically gifted, but parents, too.

Interactive Feature | Sign Up for the Opinion Today Newsletter Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, The Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world.

We talk about body shape, size and weight, but rarely about distorted features. And we talk about plainness, but not faces that would make a surgeon’s fingers itch.

Even in children’s literature, we imply ugliness is either transient or deserved. Hans Christian Andersen wrestled with rejection from his peers as a child, most probably because of his large nose, effeminate ways, beautiful singing voice and love of theater; “The Ugly Duckling” is widely assumed to be the story of his own life. But the moral of that story was that a swan would emerge from the body of an outcast, and that you could not repress the nobility of a swan in a crowd of common ducks.

What if you just stay a duck?

Mr. Hoge tells us we don’t need to apply a sepia filter. “I’m happy to concede the point,” he says, “that some people look more aesthetically pleasing than others. Let’s grant that so we can move to the important point — so what?

“Some kids are good spellers; some have bad haircuts; some are fast runners; some kids are short; some are awesome at netball. But the kids who are short aren’t only short. And the kids who are great at netball aren’t only just great at netball. No one is only just one thing. It’s the same with appearance.”

It’s important to talk to children, he says, before “they get sucked into the tight vortex of peer pressure, where every single difference is a case for disaster. Don’t tell kids they’re all beautiful; tell them it’s O.K. to look different.”

Perhaps it’s the long association of physical ugliness with immorality that we need to unpack. The Oxford Dictionary includes in its definition of ugly in English “morally repugnant.” In Greek, the word “kalos” means both beauty and noble, while “aischros” means shameful as well as ugly. Ugly characters in kids’ books are generally horrible and their physical flaws are signs of other shortcomings. Villains have bad teeth, liars have long noses, zombies have thick skulls. The miserly are bony, the greedy, fat.

And perhaps we also need to spend more time pointing to some of the magnificent creatures who have walked the earth without the need for pageant ribbons or Instagram likes, but who have contributed in enduring ways — think, maybe, about Abraham Lincoln.

And finally, surely we should also ensure that those known for attributes other than good genes are included in any pantheon of childhood heroes.

I didn’t ban Barbie dolls in my house, for example, but I did get a little nervous when my little girl accumulated a decent-size clique of them. One day I decided to buy her an Eleanor Roosevelt doll from a museum shop; the splendid former first lady’s strong, striking features are framed by a red velvet cloak and a feather boa. I was a little reticent giving it to her for fear clever Eleanor might be rejected in favor of the pretty girls. Now she sleeps with her every night.

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http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-oxytocin-social-20160620-snap-story.html?utm_source=eGaMorning&utm_campaign=b2d0cb600a-6_21_16&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_54a77f93dd-b2d0cb600a-71062770

Could wear and tear on the 'love hormone' gene make us less social?

We intuitively know that our personalities and temperaments — whether we’re introverts or extroverts, how we respond to novelty or adversity, whether we’re hard-driving or laid back — are the result of a complex interaction of nature and nurture.

We likely start with some general social tendencies established by genes inherited from our parents. But it seems equally evident that experience matters. Did you grow up beloved or neglected? Have your surroundings and people close to you encouraged confident exploration or grim self-protection? What has happened when you stumbled? The answers, we suspect, play a role in sculpting the social selves we come to be from the raw material nature provides.

If only we understood the machinery by which nature and nurture interact to produce the social creatures we are and will become. We might gain new appreciation for our individual differences. We might know better how to prevent the emergence of despair, anxiety and hate. In adulthood, we might make choices — in diet and exercise, in friends, in pastimes — that promote the development of our better social selves.

A new study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, takes a small first step on that long, winding road. It explores how “epigenetics” — the ever-changing instructions that turn genes off and on — interact with a key gene to influence our social behavior.

The gene in question is one which codes for the production of oxytocin, a hormone that’s been associated with trust, sociability and nurturing behaviors. And the epigenetic mechanism studied is methylation, a chemical signaling tool that can result from environmental wear and tear.

