This is my last post before Cervical Arthroplasty surgery tomorrow to remove two discs in my neck and replace them with artificial metal ones. My surgeon says it is a straight-forward procedure and there is nothing to worry about; he also said “We make an incision in the front of your neck and we cut […]
Entries from December 8th, 2008
One More Sleep: Over and Out
December 8th, 2008 4 Comments
Tags: Car Accident · Disc Replacement Surgery
Moral Issues and Direct Democracy
December 8th, 2008 10 Comments
I have been involved in a discussion over at MacDoctor Moments on various aspects of the abortion debate, though in this post I don’t want to talk about that issue. In the course of this discussion Chuck advocated for a policy of direct democracy to decide moral issues and it is this that I want […]
Tags: Chuck Bird · MacDoctor · Paul Wolff · Plato · Public Policy · Referenda
Cultural Confusion and Ethical Relativism III
December 6th, 2008 24 Comments
Arguments against Relativism In my previous post I argued that the common arguments for relativism fail. In this post I want to go one step further and suggest there are good reasons for rejecting relativism. Many reasons could be mustered here; I will limit myself to three. Counter Examples Both cultural and individual ethical relativism […]
Tags: Ethics · Louis Pojman · Philosophy of Religion · Relativism
Cultural Confusion and Ethical Relativism II
December 5th, 2008 13 Comments
In my previous post, I set out the differences between relativist and objectivist views of ethics. I noted that objectivist views were widely disparaged in our culture in favour of relativist ones. I now want to raise what, I think, is an obvious question, why should we accept the relativism assumed in much cultural ethical […]
Tags: Ethics · Frances Howard-Snyder · Philosophy of Religion · Relativism · Rodney Stark
Guthrie Cards as an Inchoate Genetic Database
December 4th, 2008 7 Comments
I just stumbled across this from Kiwipolemicist; it seems that if you were born in New Zealand from 1969 onwards, chances are that the New Zealand government is holding a sample of your blood. Some 2.1 million blood samples taken from newborns via the ‘heel-prick’ test are still on file today stored on “Guthrie cards.” […]
Tags: Liberty · Rights and Freedoms
Update on the Relativism Series
December 4th, 2008 2 Comments
I had hoped to have part 2 in my relativism series online by now and I am aware I said it would be, but editing has taken longer than anticipated and now we have to leave for Madeleine’s work Christmas do. Provided we do not get back too late we will get it online tonight, […]
Tags: Announcements · Career
Cultural Confusion and Ethical Relativism I
December 2nd, 2008 19 Comments
Suppose you asked me what today’s date was and I answered that the Maori Electorate seats in Parliament should be scrapped. You would quite rightly wonder what I was on. The question of what the date is is a completely different question as to whether a particular social policy is just. Oddly enough, however, when […]
Tags: Ethics · Frances Howard-Snyder · Philosophy of Religion · Relativism · Robert Adams
A common objection to belief in the God of the Bible is that a good, kind, and loving deity would never command the wholesale slaughter of nations. In the tradition of his popular Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan teams up with Matthew Flannagan to tackle some of the most confusing and uncomfortable passages of Scripture. Together they help the Christian and nonbeliever alike understand the biblical, theological, philosophical, and ethical implications of Old Testament warfare passages.
