Loving it: IOC and Science Box Themselves Into a Humpty Dumpty Goo-Woman Corner.
Aug 15, 2024 by David Fowler
The President of the International Olympic Committee said something about the controversy over persons with X and Y chromosomes (males) boxing against persons with two X chromosomes (females) for the women’s gold medal that gave me great hope. Everyone, but especially Christians, needs to take advantage of what he said. Here is how.
Regarding this controversy, the IOC president said: "It is not as easy as some in these cultural wars may now want to portray it that XX or XY is the clear distinction between the men and women.”
I suspect most folks would think it’s not as hard as the IOC may want to portray it, but here is why he rejected the “easy” chromosomal distinction as determinative: “This is scientifically not true anymore.”
Of course, he’s not denying that it is scientifically true that some human beings have two X chromosomes, and some have X and Y chromosomes. What he is denying is those chromosomal differences have any meaning; they are just biological facts.
That’s why the IOC simply goes by what is on a person’s passport. If a country allows someone with an X and Y chromosome to declare himself a female on his passport, that’s determinative. But what he said next is critical.
The IOC Goes to the Wrong Corner Looking for Help
When asked if the IOC would be willing to review its passport policy ahead of the 2028 Games, he said it would be willing to do so “[i]f somebody is presenting us a scientifically solid system – how to identify man and woman. If someone can,” he said, the IOC would be “the first ones to do it.”
Here is what’s curious, even ironic, about that: Science long ago conceded there isn’t any meaning to the stuff it measures and manipulates! It cannot tell us what the stuff means!
Therefore, by turning to science for resolution of the controversy, the IOC has boxed itself and science into a corner. And the following is a quick summary of how that happened.
How Science Boxed Itself In
During the medieval period and through the 17th century, western society had a certain concept of order in nature, and the rules of that order were eternal because the order was from God. Creation and its order of being, i.e., what constitutes the nature or essence of things, were held axiomatically; God and the God’s creation were statements of fact.
However, in the modern era, the intellectuals, including most scientists, decided to look to nature alone for an understanding of all things. And they found some things they didn’t expect—like light being waves at times and particles at times. That idea would not have bothered those who believe creation reveals a triune God of one essence but with distinctions in operations among the persons of the Trinity.
But it blew up the science world. The God of the fixed and determinable cosmic machine, or so they considered it, must not exist. Leading scientists and other anti-God philosophers determined that the earlier view about God and creation was only a theoretical construct and could be dismissed and new theories of the cosmos substituted in its place.
The new theory? The cosmos is just made up of brute facts—things just are what they are—and they have no real essences or natures of any metaphysical sort, that is, a meaning and value beyond what is physically observable that informs the proper use of what is observed.
This theory gave scientists the freedom to manipulate the material stuff any way that might be possible without ethical considerations related to meaning—the nature or essence of a thing—and its appropriate uses.
The Sad Result of Letting Science Deceive Us About the Nature of Stuff and Meaning
Over time, as the public bought into the deception, science went where it should not have gone. And having eliminated any givenness of meaning to the nature of a thing, the mere stuff of human beings reverted into a pile of human-shaped goo.
As a result, folks like the IOC President (and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson) began to forget what a woman is and even what it means to be a woman.
Now they want scientists to tell them what a woman is when the scientists have already conceded that there is no meaning to the stuff they work with? Give me a break.
Taking Advantage of Their Defenselessness to Put Them Down for the Count
So, in my view, it is past time for the IOC president and others like him to turn away from scientists and turn to the only choices they have for giving meaning to goo-woman: the theologians and Biblically-informed philosophers the scientists blew off as irrelevant.
It’s more than ironic that the very people the scientists rejected as relevant to life in this world are the only ones who talk about objective meaning. They are the ones who can take the goo of Miss Humpty Dumpty and put her back together again.
How Law Can Help Them Get This Right Again
Chromosomes are objective, determinable, and, currently, non-manipulable, unlike testosterone levels and reproductive organs.
But more important is what we know to be universally true about us from time immemorial: Humans are, in principle, reproductive beings. And that was true before science ever talked about chromosomes.
Our science may have been unsophisticated, but we knew that some human beings provided bodily fluid to another human being in certain ways and at certain times, and a new human being often ensued. That our understanding of the process became more sophisticated does not change the equation.