DNA methylation is just one way that the epigenome acts to turn certain genes off. It’s a normal and common epigenetic mechanism, but it’s not always internally driven, and it’s not always benign. Increasingly, research suggests that environmental factors such as toxins, stress, malnutrition and social adversity can cause the methylation of genes, switching them to the “off” position.

In 121 study participants, the new research found that the level of methylation seen on the oxytocin gene is a good predictor of a person’s comfort in forming social bonds and ability to judge others’ emotional states. The oxytocin gene’s methylation level was also linked to the strength of activity seen in regions of the brain that are crucial to social functioning. And in the case of one brain structure that plays a key role in our ability to read others’ intentions — the right fusiform gyrus — the oxytocin gene’s methylation level was also linked to size.

Harvesting the oxytocin gene from participants’ saliva, researchers from the University of Georgia, Emory University and Stanford University found that among those who carried a more methylated version, average sociability levels were lower, and activity levels and volume in brain regions linked to sociability were lower as well. Among those whose oxytocin genes were least methylated, they found “attachment styles” that were more secure, greater skill in reading others’ states of mind, and brains that appeared better built for positive social interaction.

Oxytocin, a hormone produced by the brain’s hypothalamus, is sometimes called the “love hormone.” Research has shown it wells up when a mother nurses her infant, when men in hunter-gatherer societies return home from the hunt, and when humans gaze into the soulful eyes of their pet dogs. Research has linked autism and its social deficits with specific variations in the gene that codes for the oxytocin receptor. And inhaled oxytocin is considered a promising aid to social-skills training in those with autism.

Along with recent studies that have tied changes in the oxytocin gene with a range of social behaviors, “this is a very exciting area of investigation and represents a new frontier of social psychology,” said neuroscientist Sarina Saturn of the University of Portland.

“Many of our personality traits are dictated by our genes — inherited,” added Saturn, who wasn’t involved in the new study. “But this area of research implies that our DNA can also learn from powerful emotional and social experiences” and influence how our brains and bodies respond to social stimuli, she added.

The new research is far from definitive in its findings. University of Georgia psychology professor Brian W. Haas, who led the study team, acknowledged that the authors did not actually measure oxytocin levels in study participants, just methylation of the oxytocin genes found in their saliva. An increased level of DNA methylation is normally associated with that gene’s decreased expression. In the case of the oxytocin production gene, more methylation should have resulted in less oxytocin in a participant’s brain and bloodstream.

“It’s a leap” to assume that those with methylated oxytocin genes had less oxytocin, Haas said. “We don’t know that empirically.”

Harvard University geneticist Steven McCarroll, who studies the genetics of psychiatric disease and was not involved in the new research, added that since epigenetic changes act differently on genes throughout the body, there’s no certainty that the methylation of oxytocin genes in saliva reflects the methylation of the same genes in the brain.

“There’s a lot of  good evidence that oxytocin levels fluctuate in response to experience,” McCarroll said.  “But whether that relates to methylation is not known, and we wouldn’t want to accept it — or dismiss it — casually.” At the very least, he added, “you’d want to measure that in the cells that actually make the oxytocin and that shape your mood and actions.”

melissa.healy@latimes.com

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http://www.healthnutnews.com/sunbathers-live-longer-avoid-sun/

Why do sunbathers live longer than those who avoid the sun?

There’s new research out which looks at the paradox of women who sunbathe vs women who don’t, and their life expectancy. You may be be surprised to hear that those who sunbathe are likely to live longer than those who avoid the sun, even though we’ve always been told sunbathers are at an increased risk of developing skin cancer.

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The study looked at 29,518 Swedish women who were followed for 20 years. While those with active sun exposure habits had a longer life expectancy, it was related to a decrease in heart disease and noncancer/non-heart disease deaths.

Researchers aren’t sure whether the positive effect of sun exposure shown in this observational study is mediated by vitamin D (which is SO IMPORTANT FOR HEALTH), another mechanism related to UV radiation, or by some other unmeasured bias, so more study is needed.

