God. Real. Right.

A note on terms in the argument: in this post, biology serves as the representative of material reductionism or just of naturalism, since it is the closest a reductionist can come to anything complex or progressive enough to explain the features which non-reductionists claim to exist. Similarly, evolution in this post is simply the most consistent model with which to explain biological advantages. In both cases, the position given to naturalism is intended to give it the most favor available.

Humans have many behavioral and functional characteristics which are biological by nature, none of which makes us human. To be clear, they may be necessary to being human, but they are not sufficient. For example, it is necessary to eat to be human. But many non-human things eat. So what separates humans from, say, pigs? Not much, biologically. But plenty, if Aristotle has anything to say about it; reason, to be specific. So Aristotle calls man the rational animal. From his perspective the definition is sufficient because it distinguishes humanity from every other thing.
There are characteristics other than reason which could be used to pull humanity out of the category of all other animals: consciousness, spirit, aesthetics, or ethics, for instance, depending on who is doing the pulling. But the one of most interest here is ethics.
Long since Aristotle, skeptics regarding human nature have argued that there is no cut-and-dry distinction between other animal species and humanity. There are differences of degree, but nothing absolute, they contend. Previously, value-laden characteristics like ethics seemed inexplicable in terms of biology alone. But once evolutionary theory takes on a social element, that explanation no longer seems Read the rest of this entry »

John Wohlstetter’s book, The Long War ahead and the Short War upon Us, is a politically and culturally plain-spoken revelation about the ideological realities behind the already present and inevitably future conflicts facing Western Civilization. For details on the book, visit http://www.longshortwar.com/.
The best quote from the book is a famous one normally attributed to British General Charles James Napier from the 19th Century. It deals with the Hindu practice of Sati:

You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.

Unbelievably, the practice exposed by Napier’s quote is still sometimes referred to as “self immolation” and still defended as an honorable form of expression for women by some multi-culturalists. Jiminy Cricket!

This question is particularly addressed at kingdom-minded believers who claim that patriotism, military service, and government authority are the wrong places for Christians to live out their Christianity. It is a very simple question rooted in the golden rule (the universalization of ethical claims; what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.)
What do believers pray will come from government, from those in authority? Simply this: “…that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty” 1 Timothy 2:2. How do “kings and all who are in authority” bring about such a condition? Although Romans 13 does make explicit that it is accomplished with the sword, that passage would not be necessary to figure it out. In all the affairs of men, it is the exercise of Read the rest of this entry »

How should Christian parents, church leaders, friends, and strangers react when they hear about the pregnancy of a young woman who is not married? This issue is very easy to address once confusion over it is resolved.
Where is the confusion? Well, when an unmarried teenager gets pregnant, there are actually two distinct issues influencing people’s behaviors and opinions: the sexual activity which brought about the pregnancy and the pregnancy itself.
Now there really should be no controversy regarding the sexual activity itself. Sex outside of marriage is precluded for those who follow Jesus. Admittedly, the presumption and even pressure of society is toward exactly what is precluded by New Testament Christianity, but there is no getting around passages against “promiscuity”, “fornication”, and the activities referenced by other lead-up and descriptive terms throughout the New Testament. But those prohibitions apply whether pregnancy is possible or not; even whether STD’s exist or not (and, duh, of course they do). So if an observer is not the parent of the pregnant teenager and does not have knowledge of the sexual activity of every non-pregnant teenager she is around then Read the rest of this entry »

When Hurricanes strike, as Gustav is doing right now, age-old questions are raised again. Some are about how to react and why. But some are more basic, about the source of all kinds of problems persistently faced by man. This post is about that question: from where comes evil?
The first eight and a half lines of Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” describe the immediate source (or proximate cause, using Descartes’ language) of problems:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the

Read the rest of this entry »