The words “male” or “man” were used to describe the human being who, by nature, provided the fluid, and the words “female” or “woman” were used to describe the human being who, by nature, received the fluid and got pregnant.
Those descriptors have applied “for a time to which memory runs not to the contrary,” as the common law would have put things. And that way of describing the situation is critical to the correction of our current mess.
Shame on Me, Justice Jackson-Brown, and All Lawyers and Judges Like Us
I bring in common law because our nation’s jurisprudence (philosophy of law) “stands upon the original foundations of the common law.” It is “our birthright and inheritance.” (Quotations from Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution (1833)).
I didn’t know that even though I have a law degree. It wasn’t taught to me.
But now that I know, I will no longer act like Esau and give up my legal birthright and inheritance and that of our nation to eat from the goo-woman porridge being served up by scientists. I will not turn to them to justify laws trying to prevent women from being goo-alized under their microscopes.
What Is Common Law and How Would It Apply?
"Common law depends upon custom," and every lawyer not poisoned by modern law schools as I was knows those customs “receive their binding power, and the force of laws by long and immemorial usage, and by their universal reception.” (William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, *64.)
Why is this important? Because in the case of what is a man and woman, male and female, that custom doesn’t just date back to 1776 or to Jamestown in 1607 but is universal and extends for millennia!
Thus, common law would say those who, by nature, could impregnate another is a man, and those who, by nature, get impregnated are women. Full stop.
Why Real Common Law Allows Us to Put Miss Humpty Dumpty Together Again
Here is why common law is a solid legal foundation for making our nation’s legislators and judges shape up and fly right on matters of human sexuality.
First, every state in our nation is a common law state, except for Louisiana and, thank God, it is not confused on this particular issue.
However, none of Tennessee’s legislators really knows what common law is (and the lawyers among them seem to have been poisoned, as happened to me) or why it is still important. But our insistence that they get educated and giving them the correct education can fix that.
Second, on multiple occasions the U.S. Supreme Court has said “the interpretation of the Constitution of the United States is necessarily influenced by the fact that its provisions are framed in the language of the English common law, and are to be read in the light of its history.” I hope a little remedial education on common law will help Justice Jackson Brown and other jurists like her know what a woman is, at least as a matter of law!
It is time to use the common law of the common persons in our nation – who know and whose ancestors over centuries have known what a man and woman are – to tell the scientists and doctors and the other broken Humpty Dumpty egg heads they need to leave the ring if they don’t know what a woman (or a man) is.
Regarding this controversy, the IOC president said: "It is not as easy as some in these cultural wars may now want to portray it that XX or XY is the clear distinction between the men and women.”
I suspect most folks would think it’s not as hard as the IOC may want to portray it, but here is why he rejected the “easy” chromosomal distinction as determinative: “This is scientifically not true anymore.”
Of course, he’s not denying that it is scientifically true that some human beings have two X chromosomes, and some have X and Y chromosomes. What he is denying is those chromosomal differences have any meaning; they are just biological facts.
That’s why the IOC simply goes by what is on a person’s passport. If a country allows someone with an X and Y chromosome to declare himself a female on his passport, that’s determinative. But what he said next is critical.
The IOC Goes to the Wrong Corner Looking for Help
When asked if the IOC would be willing to review its passport policy ahead of the 2028 Games, he said it would be willing to do so “[i]f somebody is presenting us a scientifically solid system – how to identify man and woman. If someone can,” he said, the IOC would be “the first ones to do it.”
Here is what’s curious, even ironic, about that: Science long ago conceded there isn’t any meaning to the stuff it measures and manipulates! It cannot tell us what the stuff means!
Therefore, by turning to science for resolution of the controversy, the IOC has boxed itself and science into a corner. And the following is a quick summary of how that happened.
How Science Boxed Itself In
During the medieval period and through the 17th century, western society had a certain concept of order in nature, and the rules of that order were eternal because the order was from God. Creation and its order of being, i.e., what constitutes the nature or essence of things, were held axiomatically; God and the God’s creation were statements of fact.
However, in the modern era, the intellectuals, including most scientists, decided to look to nature alone for an understanding of all things. And they found some things they didn’t expect—like light being waves at times and particles at times. That idea would not have bothered those who believe creation reveals a triune God of one essence but with distinctions in operations among the persons of the Trinity.
But it blew up the science world. The God of the fixed and determinable cosmic machine, or so they considered it, must not exist. Leading scientists and other anti-God philosophers determined that the earlier view about God and creation was only a theoretical construct and could be dismissed and new theories of the cosmos substituted in its place.