Source: Science Daily

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Erin Elizabeth

ABOUT THE FOUNDER OF HEALTH NUT NEWS

Erin Elizabeth is a long time activist with a passion for the healing arts, working in that arena for a quarter century. Her site HealthNutNews.com is less than 2 years old but has already cracked the top 20 Natural Health sites worldwide. She is an author, public speaker, and has recently done some TV and film programs for some of her original work which have attracted international media coverage. You can get Erin’s free e-book here and also watch a short documentary on how she overcame vaccine injuries, Lyme disease, significant weight gain, and more. Follow Erin on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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http://thefederalist.com/2016/06/15/islamic-terrorists-are-not-motivated-by-hate/

Islamic Terrorists Are Not Motivated By Hate

After an American Muslim who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State killed 50 people and injured 53 at a gay nightclub in Orlando, President Obama said it was an act of hate. This portrayal has led people across the country to focus on homophobia and gun control instead of exposing the real motivation so we can recognize the actual threat.

While any atrocity like this is certainly hateful, we would be remiss to simply leave it at that, because we’d fail to comprehend the complex motivations that set a man like Omar Mateen apart from other mass killers. That failure to comprehend only increases our vulnerability.

It is imperative for us to understand that the driving impulse of a man like Mateen is religious in nature. A lot is being said about how he beat his ex-wife and that he made homophobic comments to coworkers, but this behavior is part of his belief system, which allows men to beat their wives, to put homosexuals to death, and to slaughter unbelievers en masse.

Terrorists’ Main Motivation Is Religion

This last part is stated in Surah 9:14, “Fight them [unbelievers]; Allah will punish them by your hands and will disgrace them and give you victory over them and satisfy the breasts of a believing people.” Also, “They shall be slaughtered, or crucified, or their hands and feet shall alternately be struck off; or they shall be banished from the land. That is a degradation for them in this world; and in the world to come awaits them a mighty chastisement.”

The jihadist’s act of killing, therefore, becomes less about hate and more about honor and righteousness. Those who obey Allah, who “cast into the hearts of the unbelievers terror,” who “fight them till there is no persecution and the religion is Allah’s,” will be richly rewarded for their righteous act. They fight—and they die—for the “gift of Paradise.”

“The person who participates in [Holy Battles] in Allah’s cause and nothing compels him do so except belief in Allah and His Apostle, will be recompensed by Allah either with a reward, or booty [if he survives] or will be admitted to Paradise [if he is killed]” (Al Bukhari vol 1:35).

Mohommed Bouyeri, who murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, explained his motivations when he said “what moved me to do what I did was purely my faith. I was motivated by the law that commands me to cut off the head of anyone who insults Allah and his Prophet.”

It is important to understand this core motivation of Islamic terrorists in order to identify and stop them. If we continue to characterize these mass killings as events disassociated from Islamic doctrine and faith, placing the blame totally on personal hateful impulses, we will fail to identify our enemy. If we can’t identify him—if we can’t name him—we won’t know him, which means we can’t defeat him.

These Are Acts of Religious War

We will also fail to recognize that this is an act of war by a group of people who have no wall of separation between the religious and the political. As terrorism expert Sebastian Gorka said, “stop calling the Orlando shooting a hate crime. Nobody should be shocked by the attack. This is what jihadists had been planning to do after Paris, after Brussels.” This isn’t a hate crime; it’s not a tragedy, like a train being derailed. “This is part of the Global Jihad strategy. It’s not an accident—it’s a war against America. . . . it is part of an ideological military assault on the United States of America.”

It is, in reality, a religious war, driven by religious doctrine (in this case radical Islam), and carried out with religious impulses. Continuing to call this a hate crime and failing to grasp what actually defines and motivates these people will blind us to their methods, practices, and plans.

It will also cause us to look inward at ourselves instead of outward at the enemy storming our gates. We will wrongly assume we have contributed to the hate in some way, that we have done something to make them lash out and attack us. We will then erroneously conclude that there is something we can do to make them not hate us anymore. This is what leads to political correctness and weakness when we need to be bold and courageous.

The fact is we can do nothing to appease radical Islamists. They are not motivated by our policies, words, and actions, no matter how much they reference them to manipulate us. They are motivated by who we are: We are unbelievers. We are, by our very nature an offense to them. That goes for all of us, whether we are straight, gay, male, female, black, or white. We are in this together, facing an enemy who wants to kill us equally. Our response, therefore, should be a unified one, standing together against a common foe.

