Various Current Events

Soto: Catholic double standard (WSJ)
Soto: Served to prevent abortion regulation (CNS News)
Soto: International law? (WSJ)
Soto: 3 days of questions (NY Times)
Soto: She’s fair (WSJ)
Charity in truth Papal encyclical (Vatican)
Encyclical NOT for one-world government (Prison Planet)
NYT gets Pope’s ideas wrong (NY Times)
Pope on economic justice (Wash Post)
Does the deficit really matter? (Findlaw)
“Gay penguins” go straight? (CBS News)
Honduras’s non-coup (LA Times)
Troops shouldn’t smoke? (Wash Times)
0% tax actually increase revenues (WSJ)
Thoreau on universal health care (WSJ)
Pet airline starts service (Breitbart)
Christians arrested for converting Muslims (Wash Times)
Iraq paying Sunnis to marry Shiites (Fox News)
Fetuses have memories (Wash Times)
Why we don’t want a nuclear-free world (WSJ)
Swearing reduces pain (BBC)

Wacky Wednesday--Morality Doesn’t Matter

Note: Before reading the following arguments, please understand that they are not what I believe. On Wednesdays, I deliberately argue for wrong ideas, challenging my listeners to call and defend the obvious right answer, which is usually far harder than one would expect. This is a summary of what Wacky Andrew will be arguing, not a representation of what real Andrew believes.

~You can’t make yourself be good. Have you ever tried?
~You can’t choose your desires, and it is the desires of your heart that really define your goodness.
~All morality can do is teach you to not act upon your desires. But this only leads to frustration as you try to suppress your sinful tendencies.
~Ethics can’t be taught. Good people wind up having immoral children, and awful people wind up having decent children
~All people have sin, and all sins fully separate us from God, so what difference does it make which sins or how big they are?
~You’re saved by faith, not by works, anyhow, so what does it matter?
~You can’t prove what is right or wrong, which is really just a matter of opinion anyhow.
~There are four possibilities when you pronounce on morality
~1. You anger those who disagree with you
~2. You increase the frustration of people who agree with you but find themselves unable to change.
~3. You cultivate pride in the few people who can change.
~4. You cultivate contempt in the people who are lucky enough to already be in the morally superior category.

Wacky Wednesday--We Should Care About Celebrities

~Celebrities are more entertaining than ordinary people
~Most lives are fairly dull and boring, why should you be forced to contemplate your ordinariness when you could be thinking about the Jet Set?
~Culture is a blend of events, arts, and people.
~All cultures have heroes and important people
~Free markets show that they must satisfy some very deep need we have. Just look at how many outlets focus on them.
~It’s normal and healthy for people to affiliate themselves with and invest themselves in the lives of other people. Sports fans do this, right?
~Actors and artists have important things to say to us.

Evolution/Creation Posts

Over at the Ethics class blog, I have just posted two long entries on evolution and creation
Why Origins Views Matter
A Scriptural analysis of the Theory of Evolution
Enjoy. =)

Theological Tuesday

~Why is Judges 10:1-5 in the Bible?
~What should we learn from Acts 6?
~What should we learn from Jeremiah 28 and 29?
~Does Isaiah 1 have anything to teach us in America?

Links:
Andrew’s July 12 Sermon at The Refinery “What’s Your Legacy?”

Ethics Class, Session 11: Criteria 28-31

Tonight we are going to try to get through the next set of criteria in the ethics syllabus. (You can get more information at http://andrewtallmanshowethics.blogspot.com.) This means we will be talking about:

28. Hypocrisy and Ideals.
29. Little Things and Big Things
30. Segmented vs. Unified Character
31. Tallman’s Theory

In order to facilitate discussion amongst those of you either taking the class or wanting to discuss these ideas in more depth, I will be posting each of the criteria separately without much (if any) actual explanation simply so you can have your discussions on those particular ideas.

Housing Ethics

Two scenarios have recently been occupying my thoughts. One is the first-time homebuyer’s tax credit, which allows people buying a primary residence to receive $8,000 from the Federal Government so long as they stay in the home for three years. Question is, “Is it virtuous to take $8,000 from the government to buy a house?” The second is a scenario I’ve heard is occurring more and more frequently: people abandoning their houses because they owe so much more on them than the houses are worth. Sometimes they’re renting, sometimes they’re even buying new homes first, but the essence of it is simply defaulting voluntarily to escape a bad investment. The obvious question is whether this is morally virtuous.

Various Current Events

Is Roger Federer from the Matrix? (NY Times)
FCC internal report on media in US (CNS News)
Biden “We misread the economy” (ABC News)
Bill would mandate Congress use own health plan (CNS News)
Ford outperforms Government Motors (CNS News)
Cap and trade wrong approach say experts (CNS News)
Former SG Elders advocates sex ed in K (CNS News)
Fed report blames housing collapse on Congerss (CNS News)
Mass sues US over DOMA (Christian Post)
Iowa a gay wedding destination now (USA Today)
Study: Cohabitation is dating, not pre-marriaging (USA Today)
Team claims first artificial sperm created (BBC News)
School bans girl’s pro-life T-shirt (Fox News)
Sperm, egg sales up during recession (USA Today)
ACLU helps death row man access Catholic TV (Nola News)
Turkish show: Religious compete for atheists (Jerusalem Post)
U of Chicago will allow co-ed dorm roommates (Sun-Times)
Coffee may reverse Alzheimer’s (BBC)
Why Palin quit (WSJ)

Wacky Wednesday--All Sins Should Be Illegal

Note: Before reading the following arguments, please understand that they are not what I believe. On Wednesdays, I deliberately argue for wrong ideas, challenging my listeners to call and defend the obvious right answer, which is usually far harder than one would expect. This is a summary of what Wacky Andrew will be arguing, not a representation of what real Andrew believes.

~When God prohibits something, He always attaches a consequence.
~Name a sin which we’re better off keeping legal.

~Sins like murder, theft, and perjury are already the benchmark for making laws.

~For most people, the only ethical guide they have is what the law says.

~How many times have you heard someone say, “Yeah, but I didn’t break any laws?”

~When things are outlawed, people do them less.

~Prohibition wasn’t a failure, even though people think it was.

~For Christians, it shouldn’t matter, and for non-Christians, it’s the only way to teach people how to behave.

~Good parents add negative consequences to bad behaviors when a child doesn’t see how bad they are on their own merits.

~With more things being decriminalized, have we seen a flourishing in morality?

Wacky Wednesday--You Can’t Legislate Morality

Note: Before reading the following arguments, please understand that they are not what I believe. On Wednesdays, I deliberately argue for wrong ideas, challenging my listeners to call and defend the obvious right answer, which is usually far harder than one would expect. This is a summary of what Wacky Andrew will be arguing, not a representation of what real Andrew believes.

~Legislating morality is just another way of teaching someone that might makes right. Morality is just a personal opinion, not the basis of law.
~Morality presupposes religion, and there is no official religion of these United States.
~Furthermore, people have the expressly protected freedom to choose and act upon their religious beliefs.
~Hence legislating morality entails curtailing expressly protected religious liberties in the First Amendment.
~You can’t make people good by passing laws.
~It’s wrong to impose your personal beliefs on other people.
~Goodness is a matter of internal restraint, and external restraints cannot impart internal restraints.
~Look at something like the 18^th Amendment. It’s failure should show you that people can’t be made good through the use of law.
~It doesn’t work, because moral laws are generally unenforceable.

Theological Tuesday

~What does it mean that “God is a jealous God?”
~What should we learn from Jeremiah 28 and 29?
~Why is Acts 6 so interesting?
~Why did God do what He did in 2 Kings 1?