The new theory? The cosmos is just made up of brute facts—things just are what they are—and they have no real essences or natures of any metaphysical sort, that is, a meaning and value beyond what is physically observable that informs the proper use of what is observed.
This theory gave scientists the freedom to manipulate the material stuff any way that might be possible without ethical considerations related to meaning—the nature or essence of a thing—and its appropriate uses.
The Sad Result of Letting Science Deceive Us About the Nature of Stuff and Meaning
Over time, as the public bought into the deception, science went where it should not have gone. And having eliminated any givenness of meaning to the nature of a thing, the mere stuff of human beings reverted into a pile of human-shaped goo.
As a result, folks like the IOC President (and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson) began to forget what a woman is and even what it means to be a woman.
Now they want scientists to tell them what a woman is when the scientists have already conceded that there is no meaning to the stuff they work with? Give me a break.
Taking Advantage of Their Defenselessness to Put Them Down for the Count
So, in my view, it is past time for the IOC president and others like him to turn away from scientists and turn to the only choices they have for giving meaning to goo-woman: the theologians and Biblically-informed philosophers the scientists blew off as irrelevant.
It’s more than ironic that the very people the scientists rejected as relevant to life in this world are the only ones who talk about objective meaning. They are the ones who can take the goo of Miss Humpty Dumpty and put her back together again.
How Law Can Help Them Get This Right Again
Chromosomes are objective, determinable, and, currently, non-manipulable, unlike testosterone levels and reproductive organs.
But more important is what we know to be universally true about us from time immemorial: Humans are, in principle, reproductive beings. And that was true before science ever talked about chromosomes.
Our science may have been unsophisticated, but we knew that some human beings provided bodily fluid to another human being in certain ways and at certain times, and a new human being often ensued. That our understanding of the process became more sophisticated does not change the equation.
The words “male” or “man” were used to describe the human being who, by nature, provided the fluid, and the words “female” or “woman” were used to describe the human being who, by nature, received the fluid and got pregnant.
Those descriptors have applied “for a time to which memory runs not to the contrary,” as the common law would have put things. And that way of describing the situation is critical to the correction of our current mess.
Shame on Me, Justice Jackson-Brown, and All Lawyers and Judges Like Us
I bring in common law because our nation’s jurisprudence (philosophy of law) “stands upon the original foundations of the common law.” It is “our birthright and inheritance.” (Quotations from Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution (1833)).
I didn’t know that even though I have a law degree. It wasn’t taught to me.
But now that I know, I will no longer act like Esau and give up my legal birthright and inheritance and that of our nation to eat from the goo-woman porridge being served up by scientists. I will not turn to them to justify laws trying to prevent women from being goo-alized under their microscopes.
What Is Common Law and How Would It Apply?
"Common law depends upon custom," and every lawyer not poisoned by modern law schools as I was knows those customs “receive their binding power, and the force of laws by long and immemorial usage, and by their universal reception.” (William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, *64.)
Why is this important? Because in the case of what is a man and woman, male and female, that custom doesn’t just date back to 1776 or to Jamestown in 1607 but is universal and extends for millennia!
Thus, common law would say those who, by nature, could impregnate another is a man, and those who, by nature, get impregnated are women. Full stop.
Why Real Common Law Allows Us to Put Miss Humpty Dumpty Together Again
Here is why common law is a solid legal foundation for making our nation’s legislators and judges shape up and fly right on matters of human sexuality.
First, every state in our nation is a common law state, except for Louisiana and, thank God, it is not confused on this particular issue.
However, none of Tennessee’s legislators really knows what common law is (and the lawyers among them seem to have been poisoned, as happened to me) or why it is still important. But our insistence that they get educated and giving them the correct education can fix that.
Second, on multiple occasions the U.S. Supreme Court has said “the interpretation of the Constitution of the United States is necessarily influenced by the fact that its provisions are framed in the language of the English common law, and are to be read in the light of its history.” I hope a little remedial education on common law will help Justice Jackson Brown and other jurists like her know what a woman is, at least as a matter of law!
It is time to use the common law of the common persons in our nation – who know and whose ancestors over centuries have known what a man and woman are – to tell the scientists and doctors and the other broken Humpty Dumpty egg heads they need to leave the ring if they don’t know what a woman (or a man) is.