That foe does not act alone. Because these individuals are motivated by a divine directive and act with a communal mindset, they don’t need orders from the leaders of the Islamic State to act. For one thing, those orders have already been issued. In 2014, the chief spokesman for the Islamic State called for all supporters to kill unbelievers “in any manner or way, however it may be.”

“Do not ask for anyone’s advice and do not seek anyone’s verdict,” said Abu Mohammed al Adnani. “Kill the disbeliever whether he is civilian or military, for they have the same ruling.”

If they want to shoot up a Christmas party where Christians are gathered, ISIS sympathizers can do that, according to their faction’s leaders. If they want to target U.S. military members because that’s their particular bugaboo at the time, then they are free to do that. Or they can target a gay nightclub, killing homosexuals with the same hand of judgment as their brethren in the Middle East who execute homosexuals by the thousands.

To Them, War Is a Means of Peace

Whatever their target, these “soldiers of Islam” are motivated by the same impulse: honor, faith, and the glory of god. In 1998, Osama bin Laden made this clear, saying, “I am one of the servants of Allah. We do our duty of fighting for the sake of the religion of Allah.” The Taliban has stated that those who wage war on unbelievers are bound by the command “to restore to this world the light of divine justice…. For to die in the cause is to be sent immediately to paradise.”

Whatever their target, these ‘soldiers of Islam’ are motivated by the same impulse: honor, faith, and the glory of god. 

Through pain, there will be healing. Out of violence, there will be peace. In death, there will be eternal life. In judgment, there will be salvation. This is what motivates the Islamic terrorist. This is what ties him to all the other radical Islamists throughout the world.

How these men and women feel about the infidels—whether they hate them or not—doesn’t really matter. Of course, if they think Allah considers unbelievers to be evildoers who need to be eradicated by any means necessary, then they probably will hate them—for “righteousness sake.” But it’s not a prerequisite. What they desire is to bring glory to Allah.

They don’t need marching orders or emails with instructions. They don’t need a green light from ISIS headquarters. All they need is the courage and the opportunity to do what Allah has commanded—because, according to their faith and doctrine, it is the right thing to do.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the militant Islamist from Jordan who ran a paramilitary training camp in Afghanistan, said Allah commanded them to strike unbelievers (the Kuffar), to “kill them and fight them by all means necessary to achieve the goal. The servants of Allah, who perform Jihad to elevate the word of Allah, are permitted to use any and all means necessary to strike the active unbeliever combatants for the purpose of killing them, snatch their souls from their body, cleanse the earth from the abomination, and lift their trial and persecution of the servants of Allah.

“The goal must be pursued even if the means to accomplish it affects both the intended active fighters and unintended passive ones such as women, children and any other passive category specified by our jurisprudence.”

These are the “defenders of Islam and its sanctity” who wear, as Hassan al-Smeik said, terrorism as “a badge of honor on our chests until Judgment Day.”

Assimilate, Fight, Or Be Slaughtered

The words of Mohammad Sidique Khan, who bombed a subway in London, should ring in the ears of every politician, law enforcement official, and American citizen: “Our driving motivation doesn’t come from tangible commodities that this world has to offer. Our religion is Islam—obedience to the one true God, Allah, and following the footsteps of the final prophet and messenger Muhammad… This is how our ethical stances are dictated.”

These are the ethical stances that drive true believers to shoot up a nightclub, killing dozens. These are the ethical stances that require either death or obedience, slaughter or conversion to Islam: “Repent, and perform the prayer, and pay the alms,” the holy text says to unbelievers. If we do this, we will be allowed to live.

In other words, assimilate or die. This is unacceptable to every liberty-loving American, and it’s why we must fight back with courage, solidarity, and strength, without appeasement or apology. We must be willing to look our enemy in the eye as a united free people and call him by the name he has given himself—the name of Islam.

Denise C. McAllister is a journalist based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a senior contributor to The Federalist. Follow her on Twitter @McAllisterDen.

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