The last post on science touts the material benefits of science for societies which respect liberty. But because that argument makes some people think science should operate without restriction, this post deals with the moral value of science’s product: technology. (This post is a necessary excursion on the way to defining science, which is next.)
Scientists regularly lament the restrictions imposed on them by moral, religious, and other value-laden sects of society. A few years ago an ABC news analyst/physician complained that since scientists had given the McGaugheys the ability to conceive their septuplets, scientists should be the ones to decide whether selective abortion was necessary for the health of the children. (The McGaugheys are pro-life and were the focus of Christian pro-life public activity at the moment.) But her argument is based on a poor understanding of liberty.
It is impossible to respect liberty without restricting it. Maintaining liberty with rational consistency requires separating negative rights (good ones) from positive rights (artificial ones). Negative rights preserve the interests (particularly life, autonomy, and property) of individuals against the intrusive interests of others. In other words, negative rights keep a bully from taking a would-be-victim’s iPod. Positive rights, on the other hand, claim entitlement for those who currently are doing without something. In other words, the claim that a person is entitled to medical care is a positive right. Obviously, positive rights inherently lead to a violation of negative rights. A doctor has a right to work only if it is worthwhile to him, and even neglect work altogether if he no longer cares about income. To say a patient has a “right” to that doctor’s care obviously violates the doctor’s liberty. No system with positive rights can survive—it will devour itself because of the practical contradictions built into it.
The ABC analyst mentioned above confused scientists’ libertarian (negative) right to study and learn in whatever direction the empirical data takes them with the contradictory (positive) right to impose the product of their research or the values they associate with it on either their clients or the public. It may be correct that intellectual freedom is essential to valuable scientific progress—as the last post argues. But it is equally correct that moral constraint is essential to the implementation and application both of scientific research itself and of its products. Read the rest of this entry »

Scientists have apparently (or non-apparently, as the case may be) taken a big step toward making invisibility a possibility–according to an AP story and a C|Net article out this week.
But putting the technical aspects of a childhood dream aside, living among people who are invisible, or of living invisibly among people, is already an adult nightmare; ethically, that is.
Here’s a smidgen of background on egoism and altruism: People need each other. That fact is the bane and purpose of human existence in the world. It also explains why it is so easy to explain all human behavior, even what looks like altruism, as egoism. Altruism is a sincere (pure, simple) concern for others. Egoism is pure concern for self. While egoism is an essential part of living as a human it is not sufficient to explain genuinely ethical living. The Western world’s claim that everything people do is egoistic is wrongly motivated, wrong-headed, and wrong. Worse yet, if the West’s worldview were correct it would mean either that morals are not real (artificial constructs of society or individual psyches) or that morals are nothing more than a description of the selfishness of those who are approved by whoever stands in judgment–a famished view of ethics at best.
Back to the invisible man: The normal way for people to act Read the rest of this entry »

With the Olympics comes a dilemma. On one side is international goodwill, the abeyance of political judgment, and something like a military cease-fire. This side of the dilemma is worthy of the most intriguing aspect of ancient warfare, when sides bent on the utter destruction of each other would wait sometimes for weeks while their mortal enemies performed burial rites or offered seasonal sacrifices.
On the other side is the pressure to use such an enormous stage to make political statements. Some of those statements are ethically compelling, such as opposing human rights violations in China this year. Governments contemplate Read the rest of this entry »

On June 19th I wrote about pro-life pharmacist’s facing accusations of unethical behavior for not providing abortive remedies to their customers.
Now doctors are facing the same pressure. Here’s the issue. Suppose a woman goes in for an exam and her obstetrician realizes there is a problem with the fetus which would lead a pro-choice physician to recommend a “therapeutic” abortion. But suppose this doctor is pro-life. Obviously she is not going to perform an abortion. But because she is pro-life she cannot participate in a abortion either, not even by referring her patient to a different physician. For those who are pro-life that decision is obviously justified. But for those who are pro-choice it appears to be a breach in the physician’s agreement to benefit her patient.
Obstetricians and gynecologists have lived Read the rest of this entry »

Robert Frost uses the title above to mock a shallow, short-sighted public more interested in the trivialities of meaningless distractions than real life. It’s hard to complain about him; we are much that way.
In the most significant cases, our short-sightedness takes the form of a very short attention span and an even shorter memory. Only about three months after the discovery of Buchenwald Americans were fatigued at the sight of bleak newsreels on the prison camp’s sufferers. On September 11, 2002, the first anniversary of the terror attack on U.S. soil, the president declared that we are a “patient and steadfast” nation, and that “what our enemies have begun, we will finish.” Even then it was apparent that such confidence in our resolve might be misplaced. Now there is even more reason to doubt Americans’ steadfast patience to oppose terror.
But in less traumatic but still hugely significant areas of life our short-sightedness has less to do with time and more to do with distance. The Washington Post just reported on a claim Read the rest of this entry »