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The closer an election, the greater the shallow promises intended to convince a few more voters toward one side or the other. Since by definition the majority of people are not wealthy, many of those shallow promises are aimed at the middle class and lower. “We will not raise taxes (or we will lower taxes) for anyone making less than $xxxx.” But promises are not the only way to win a middle-class heart. There are also attacks on a minority, in this case the wicked people who make more money than they do. “Greedy corporate executives have abused the free market and they ought to be punished.” Never mind that it is not greed, but the success at acting on their greed which actually aggravates the critic’s audience. That is, there is no political bounty to be had by attacking those who are greedy but fail to gain wealth through it: only those whose greed brings them wealth face the criticism, revealing the hypocrisy of a criticism motivated more by its disdain for wealth (or even profit) than for greed.
But back to the point: even a cursory analysis of those attacks extrudes (more…)

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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 (more…)

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I wrote on June 10th about a Harvard Medical School teacher and researcher accused of accepting millions of dollars from pharmaceutical companies for his research supporting the use of their drugs for pediatric care. There is an obvious conflict of interest which clouds such research. Well, Harvard is hard at it again. This time. a leading researcher on the issue of gambling addiction, Howard Shaffer, is accused of accepting millions from companies (more…)

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Here is the next message from the book of James. It’s on chapter 4, verses 1 through 5. I delivered it as interim pastor at First Baptist, Madisonville, TX. This passage deals with the most fundamental ethical issue, and with the reason practical discipleship (practiced Christianity) often fails. It deals with the inherent problem with egoism (of any form), and the value of altruism. The reason Christians often end up with unanswered prayer and acting as the enemy of God is not that they imitate just any immoral, worldly behavior, but that they choose self over others. It is a very important passage for contemporary theology and practical Christian living.
Audio sermons posted to date, including this one, are also freely available on the sermons page, which is also linked on the sidebar, including as an RSS feed (for subscriptions, like with iTunes).
As with every audio link on this blog, you can click the text just left of the playable arrow and the audio will open in a new page, or you can right-click that text and select “save linked file” (or something similar) and download the file to your hard drive, or you can click the little arrow next to an audio file and it will play the sound right on this page.

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Three words: conflict of interest. There is no more comprehensive or practical tool for identifying ethically indefensible behavior than conflict of interest. Yet its significance is often overlooked and its implications ignored. The New York Times published a story (click here to read it) on June 6, 2008 dealing with exactly this problem in a couple of research professors from Harvard’s medical school. Apparently they have been doing pediatric research on the use of anti-psychotic drugs (yes, anti-psychotic drugs in children, which the Times claims has increased some forty-fold in part because of this research) while failing to report substantial income from the drug companies who benefit from successful test results. Of course, the scientists claim objectivity (more…)

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A Jerry Johnson Live broadcast from June 9, 2008: An hour of phone calls and discussion about why people are reluctant to get involved in helping others, and why Christians ought to do it, even if it involves great personal risk.

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…unless you are prepared to see a pedestrian violently hit by a car Friday evening, May 30th. The video has received a lot of attention not because it shows a 78 year old man, Angel Torres, being struck down by two cars racing or chasing down the wrong side of a two way street, but because it shows onlookers, some of whom clearly witness the accident, demonstrating inexplicable reluctance to step out and help him.
A captioned slideshow about Mr. Torres and the incident is available here, at the website of wsfb, a local news station. Now to be fair, the onlookers did not have much time to respond. The video shows a police cruiser happening on the scene less than a minute and a half after Mr. Torres is struck. And the onlooker who appears most disturbed also appears to behave (in slightly sketchy video) like someone who is confused and not sure what to do.
But with those caveats in place, not only are the witnesses irresponsibly reluctant to act, but so are a number of passersby in vehicles slowing down, looking, and moving on. One motorcyclist at least hesitates, slows, and finally returns to the victim just before the police cruiser arrives. Their reluctance to act exposes a problem in our culture and raises a moral issue no culture can afford to ignore. (more…)

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