Science Avenger has an excellent article on the connection, or rather lack of a logical connection, between the theory of evolution and social Darwinism (for the third time today, HT: Dispatches). Evolution is a scientific theory. It explains why many facts are what they are. It can never tell us what we should do about…
I believe I have established here that I like tolerance, but I have also noted that tolerance is a value for me, not an absolute. In other words, I don’t have to tolerate everything. I just believe it’s good to be as tolerant as possible. (You can find some previous comments here.) Ed Brayton has…
When I saw the post Virtual Gomorrah: Temptation, Technique, and Technological Progress on the evangelical outpost, I expected to be annoyed by calls for censorship. And indeed there are a few words that tend to annoy my libertarian approach, such as these: . . . My basic position is that while they are desperately needed…
John has an interesting post over at Locusts and Honey titled The Bible, Politics, and Pseudoprophecy. Though there have clearly been some extended exchanges, I haven’t followed them closely, so I’m not 100% certain what John means by Pseudoprophecy, but I think he makes a number of good points. I’d like to comment a bit…
Way back in the prehistory of this blog I posted an entry about fear and human-animal hybrids. Yesterday I got the latest edition of this type of fear in my Breaking Christian News e-mail. In it was a story headlined Prayer Alert: Ethical Outrage as Scientists Create “Human-Sheep”. Now I’m always mildly skeptical when I…
A post on the evangelical outpost alerted me to a minor tempest about abortion rights. It seems that Amanda Marcotte believes that abortion is a moral good, something to be celebrated. Having recently encountered the notion that one trully cannot take the position I do, that abortion in the bulk of cases is to be…
It appears that Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) will get a seat on the Homeland Security Committee, according to the Washington Post. If anyone is wondering how I can vigorously oppose the war in Iraq and still consider not voting for Democrats, this is an excellent example. (I have the same problem with the Republicans and…
John at Locusts and Honey responds to SimplyComplexJen on this topic. John’s basic argument is that an abortion involves taking a human life without that person’s consent, i.e., the consent of the unborn child, and thus one cannot oppose abortion personally and yet support permitting it legally. Frankly, I think John has left out most…
I found this article on MSNBC very interesting in terms of the number of doctors who feel that they can somehow impose their moral choices on their patients. I do have some problems with the methodology involved in the survey and the conclusions drawn–the former don’t clearly support the latter. Nonetheless, these attitudes raise some…